Would you pluck out your eye?

In the passage in Matthew 5:29 and Mark 9:47 "If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. Better for you to enter the kingdom of Heaven with one eye than to be cast with two eyes into Hell."

This should not be too surprising if we look at it in the proper context. If I am righteous, I want to convince everyone around me of my goodness and my good intentions. Therefore, If I want to convince someone of my goodness, I might say "I am so righteous, I would never look at a prostitute. It was my eye that looked. I couldn't help it."

Someone might also say "I would never steal. It was this cursed hand of mine that stole." ... and so on. This would make me look better. I am a good person, and I can't help it if my body members sin.

And there is reference that parts of your body to not communicate with the self. In Matthew 6:3, Jesus says "do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing." It is thoughts like this that would lead someone to say "I don't know why my hand is sinning. I am good, but my hand is sinning."

We all know for sure that we can control our hands and eyes. They are all controlled by our brains for conscious actions, and by our reflexes for reflex actions. So, Jesus is only saying that you should get rid of the body parts that you cannot control.

In other words, take responsibility for your actions.

God's name

Do you know God's name? The Jewish wisdom is that God's name cannot be pronounced. It is shown in English as YHWH. This has been interpreted as Yeshewa, Yahweh, and Jehovah. However, it is more proper to leave it as an unpronounceable word.

In 2008 the United States Catholic Bishops decided that, out of reverence of the greatness of God, that Yahweh will not be used during liturgy.

Moses did not want to go into Egypt and knew full well that God's name could not be pronounced. That is part of the reason he asked "who shall I say sent me?"

Jehovah's witness education

Jehovah's witnesses missed Isaiah 51:6, ... and the earth will wear out like a garment... After thumbing through their bibles, and coming up with some beautiful passages, they failed to realize this was in scriptures. Let's get the message out to them.

One of the passages they brought up was Isaiah 65:17 ... Behold I will make a new heavens a new earth... But they insisted it was this same earth. They were a bit frantic because I told them the kingdom of God was not of this world. Jesus said that if his kingdom was of this world, his servants would be fighting to save him. John 18:36