Death Grip

In May 2003, mountain climber Aron Ralston used a pocketknife to amputate his right arm. He had been pinned down by a boulder weighing nearly a thousand pounds in a canyon near Moab, Utah, for five days, and running out of water realized it was his only chance to survive. After cutting off his arm he rappelled to the bottom of the canyon and hiked out to meet his rescuers. And believe it or not, he wasn’t the first. Ten years before, Colorado fisherman Bill Jeracki cut off his leg at the knee when two boulders fell on him while angling alone in a remote canyon stream. Jeracki used hemostats from his fishing kit to close the severed artery and vein, then crawled a half mile back to his truck and drove to find help.

It is well known that animals caught in traps will gnaw off a trapped limb to get free. But people - well, that’s a whole different story. People tend to stay stuck in situations that will kill them. That’s why these two stories made the news. And that’s why pretty much everyone skips over - or allegorizes - what Jesus’ said in the sermon on the mount, that “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell. [Mt 5:29-30] I prefer to skip over those particular lines, too... or interpret them as being hyperbole, the kind of dramatic exaggeration that Jesus was prone to use to get his listeners attention. But what if he meant it seriously? What if Jesus really means that we should be willing to lose even body parts if they are getting in the way of discipleship?

I think that what keeps us from taking Jesus’ seriously is that we really don’t fully grasp that sin is just as much a threat to our lives as those boulders that trapped Aron Ralston and Bill Jeracki were. “It’s not that big a deal,” we say to ourselves, when we indulge in our favorite bad habit. There are the big, dramatic sins - stealing, lying, drunkenness, addictions of all kinds, anger and violence - and there are the little, sneaky sins, the ones that don’t seem as harmful but that eat away at the foundations of your soul. A critical spirit, a sense of entitlement, self-righteousness, thinking the worst of others, envy, impatience, thoughtlessness, failure to forgive... That’s just being human, isn’t it? Nobody’s perfect.

Well, that’s true. Nobody is perfect, except Jesus, and we’re getting into heaven on his coattails, not because we deserve it, so we excuse our little, everyday sins as if they didn’t matter, as if God didn’t have good reasons for calling us to live in a particular way. But think. Every decision we make, every action, every word we speak not only displays what we are like on the inside, it also deepens those qualities. We become what we do, we become what we say. The great English apologist C.S. Lewis says, “Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance... perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy are gradually getting worse - so gradually that the increase in seventy years or so will not be very noticeable. But it might be absolute hell in a million years.” [Mere Christianity] Every part of ourselves that we are unwilling to give over to the Lordship of Christ is a little hidden altar to death. But we cannot let go on our own.

The story of “The Rich Young Man” is found in all three of the synoptic gospels. It’s the story of a man who has everything and wants to know how to inherit eternal life. The first thing that Jesus says is “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” [v. 19] Isn’t that what I just said? Nobody’s perfect! Jesus agrees with me!

But then of course, Jesus goes on, because behavior does matter. “You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; Honor your father and mother.’” [v. 20] And the young man answers, “I have kept all these since my youth.” [v. 21] See? He’s a good guy! Just like us! Why doesn’t he just sigh with relief and go home rejoicing that his celestial reservation has been confirmed? But Jesus doesn’t stop there. Luke goes straight to the rest of Jesus’ response, but Matthew tells us that the young man himself asks a question: “What do I still lack?” [Mt 19:20] You see, there’s something in him that knows that this isn’t enough; it can’t be that easy. There’s got to be more to it.