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.” 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-beast 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 looketh upon a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery already in his heart.” 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 pustule which suddenly appears, but which would not have appeared if the blood had been purged from its malignant humors 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, 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.”
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 impotent 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.” Here also the old precept which ties the new order to the old order with the tether of reverence is brusquely reversed.
Jesus does not condemn filial 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 paternal 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 must needs 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 any one else. But he who is devoting his life to something which transcends 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.” 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, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man; but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.”
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 waters. 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 noisome 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.