BUT I SAY UNTO YOU
"Ye have
heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill . . . but I say
unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother . . . shall be in danger of
the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger
of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell
fire." (Matt. 5:21-22) Jesus goes straight to the extreme. He does not even
consider the possibility of striking a brother, much less of killing him. He
does not conceive even the intention, the wish to kill. A single moment of
anger, a single abusive word, a single offensive phrase, are for him the equivalent
of assassination. Unimaginative, mediocre people cry out, "Exaggeration." There can be no grandeur where there is
no passion and passion is exaggeration. Jesus has His own logic and makes no
mistake. Murder is only the final carrying out of a feeling. From anger follow
evil words, from evil words, evil deeds; from blows, murder. It is not enough
therefore to forbid the final act, the material and external act. That is only
the result of an interior process which has made it inevitable. The right thing
to do is to cut at the root of the evil to destroy the evil plant of hate which
bears the poisonous fruit.
Achilles,
son of Peleus, that same Achilles who was wrathful because they took away his
concubine, and who begged the gods to let him become a cannibal so that he
could set his teeth in his dead enemies' flesh, Achilles of the silver-footed
mother said: "Whether they come from
Gods or from men, ill-omened are quarrels and the anger which drives even a
wise man to wrath, wrath which sweeter than honey in the mouth grows greater in
men's hearts." Achilles, after the massacre of his companions, after
the death of his dearest friend, discovers finally what a thing is wrath, which
kindles and burns and not even a river of blood can quench it. The wrathful
hero knows what an evil thing is wrath, but he is not converted. And he
foregoes his wrath against the king of men only to vent the fury of his
vengeance upon the murdered body of Hector.
Anger is like fire: it can be smothered only at the first
spark; afterwards it is too late. Jesus uttered the profoundest truth when He
decreed the same penalty for the first hot words as for murder. When all men
learn to conquer at the very start their outbreaks of resentment and to curb
their imprecations, quarrels of words or of deeds will flame up no longer
between man and his brother man, and homicide will become only a black memory
of our wild-animalistic past.
"Ye have
heard that it was said of them of old time, thou shalt not commit adultery, but
I say unto you that whoever looks upon a woman to lust after her hath committed
adultery already in his heart." (Matt. 5:27-28) Even here Jesus does
not stop with the material fact which seems of importance to gross men. He
always soars from the body to the soul, from flesh to will, from the visible to
the invisible. The tree is judged by its fruit, but the seed is judged by the
tree. Evil visible to all is seen too late. In its maturity it can no longer be
prevented. Sin is the abscess which suddenly appears, but which would not have
appeared if the blood had been purged from its malignant absurdities in time.
When a man and another man's wife desire each other, the betrayal is complete,
they have committed adultery whether or not they are guilty in deed. A man marries
not only the body of his wife, but her soul. If her soul is lost to him he has
lost the greater part. To lose also the lesser part may be unendurably painful,
but it is not vital. A woman overcome and forced without her consent by a
stranger not loved by her, does not commit adultery. What counts is the
intention, the feeling. He who wishes to maintain himself pure must abstain
also from the mere silent passing look of
desire, because the look of desire if not repressed is repeated and a look passes into a
word, into a kiss, and into love which spares no lover. To think
of, to imagine, and to desire a betrayal is already a betrayal. He alone who
cuts the first thread can save himself from the great net of perversity which,
starting from a glance, grows until not even death can break it. And
Jesus advises expressly to pluck out the eye and cast it away if evil comes
from the eye, and to cut off the hand and throw it away if evil comes from the
hand,—advice which dismays the cowardly and even the strong. Yet even the most
cowardly, when threatened by cancer, have their arms or legs cut off, and if a
tumor grows in the bowels, are ready to have their bodies cut open to save
their lives. Men are concerned to save the body, but grudge any sacrifice necessary
to keep in health the soul, without which the body is only an insensate machine
of flesh and blood.
"Again, ye
have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear
thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths:
"But I say
unto you, Swear not at all, neither by heaven; for it is God's throne:
"Nor by the
earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of
the great King.
"Neither
shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or
black.
"But let
your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these
cometh of evil." (Matt. 5:32-37)
He who swears to the truth is afraid, he who swears to
the false is a traitor. The first believes that the power invoked could punish
him, the other is an impostor who profits by the faith of others the more
readily to deceive them. In both cases swearing is wrong. For us powerless men
to call on a superior
power to bear witness or to be a judge in our miserable quarrels of opposed
interest, to swear by our heads or by our sons' heads when we cannot change the
appearance of the smallest part of our body, is an absurd challenge, a
blasphemy. He who always speaks the truth not through dread of penalties, but
through natural desire of his soul, needs no oaths. Oaths can almost always be
called in question, and never serve to give perfect security even to those who
seem to be satisfied with them. In the history of the world there are
more stories of broken oaths than of oaths kept, and he who uses most
words to swear is precisely the man who is already thinking of breaking his
oath.
"Ye have heard it said, Honor thy father and thy mother, but
I say unto you, he that loveth his father and mother more than me is not worthy
of me." And also, "If any man
come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and
brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my
disciple." (Matt. 10:37) Here also the old precept which ties the new order to
the old order with the tie of reverence is shortly reversed.
Jesus does not condemn family love, but He puts it in its
right place, which is not first of all, as the people of antiquity thought. For
Him the greatest love, the purest is fatherly love. The father loves in the son
the future, what is new; the son loves in the father, the past, the old. But
Jesus comes to change the past, to destroy the old. Homage paid to parents,
shutting oneself up in tradition and in the family, is a barrier to the
renovation of the world. Love of all men is a greater thing than love for those
who gave us life. Salvation for all men is infinitely preferable to the service
of the few who make up a family. To have the greater, one needs to abandon the
less. It would be more convenient to love only those of our family and to make
this love (often forced and simulated) an excuse for not being friendly to anyone
else. But he who is devoting his life to something which goes beyond him has a
great undertaking which takes all his strength and every moment of his every
hour until the last. He who wishes to serve the universe with a broad spirit
must give up, and if that is not enough, deny the common affections. He who
wishes to be Father in the divine sense of the word, even without physical
paternity, cannot be merely a son. "Let
the dead bury their dead." (Matt.
8:22) In the old law, and more than
ever in the learned traditions, there were hundreds of precepts for the
purification of the body, minute, tiresome, complicated precepts without any true earthly or heavenly foundation. The Pharisees made the
best part of religion consist in the observance of these traditions because it
is much less trouble to wash a cup than your own soul. For a dead thing like a
cup a little water and a towel are enough; for the soul there must be tears of
love and the fire of desire. "Not
that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of
the mouth, this defileth a man. Do ye not understand that whatsoever entereth
in at the mouth goeth into the belly and is cast out into the draught? But
those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they
defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders,
adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, and blasphemies. These are the
things which defile a man; but to eat with unwashed hands defiles not a
man." (Matt. 15:19)
The bath with water from the well or from
the fountain, the bodily and ritual bath, does not take the place of the essential
inner purification, and it is better to eat with hands soiled with sweat than
to repel a hungry brother with hands washed in three basins of water. Filth
issues from the body, disappears into the vaults and enriches orchards and
fields. But there are many finely dressed gentlemen so full to the throat with
another sort of filth that the stench of it comes out with the words from
their mouths, vainly washed and rinsed. And this filth does not disappear into
underground vaults, but soils every one's life, poisons the air, befouls even
the innocent. From these excremental men we should stand far away, even if they
are washed twelve times a day; the soaping of the skin is not enough if the
heart sends up disgusting thoughts. The sewer-cleaner, if he thinks no evil, is
certainly cleaner than the rich man who, while splashing in the perfumed water
of his marble bath tub, is meditating some new fornication or fraud.
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