Whosoever that looketh to lust: KJV with JST versus Book of Mormon

 In these verses, Jesus expounds the higher law that one should not look on a woman (or anyone, I suppose) to lust, and looking to lust was to commit adultery in the heart.  However, Matthew and 3 Nephi have different attending explanations that seem to have different emphases.

KJV with JST:

27 ¶Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:

 28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

 29 And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

 30 And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.  And now this I speak, a parable concerning your sins; wherefore, cast them from you, that ye may not be hewn down and cast into the fire.

 (Matt 5:27-30, JST added in green)

Book of Mormon:

27 Behold, it is written by them of old time, that thou shalt not commit adultery;

 28 But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman, to lust after her, hath committed adultery already in his heart.

 29 Behold, I give unto you a commandment, that ye suffer none of these things to enter into your heart;

 30 For it is better that ye should deny yourselves of these things, wherein ye will take up your cross, than that ye should be cast into hell. (3 Nephi 12:27-30)

I notice that the KJV has “hath committed adultery with her,” but the Book of Mormon has only “hath committed adultery.”  The KJV “with her” seems to imply that the woman participates too, but the Book of Mormon doesn’t, leaving the impression that it is all the man’s (or onlooker’s) sin.

3 Nephi doesn’t have anything about plucking out eyes or cutting off hands, so perhaps the Jews needed the extra vivid language more than the Nephites did.  Concerning this intense imagery, the JST gives us the info that Jesus was not speaking literally, which is a relief.  (We suspect it was the case, but it is nice to know for sure, since there have been people who have taken the extreme view from time to time.)  Learning it is a parable about our sins invites us to look deeper.

Comparing our sins to parts of our bodies shows that Jesus knew our sins can be so much a part of us that the prospect of repenting can seem as devastating as losing an eye or our dominant hand, such that we may ask ourselves, “What am I going to do instead?” especially when it is a favorite way of releasing tension, coping with stress or difficulty, relaxing, having fun, or passing time that weighs heavily on our hands.

I also think that Jesus’ choice of body parts in that parable is not accidental.  The eye is the way we see the world and our perspective, which means it is really about how we think, so Jesus meant we have to cast away sinful thoughts.  The hand is about the things we do, so I think Jesus mean we have to cast away evil deeds.  Evil deeds and evil thoughts that have become attached to us like body parts qualify for the terms “bad habits” and “addictions.”  Seen this way, we can understand why Jesus would use such extreme language about plucking out and cutting off. 

The Book of Mormon’s additions add more to this idea.

29 Behold, I give unto you a commandment, that ye suffer none of these things to enter into your heart;

 30 For it is better that ye should deny yourselves of these things, wherein ye will take up your cross, than that ye should be cast into hell. (3 Nephi 12:29-30)

Jesus makes it a commandment to guard our hearts so that we keep lust (and other ungodly desires) from entering.  AS someone has said before, maybe the bird lands on your head, but you can keep it from building a nest there. 

It is clear Jesus recognizes the difficulty of keeping this commandment, especially if there have been previous problems.  He calls it “tak[ing] up your cross.”  That implies to me a daily burden, a decision made every day that requires great care and self-denial.  I love that He says taking up that cross is better than being cast into hell because it exalts that painful watchfulness into a legitimate part of His higher law.  Thus, anyone who is recovering from an addiction need not think of the hard work of vigilance they do to stay clean as something that only brings them up to the level of ordinary morality.  Rather, it puts them on the higher way—Jesus’s way.  It is, after all, what He commanded as part of the higher law. 

I’m rather stunned to discover this.  I never thought of it in that way before!  What do you think?

Bonus: I found a neat PDF of Semitic idioms in the Bible that explains the meaning of some phrases that are odd in the KJV because they were idioms literally translated instead of explained.  Very instructive; I recommend it.  (It even had a bit about the plucking out of eyes and cutting off of hands, showing that it was an Aramaic idiom meaning about the same as stated above.)

America before the Word of Wisdom

We have all heard the stories about the incidents that prompted D&C 89.  The school of the prophets would meet and the elders would dirty the floor chewing tobacco that they spit liberally in all directions, and they’d fill the room with smoke from their pipes as they discussed the doctrines of Zion.  Emma Smith had to clean up all that yuck from the floor in the evening and she complained to her husband about it, and then he asked the Lord about it and received the Word of Wisdom.

We might be inclined to think that for some reason the elders of the church were major slobs to spit tobacco all over, but actually their behavior was typical in various American cities at that time.  So typical, in fact, that Charles Dickens commented freely on his observations in his travelogue American Notes.

As Washington may be called the head-quarters of tobacco-tinctured saliva, the time is come when I must confess, without any disguise, that the prevalence of those two odious practices of chewing and expectorating began about this time to be anything but agreeable, and soon became most offensive and sickening. In all the public places of America, this filthy custom is recognised. In the courts of law, the judge has his spittoon, the crier his, the witness his, and the prisoner his; while the jurymen and spectators are provided for, as so many men who in the course of nature must desire to spit incessantly. In the hospitals, the students of medicine are requested, by notices upon the wall, to eject their tobacco juice into the boxes provided for that purpose, and not to discolour the stairs. In public buildings, visitors are implored, through the same agency, to squirt the essence of their quids, or ‘plugs,’ as I have heard them called by gentlemen learned in this kind of sweetmeat, into the national spittoons, and not about the bases of the marble columns. But in some parts, this custom is inseparably mixed up with every meal and morning call, and with all the transactions of social life. The stranger, who follows in the track I took myself, will find it in its full bloom and glory, luxuriant in all its alarming recklessness, at Washington. And let him not persuade himself (as I once did, to my shame) that previous tourists have exaggerated its extent. The thing itself is an exaggeration of nastiness, which cannot be outdone.

On board this steamboat, there were two young gentlemen, with shirt-collars reversed as usual, and armed with very big walking-sticks; who planted two seats in the middle of the deck, at a distance of some four paces apart; took out their tobacco-boxes; and sat down opposite each other, to chew. In less than a quarter of an hour’s time, these hopeful youths had shed about them on the clean boards, a copious shower of yellow rain; clearing, by that means, a kind of magic circle, within whose limits no intruders dared to come, and which they never failed to refresh and re-refresh before a spot was dry. This being before breakfast, rather disposed me, I confess, to nausea; but looking attentively at one of the expectorators, I plainly saw that he was young in chewing, and felt inwardly uneasy, himself. A glow of delight came over me at this discovery; and as I marked his face turn paler and paler, and saw the ball of tobacco in his left cheek, quiver with his suppressed agony, while yet he spat, and chewed, and spat again, in emulation of his older friend, I could have fallen on his neck and implored him to go on for hours….

The Senate is a dignified and decorous body, and its proceedings are conducted with much gravity and order. Both houses are handsomely carpeted; but the state to which these carpets are reduced by the universal disregard of the spittoon with which every honourable member is accommodated, and the extraordinary improvements on the pattern which are squirted and dabbled upon it in every direction, do not admit of being described. I will merely observe, that I strongly recommend all strangers not to look at the floor; and if they happen to drop anything, though it be their purse, not to pick it up with an ungloved hand on any account.

It is somewhat remarkable too, at first, to say the least, to see so many honourable members with swelled faces; and it is scarcely less remarkable to discover that this appearance is caused by the quantity of tobacco they contrive to stow within the hollow of the cheek. It is strange enough too, to see an honourable gentleman leaning back in his tilted chair with his legs on the desk before him, shaping a convenient ‘plug’ with his penknife, and when it is quite ready for use, shooting the old one from his mouth, as from a pop-gun, and clapping the new one in its place.

I was surprised to observe that even steady old chewers of great experience, are not always good marksmen, which has rather inclined me to doubt that general proficiency with the rifle, of which we have heard so much in England. Several gentlemen called upon me who, in the course of conversation, frequently missed the spittoon at five paces; and one (but he was certainly short-sighted) mistook the closed sash for the open window, at three. On another occasion, when I dined out, and was sitting with two ladies and some gentlemen round a fire before dinner, one of the company fell short of the fireplace, six distinct times. I am disposed to think, however, that this was occasioned by his not aiming at that object; as there was a white marble hearth before the fender, which was more convenient, and may have suited his purpose better. (1)

I remember when I first read this I was simply amazed that such a dirty and disgusting habit could have been so widespread and socially acceptable.  It gave me a deeper sense of what a revolutionary concept it would be for our church members in that time to learn that tobacco was not for the body or the belly.   I had an instant appreciation for the messes that we don’t have to clean up now that this is no longer a common practice in our society.  And too, a look at some pictures of decayed and rotting mouths of teeth caused by frequent tobacco chewing caused me to appreciate the greatly increased health we enjoy now.

As I was working on this post, I started to wonder at what point in our history people decided that spitting tobacco was bad.  Michael Pekker had a bit of insight on his blog about smoking tobacco.

When the germ theory was proven in the late 19^th century, public reform efforts began targeting unsanitary practices, such as spitting, which could spread disease.  Public opinion turned against spitting tobacco, and laws were framed that made spitting unlawful in public places.  (2)

Might we have spiritual habits that are just as ugly and unhealthy which we wouldn’t see without an outsider telling us how gross they are?

Sources

(1)  (Charles Dickens, American Notes, chapter 8) [http://www.online-literature.com/dickens/americannotes/9/]

(2)  Michael Pekker, “Chewing Tobacco: History, Specifics, and Health Effects”, http://smoking-tobacco.blogspot.com/2011/05/chewing-tobacco-history-specifics-and.html

3 Tiny Habits

Recently I ran into a method that explained to me why and how I was able to get in the habit of reading the scriptures every day. BJ Fogg, a PhD from Stanford has a motivational method called “3 Tiny Habits” he developed to help people make positive changes in their lives in about a week. He recommends that if you are trying to develop a good habit, then you make it something extremely small that you can do in about 30 seconds every single day and then tie that action to something that you already do everyday, so that the first action becomes a trigger for the new action that you are trying to make a habit.

So, if you want to get in the habit of reading your scriptures every single day, make it your goal to read just a single verse. That’s it. (And don’t underestimate the power of reading a single verse! I have felt my entire outlook on life change from reading a single verse on those days when that was all I could do!) The beauty of starting a tiny habit is that it is also painless. If you think reading only a single verse is too short a time, just remember that scripture that out of small things come that which is great.

When I first started reading my scriptures on my own, I tied my reading activity to the activity of getting into bed at the end of the day. I was able to read just about every day for two years because of that. After that two years, I changed my routine to reading in the morning, so I tied it to the activity of getting dressed. A few years ago, I changed my routine again and I tied my reading to the activity of eating breakfast. I can see that I have been able to maintain my reading habit because I tie it to something else I always do. It also shows me that my family was able to consistently do family scripture study because it always came right after dinner; we couldn’t leave until we read the scriptures together. Scripture study was tied to dinner.

So, why is my title 3 Tiny Habits? Well, if it happens that your new years resolutions are implementing family prayer and family scripture study, all you have to do is figure out an activity that you already do as a family that you can tie those small habits to. Make it short so it is painless. And as the third habit, how about giving each person a hug and a kiss? (My family growing up actually tied this habit to family prayer.) That will make it so that each person will get at least one physical sign of affection each day.