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Any fundamentalist will tell you Jesus was speaking literally. There's nothing metaphoric about Jesus saying that when you see a hot blonde and fantasize about the joy of getting into her pants you've as good as done the deed.
I will add that if a man becomes obsessed with the lust to the point of driving himself crazy and disrupting his family, then I can see how this might be a good saying. But by itself, a little passing lust doesn't hurt anybody, least of all God. Jesus, however, never drew a distinction between the two or added degrees to it. That's what makes it such a silly saying.
I don't think He was. First of all He said it is by your word's you will be forgiven. This then has nothing to do with the fleshly body's yearnings. Just the same He did not mean to cut off your hand if it makes you sin either.
One must try to understand what is between the lines. What His point was.
Adam died after some 900 years he died , as Adam was called to be the first savior , where he failed , and then God brought Jesus 4000 years later and Jesus died and was raised up by God and became a judgment for all who will come , and Jesus is still live today ....... See the thing Jesus said are spirit , as the man hated the other man is a rebel , as it would be a murder for this man to not forgive the other , as the man could not be saved and if he passed away right there he would be sent to the other place and the Holy Angels of God would collect the man and put him in the other place were you would never want to go , so then in spirit he would die and be lost to God ................. Then in the adultery if one looks at the opposite sex with lust then they have committed adultery which is a spiritual curse , as the devil will curse the person , and only Jesus can break the curse of a devil ........ See Jesus says things that do not make physical sense but he was teaching things of the spirit
I don't think He was. First of all He said it is by your word's you will be forgiven. This then has nothing to do with the fleshly body's yearnings. Just the same He did not mean to cut off your hand if it makes you sin either.
One must try to understand what is between the lines. What His point was.
We can see in hindsight that most of what is attributed to Jesus having said he purely metaphorical because to make it literal would have killed off the human race. But people were uneducated and poor and ignorant in those heady days after the destruction of Jerusalem and especially during the Church Age when people were converted to Christianity at the point of a sword. So believing in literal interpretations was the main way of explaining what Christ was saying. After all, that's why the Self-Flagellators came into existence during the Dark Ages and why Origen, one of the smartest of the early church leaders cut off his....er..."stones" because he wanted to be true to Jesus expression,
"And if your stones offend you cut them off and hurl them away from you, for it is better for you to walk into heaven with a funny-looking limp than to run into hell with all your working parts".
Don't ask me what translation that is, I laughed too hard after reading it to make a note.
I already been over what is most likely real meaning of Matthew 5:27-28. I tend agree with Tyndale (the first translator of the English bible from the Greek and Hebrew) that 'Woman' should be translated 'Wife.' Doesn't sound so silly when its properly understood.
Now of course "desiring someones wife" isn't as bad as committing adultery with them at least in the physical sense, but in this case the Greek word behind "look" is also a much more intense form of look. One might even say "obsession." Now in the case of murder, in the US criminal Justice system, a person can be charged with both the murder itself and "conspiracy to commit murder" and they are two separate class 1 felonies and almost always go hand in hand in a charge. One can still be charged with conspiracy to commit murder without murdering if there is enough evidence. Jesus may be referring to "conspiracy to commit adultery" in this case as far as being the actual sin (which makes sense as it goes along with the 10th commandment). In the Torah, adultery is considered a crime of theft against the man and his family because he technically owned his wife. Luckily Paul may have changed that when he said "the spouses bodies belong to 'eachother.'"
Where does the line get drawn between thinking someones wife is hot and "conspiracy to commit adultery"? Its hard to say for sure but I'd say it is mostly involving actual intention. To Paraphrase Billy Crystal in City Slickers: "when I see a Picasso, I admire it. I don't try to take it off the wall." God knows our hearts and our actions and if we are on the path to committing adultery, don't think for a second he won't hold us accountable for it.
God is the final judge, he knows your thoughts and intents.. It is stupid to think or say we go to hell because one had a brief moment of lust in our heart and mind. We as believers come to understand that we are to have a change of mind and repent of our sinful thoughts. We can't proceed in the direction of a sin that will be a downward spiral in our life that will eventually ruin us. Yes, in a Heavenly way God has found us out because He knows what is written on our hearts but in a Earthly matter it is only an individual thought that knows the intent.
You really seem to have a lot of pent-up anger against God. Why?
First of all, the dad in your story is not God. He is just a man. He is incapable of fixing the damage done by that gun. As a human being he is incapable of fixing the damage caused by his actions on another human being.
On the other hand, God is capable of redeeming his creation. He knew that Adam would eat of that fruit, and disobey. He had a plan in place to redeem sinful man.
Then why the "test?"
Why tell someone NOT to do something you know they will do? Then punish them for doing what you knew would happen?
IMO it's this "He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows if you've been bad or good so be good, for goodness' sake" thing that really makes the very religious paranoid, and is the ultimate control tool. Kind of a like a parent warning the kid, "I'll KNOW if you've been watching TV while I'm at the store when I said you couldn't!" even though s/he obviously won't.
It makes for neurosis and fear and self-loathing, IMO. Other very useful control tools. Because then you "need" a savior from all that. Right?
It's cruel, IMO. And I can't believe any god worth its salt would not even give people privacy in their own thoughts. Now a god that was deliberately setting people up to fail, sure, that god would take away all forms of privacy, probably.
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Then why the "test?"
Why tell someone NOT to do something you know they will do? Then punish them for doing what you knew would happen?
Yupper. I'm not sure of the answer to this one, but a few things come to mind... "sadism," "Stockholm syndrome," "forced reliance," "sociopathic level of non-empathy" and a few others. But who am I to say...
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