Lizards scatter when they perceive a threat, and they will self-amputate their tail if a predator seizes it. It will leave its tail behind and run but with modified locomotor performance and mechanics. The lizard says to itself: 'It's better to lose my tail than to lose my life!'
Similarly, Jesus says to us, if your hand, foot, or eye causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed than to go into Gehenna with your hand, foot or eye intact.
According to our Readings, the solution is to accept that there must be necessary endings to things in our life.
e.g., Several Saints of the Church interpret the hand, the foot, and the eye as dear friends but with limits. Christian friendship submits to the law of the Lord. We may have no other choice but to cut a sinful relationship out of our lives because it’s better for you to go alone into the Kingdom than to go with your friend to hell.
The children at Fatima, who had been prepared for a vision of hell by Our Lady, afterwards did not hesitate to tell people, “don’t do that because you will go to hell.”
Maybe you’ve seen the famous sculpture "The Thinker." The statue was originally created in 1880 as part of Auguste Rodin’s larger work 'The Gates of Hell', an ornamental door for a proposed Palace of Decorative Arts.
What is the thinker thinking about? According to the artist "the Thinker" is sitting in mute amazement as he contemplates lost people in hell.
As Mark Pestaña explains, “The will of a damned soul, similar to the will of a demon cannot alter. Their subjectivism has succeeded, and they have made themselves oblivious to real goods and unmovable by them. Nothing can be done for them — they would not be attracted to real goods, even if they became fully aware of them. Nonetheless, in this life, human beings always retain the possibility of converting the course of their lives by God’s grace.
[Source: Mark Pestaña, How pride causes slavery to sin Part Two, Journal of Spiritual Formation & Soul Care; January 1, 2015.]
A premise in Mark Pestaña’s work is that there is a moral order that exists independently of any human person’s consciousness of it, and that we can come to know that order, and know it as real.
The problem is that just like the tail of the lizard is almost always regenerated, which is good for the lizard, habitual or serious sin once stopped can tend to come back, which is bad for us.
In fact, Lizards that lose and regrow their tails can go overboard and grow back more than one tail — and sometimes they sprout as many as six.
What I find helpful is Dr. Cloud definition of character, which he says is “the ability to meet the demands of reality” (Cloud, p. 24) and integrity, he writes, is the courage to meet those same demands.
The French and Latin meanings of the word integrity hint at its origins, "that the whole thing is working well, undivided, integrated, intact and uncorrupted." [Cloud]
And achieving this "wholeness," paradoxically, is to take drastic measures to eliminate serious sin from our lives by cutting what we need to cut; it’s the pain that works peace.
I close with a story, no doubt, about a lizard:
As one preacher summed up: In C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, which he wrote to suggest that the option between heaven and hell is a radical choice we all have.
In this short, symbolic story, it turns out that a group of people, after a long bus ride, find themselves in a strange location. It is the vestibule of heaven itself, a place they have all generally wanted to go. The problem is that they must now believe that they are actually there. They must accept the fact that God really saves them.
Lewis develops a lively drama for each traveler’s life. All they need to do is “put on” the armor of salvation to receive it; yet many of them cannot bring themselves to believe that they are in banquet-land. They would rather cling to the defenses with which they have covered themselves during their lives.
One self-pitying chap, unwilling to let go of the mantle of his own righteousness, just cannot bring himself to trust that he is actually within the gates of Paradise. He grips his resentments so tightly that he disappears into the small dark hole of his egotism.
Another poor soul wears a small, slimy red lizard on his shoulder, a twitching, chiding garment of shame and disappointment. This lizard is his clothing, his self-image and self-presentation to the world. It is a symbol, Lewis leads us to believe, of some sin of lust, which the pilgrim soul both hugs for identity and carries for self-pity.
An angel approaches, offering to kill the slimy creature, which protests that if he is killed, the soul will surely lose his life and meaning. The ghost-soul, encouraged by the angel, finally let’s go of the lizard, but only with trembling fear. He gasps out a final act of trust: “God help me. God help me.”
And with that plea, a mortal struggle ensues, the lizard mightily resisting while a wondrous metamorphosis happens. The lizard is transformed into a glorious creature. “What stood before me was the greatest stallion I have ever seen, silvery white, but with mane and tail of gold. ... The new-made man turned and clapped the new horse’s neck. ... In joyous haste the young man leaped upon the horse’s back. Turning in his seat he waved a farewell, then nudged the stallion with his heels.” They both soar off, like shooting stars, into the mountains and sunset.
What happened to this wayfarer at the vestibule of the banquet is that he finally clothed himself in Christ rather than in his shame. Having nothing of his own, not even his sins to cling to, he abandoned himself in the “God help me” of radical trust.
When in doubt cut it out.
Amen.
