If your eye be single

"The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! Matthew 6:22-23 KJV

What does this mean?

I think Jesus is referring to the special role of the eye (moreso than any other part of the body) in guiding the rest of the person. A focused eye guides your walk rightly, but with an evil eye one fumbles into the ruin of sin.

This reminds me of the instrumental role of the eyes of Adam and Eve during their fall. "So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths." Since their eyes were instrumental (via deception and seduction) to closing the deal on rebelling against God, the first and immediate consequence was a taking away of any singularness of their eyes as they were then opened to their shame and nakedness. They misused their eyes for evil, so they were handed over to a fuller realization of this misuse. More than they bargained for. Now shame and guilt impair their God-given vision.

As to his last sentence, "If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness" I'm not exactly sure if he is making a new point here or just emphasizing what was already stated. IF the light that is in thee -- if one deceives oneself into thinking one is full of light? -- another judgment of the pharisees and scribes? Not sure.

Testimony

There's only one testimony. And it's not first about our lives.

Even if our lives are genuinely blessed, personal testimony (whether it refers to material, earthly, or spiritual blessings from God) is still boasting, and it has the danger of obscuring the one testimony in which the bible itself has focus. In fact the Gospel itself, the good news of what God has done in history to accomplish salvation, can potentially get eclipsed when the triumphs of personal testimony are overemphasized.

Paul the apostle learned his lesson about this, and he wrote about it. He concluded that "If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness."

"I must go on boasting. Though there is nothing to be gained by it, I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven--whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into paradise--whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows-- and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter. On behalf of this man I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses. Though if I should wish to boast, I would not be a fool, for I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me. So to keep me from being too elated by the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong." (2 Cor. 12:1-10 ESV)

In the eyes of most, I don't think there could have been a more powerful personal testimony to others than an apostle like Paul describing his divine visions and revelations. But the great irony is that Paul's personal testimony in this case (his boast) is not the glory of the visions and revelations (which would tempt even Paul to obscure the power and grace of God with his own glory in boasting of his personal experiences). Rather, the testimony commited to writing was this honest and almost embarassing account of God's process of humbling of Paul, to portray the principle of the sufficiency of God's grace in human weakness.

There is a definite lesson here: Our life testimony of the work and power of God is the weaknesses, the insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamnities. Those are the things that testify to our blessed status before God. Remember the Beatitudes in Matthew 5: Jesus pronounces blessings for those who are rejected, weak, lowly, hungering and thirsting after a righteousness which they do not have. God's vision was broader than Paul's; against human expectations, it would be the written testimony of Paul being humbled by some sort of physical ailment (with demonic origins but ultimately by God's purpose), which has since then encouraged and built up countless Christians throughout the ages in the midst of their unvictorious Christian lives. Here we have a record of Paul's "boasting" in his weaknesses. Of course what he is really boasting in is Christ because Paul in his sufferings was partaking in Christ's sufferings. The kingdom of God is not to do with the outward and the trumpet blasts of human accomplishments, it is the invisible work of the Holy Spirit which transforms hearts and minds to be in fellowship with a sovereign God through Jesus Christ, who himself was humbled to the point of death so that the power of God to save would be made known.

As an aside, I suppose one could point to Paul's speeches in the book of Acts, as proof that personal testimony is essential to evangelism. But in Paul's case, his personal testimony (which was very unglorious by human standards) was very important because it linked his apostolic mission with Jesus' ministry. In fact it can be said that the main purpose of the book of Acts as a whole was to establish a bridge between Jesus and Paul, so the account of Paul's coming to faith was very important in the history of salvation. But Paul only uses his own conversion experience as a brief preamble to validate his right to preach the Gospel. His main point was always to proclaim the one testimony, of Jesus and the kingdom of God which had now come.

Praying for the Lost

Matthew 5:43-45:

"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust."

There is no greater act of love towards our enemies than to pray on their behalf, because it signifies our desire for them to be brought into the same great salvation in which God has brought us. If even God extends certain mercies on the unbelieving world at this time, then we too are obliged to do the same. If Christ died for us while we were yet sinners at enmity with God, how much more ought we love and pray for those we know who are at enmity with God and at enmity with us?

John 11:38-46:

"Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days." Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?" So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, "Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me." When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out." The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go."

Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him, but some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done."

Jesus states his purpose in his public prayer towards his Father that his words and actions would bring everyone standing around to believe in him. It is not clearly if he intended for everyone to believe or only a number of them to believe, but the point is every unbeliever there heard those words. Only some believed while others ratted on him, presumably with evil intent. This did not concern Jesus, as if his prayer only partially succeeded, because he already knows that all that the Father gives to him will come to him (John 6:37). But I think the implications are strong for our own intercessory prayers. We pray for those who do not believe, so that they may believe Jesus was sent by God. The immediate success of those prayers or not should not concern us.

Back in Blog

I have neglected this blog for about a year now. The time is again ripe to make use of this thing. I like the idea of concentrating everything into one place. I may also push out some poetry again.

Clinton vs. Wittgenstein

I was just now reading a short synopsis of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, and when the topic of meanings of words came up, I thought of Clinton's fabricated distinction of meanings of the word "is", since the valid distinction would not have helped his case. From the author:

"Knowing the meaning of a word can involve knowing many things: to what objects the word refers (if any), whether it is slang or not, what part of speech it is, whether it carries overtones, and if so what kind they are, and so on. To know all this, or to know enough to get by, is to know the use. And generally knowing the use means knowing the meaning. Philosophical questions about consciousness, for example, then, should be responded to by looking at the various uses we make of the word "consciousness." Scientific investigations into the brain are not directly relevant to this inquiry (although they might be indirectly relevant if scientific discoveries led us to change our use of such words). The meaning of any word is a matter of what we do with our language, not something hidden inside anyone's mind or brain. This is not an attack on neuroscience. It is merely distinguishing philosophy (which is properly concerned with linguistic or conceptual analysis) from science (which is concerned with discovering facts).

"One exception to the meaning-is-use rule of thumb is given in Sect.561, where Wittgenstein says that "the word "is" is used with two different meanings (as the copula and as the sign of equality)" but that its meaning is not its use. That is to say, "is" has not one complex use (including both "Water is clear" and "Water is H2O") and therefore one complex meaning, but two quite distinct uses and meanings. It is an accident that the same word has these two uses. It is not an accident that we use the word "car" to refer to both Fords and Hondas. But what is accidental and what is essential to a concept depends on us, on how we use it."

From Clinton's 1998 grand jury testimony:

QUESTION: "Your—that statement is a completely false statement. Whether or not Mr. Bennett knew of your relationship with Ms. Lewinsky, the statement that there was no sex of any kind in any manner, shape or form with President Clinton was an utterly false statement. Is that correct?"

CLINTON: "It depends upon what the meaning of the word is means. If is means is, and never has been, that's one thing. If it means, there is none, that was a completely true statement."

Where Clinton is parsing tenses (completed past event(s) versus ongoing condition) he is inventing ambiguity to a word whose meaning is defined by its immediate understanding and usage. Because the current question referred to previous exchanges with another party, his charge of ambiguity with the word "is" almost works, but in a sleight of hand way. He is essentially saying, Because that question was posed in the past by other people, you and I cannot know with any certainty what the intended meaning of "is" was in the minds of the questioners, and whether that meaning corresponded to my then understanding of the word's assumed meaning. Slick Willie, indeed.