Tear it out! A Lenten joke.
Bullfrog
Shipmate
in Kerygmania
Matthew 5:27-30
I find my mind staring at this passage and wondering if I'm a failure because it isn't the last thing I see. I've heard it joked, with varying degrees of seriousness, that there might not be a man alive who has manged not to occasionally notice that someone else's body is desirable.
Attaching a threat of violence to a near-unavoidable sin of the mind causes harm because it inspires unhealthy displacement, dissociation, and general denial of self.
On the other hand, you have the legacy of male theologians making awkward excuses for themselves, undermining the seriousness of the passage. "Oh, it's OK. Jesus said that to tell y'all that being holy is impossible, so give up and rely on grace!" Somehow that doesn't sit right either.
And while I can easily see how these teachings are based on a misreading of the passage, if you have to apply interpretive gloss the passage so carefully to get the proper teaching out of it, is it really that great?
I imagine how this passage has been abused and led to abuse, and I want to - according to its own logic - tear it out! Or amend it with something a little more sane. "Mind your thoughts, for they will become your actions" or somesuch.
Self control is a virtue, certainly, and men should learn to manage themselves on all levels, but my experience is that external threats of existential violence are not conducive to the proper exercise of self control. Plus threatening violence implies a lack of self control. Why is God so incompetent at management that they have to literally threaten people with destruction to get them to do something as simple as not staring at someone else's chest?
I find my mind staring at this passage and wondering if I'm a failure because it isn't the last thing I see. I've heard it joked, with varying degrees of seriousness, that there might not be a man alive who has manged not to occasionally notice that someone else's body is desirable.
Attaching a threat of violence to a near-unavoidable sin of the mind causes harm because it inspires unhealthy displacement, dissociation, and general denial of self.
On the other hand, you have the legacy of male theologians making awkward excuses for themselves, undermining the seriousness of the passage. "Oh, it's OK. Jesus said that to tell y'all that being holy is impossible, so give up and rely on grace!" Somehow that doesn't sit right either.
And while I can easily see how these teachings are based on a misreading of the passage, if you have to apply interpretive gloss the passage so carefully to get the proper teaching out of it, is it really that great?
I imagine how this passage has been abused and led to abuse, and I want to - according to its own logic - tear it out! Or amend it with something a little more sane. "Mind your thoughts, for they will become your actions" or somesuch.
Self control is a virtue, certainly, and men should learn to manage themselves on all levels, but my experience is that external threats of existential violence are not conducive to the proper exercise of self control. Plus threatening violence implies a lack of self control. Why is God so incompetent at management that they have to literally threaten people with destruction to get them to do something as simple as not staring at someone else's chest?
Comments
Though at some point the error is on the reader for reading a hyperoble and taking it so literally, I suppose. Though I suddenly recall one of the nuttier of the church fathers might've done that? Name escapes me, one that the Catholics are wary of and the Orthodox are generally pretty comfortable with...*goes Googling*...Origen!
Apparently it's not just moderns taking things too...erm...seriously...
It is rather comedic, I'll admit. And I think that's something about sexual sins from the male perspective. They may seem silly and awkward...until they're not. And when they aren't, they're horrifying. And the shift from the one to the other can happen fast if you're stupid.
And yes. Origen was undeniably weird, though I think his completely deranged behavior does reflect on how a lot of inexperienced guys deal with lust (speaking as someone comfortably married with 3 kids who vaguely remembers that phase.)
I once chatted with a fundamentalist via f-book who described managing lust as "man's greatest battle" and I was glad he couldn't see me laughing at him. ISTM that by inflating the problem he was making it a lot harder than it really needed to be. And more seriously, I do think that's exactly the psychosis that this passage creates in people who misunderstand it. By freaking out about their dicks, they turn into dicks.
I do think you have the sound read of it. I'm just so used to hearing people take an unsound read of it that I wish there were a better way.
The argument went that it was alright to desire single women because you might marry them but not married women because that would constitute adultery.
The Greek scholars and ministers/clergy here will be able to confirm whether or not this is the case.
As for Origen, well he's partly acceptable to the Orthodox but not fully. The general consensus is that he had some good ideas and some things right, but others completely wrong.
I'm not so sure it would have been as obvious to the ancients as it is to us that docking one's dangly bits wouldn't curb lustful thoughts although Origen's alleged action was considered pretty 'out there' at the time.
And thanks for clarifying the church's relationship to Origen, it has been a long time.
"alleged" is the key word here. There is little to no evidence that Origen performed the actions attributed to him by his opponents after his death. Most of the evidence points to his being accepted in his lifetime as a respected priest and teacher.
And @Gamma Gamaliel, if the man in question is married, I can’t see that the marital status of the woman is relevant.
Personally, I would say there is something of a line crossed between noticing that someone is attractive, and imagining having sex with them. Something about being aware and avoiding crossing that line is IMHO what Jesus has in mind. This sits well with a legitimate translation of βλέπων γυναίκα προς επιθυμησαι as ‘looks on a woman in order to lust / with the purpose of lusting’.
What he was trying to say, however sexistly and clumsily, was that if a single fella 'fancied' a single woman then that wasn't sinful in the way that ogling someone else's wife is, or if married men were lusting after single women.
His argument was that the human race would not propagate itself if people didn't have sexual desires.
FWIW I agree with @BroJames that there is a difference between finding someone attractive and imagining having sex with them, particularly if that leads to fantasises and inappropriate attention.
I can't cast the first stone.
Some other hyperpoles:
how about that tiny speck in your neighbor's eye vs the beam in your own,
straining out a gnat while swallowing a camel,
speaking of camels, how about the camel going through the eye of a needle, or
if you want to get into heaven, you must hate your father and mother.
Matthew 5:29f is a deliberately shocking image to stress the seriousness of dealing sin at its source, not literal self mutilation.
And that Jesus must have had a lot of confidence in his disciples to take them to dinner with tax-collectors and prostitutes (even if that's not soliciting).
The marital status of the person you're lusting after makes a difference in only one case--if she's your wife. Otherwise you're sinning against her, God and her spouse, regardless of the technical name (adult? Fornication? Rape?
And the ancients as a whole were probably more familiar with the effects of castration than we are. They dealt with it more commonly than we do.
We need to differentiate between the normal, innocent and momentary "Wow, he/she's gorgeous" and the sinful objectification and use of that person for one's own pleasure that may or may not follow the first noticing. One is ordinary, biologically based and not harmful. The other requires our consent on some level--a choice to carry on with the reaction when it starts to move into mental fondling, etc.
That said society has often had asymmetric standards, to the benefit of the Patriarchy and to the detriment of lower-priveledged males and women of all statuses in different ways.
Catholic Renaissance France being an easy example.
* I can't think of a simple way of excluding violating thoughts (at some point it would arguably not be lust).
I think the following is the most relevant part of that section is:-
I don't think I have overquoted, but the hosts can edit this post if I have overstepped.
So having sexual desires towards someone only legitimately kicks in once a marriage ceremony takes place?
Nobody ever 'fancies' their future wife or husband until they've exchanged rings?
Now, I know you aren't saying that and that prior to marriage it behoves both partners not to get 'carried away.'
I'm not saying I agree with the bloke I was quoting but what he was saying was that if sexual desire wasn't there then nobody would marry in the first place.
So the verse, this bloke suggested must be about not lusting after married women not having sexual desires towards unmarried women, provided you are going to marry them of course.
My wife and I were very prim.and proper before we got married and didn't overstep any marks. I don't regret that.
I do regret overstepping the mark since she died though.
If we're reminiscing ( @Gwai and I are approaching 20 years) I can think of extremely attractive girls I knew in my teens who...that would've been a terrible idea because the timing, the personalities, social circumstances, etc. would've made for a terrible long term relationship.
Of course, this might get into the role of eros in general, with the Catholic (and weirdly, social darwinist) approach being that such desire is geared toward making babies via marriage. And that's most efficiently done with monogamy, at least in most cultures I'm aware of. Trying to mix up your relationships can get messy and emotionally dangerous, even without the looming specter of God's judgment.
Or at least that has been my sensibility on marriage. It's not that God demands it and threatens people into obedience per se, it's that it's that simple, honest monogamy is a functional model for society. And cheating endangers that stability.
I wasn't aware that I did.
But my post was poorly worded. I should have posed my questions differently.
Was Jesus operating in a "the families arrange their children's marriage" culture?
If that's so, then sexual license was a wildly different can of worms than it is in 21st century America. That gap needs an interpretive bridge. It's not nearly impossible, but it must be minded.
Please listen to me this once, as a former professional teacher of rhetoric. Every time you say, "I'm not saying that..." and then actually SAY the thing, you come off sounding disingenuous--and well you should. Because you HAVE said the thing, and usually you are in fact the only person on the thread who has even imagined that thing, let alone posting it.
If you in addition drag in the name of a Shipmate using the form ("I'm not saying that X means such-and-such") you have not only brought up the topic of such-and-such, but you have attached X's name to that topic in the minds of every reader. THAT is what the problem is. And using the word "not" is no protection against it. The association still happens.
In my case, you wrote:
This rhetorical move does two things:
It introduces the idea that no one ever fancies a future spouse before exchanging rings, an obviously stupid idea that nobody on the thread has previously posted or probably imagined; and
It associates my name with it ("you aren't saying..."). Putting the word "not" in there isn't going to improve matters. You've made the association either way. This is a well-known rhetorical strategy people of ill repute (congress critters and the like) use to smear their enemies with all sorts of nasty associations, and when they get called on it, they say innocently: "But I didn't say he said it. I said he DIDN'T say it!"
(Please, can someone come up with the formal name of this rhetorical strategy for me? I'm aware of the strategy, but I'm drawing a blank at the moment on what the name is)
Perhaps you would understand the point better if you imagined the exchange going this way:
Do you see the problem?
Look, I'll pull it myself.
"People who use this strategy in Congress manage to smear their enemies in a way that makes it very difficult for them to clear their names. Now, I'm not saying that Gamaliel meant to do that..."
There. There's an example. Not fun, is it?
And the fact that I truly don't think you're doing this with bad intent--well, that doesn't make it any more comfortable for you, does it?
So please. Take those words "I'm not saying that" and dump them in a deep, dark hole. Never use them again. Because you're causing pain to people. You may not mean to, but you are.
But I can see how it sounds.
I think I'll step aside for a bit and take more care in future.
I do not deserve your indulgence.
What I should have typed in an instance like this is something like:
'I know nobody here is saying X but there is an X view out there. What are Shipmates' views of X?'
Or something of that kind.
Or 'I'm not saying you are saying X Shipmate Y, but what should our response be to X ...'
Or better still, refrain from comment unless or until I have something useful to add.
Which may take a lo-oo-oong time.
I will withdraw from this thread as I feel I've spoiled it for everyone else.
I apologise and will withdraw to reflect and adjust.
Anyway, stay with us, @GammaG, even if keeping your head down.
“I’ve encountered X view, and it made me uncomfortable/curious/struck me as odd/whatever. How would people here respond to that?”
There is an unresolved problem here which may well require further thrashing out.
However any such public thrashing or self-thrashing ought to take place in Hell, that place of thrashing and gnashing coincidentally referred to in this very same passage.
Contributors to this thread should return to views on Matthew 5:27-30.
Hostly Fin Submerges
Message received and understood.
One thing I noticed in your post was referring to the violence, in this instance, as if it is imposed externally. Is it? No one is threatening to harm someone else. It is Jesus's hyperbolic recommendation as a 'cure' for sinful behaviour.
I have read this from the perspective that Jesus is addressing real or potential pushback between verses 28 and 29. Jesus gives a radical statement about lust in verse 28 ("But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.") Opponents of his position - real or potential - might argue with Jesus, on the basis of morally detachable body parts. Jesus, I can't help it if I've got a wandering eye. So what if my hand reaches out and grabs a handful every now and then?
I definitely read this as joke structure, with a traditional three-part punchline.
Jesus: You've got a wandering eye? You'd better pull that out, since it's not listening to you and causing you to sin. Your hand has a mind of its own? You should get rid of it.
Got any more problematic body parts? Anyone? <crickets>
More seriously, this challenges a viewpoint that is still in our world today: that women are responsible for men's behaviour. IIRC, in certain places, a woman who is not dressed modestly is actually sexually harassing the men around her by doing so. She is abusing them, because men cannot be held responsible for their morally detachable body parts. How this perspective is still alive anywhere is truly astonishing. In my reading, Jesus challenges this viewpoint directly, by placing the onus on men to be responsible for their behaviour.
Not loving the gendered assumption about behaviour in this sentence, even if it mirrors the gendered assumptions in the text.
I think I’ve mentioned somewhere on the Ship recently that I’ve heard an interpretation of the commandment to circumcise that actually is along those lines. That interpretation notes that the commandment to circumcise is given immediately after the story of the sexual abuse and exploitation of Hagar and the birth of Ishmael, and sees circumcision not just as a sign of covenant, but as a reminder of Abraham’s attempts to bring about God’s promise of a child through his own schemes and his abuse of others. So, cutting off the part of the body that represented the patriarch’s failure to trust the covenant.
Those are good points and I'll try to clarify my thinking.
I am also not fond of the gendered assumptions in either my post or the passage, but I also know a lot of women in my life who have complained about this particular behavior by men, and I have not known a lot of men who have similar complaints. By most reports, men are the majority of perpetrators, which is not something I'm particularly proud of. Men do appear have a big problem socially, so I do think we own a lot of that responsibility.
That said, I'll happily say the passage should apply to people equally. I'll happily accept your point with these awkward reservations. I think you're right and fairly called me out.
Far as threats, I was looking at the last bit in the passage: He seems to be saying "Either follow my instructions or go to hell." I understand there are many discussions of the specific meaning of hell, but being tossed into a burning garbage dump does seem like a threat.
That said, as noted, I do think there's some hyperbolic comedy, and I might've been also chuckling a bit at my own joke about tearing out a passage - for being misread and leading people to error - when the passage tells people to tear things out because they could lead to error.
😊😊
(I say "probably" because, of course, God is forgiving to the repentant---so there is a way to get back on top of the cliff after you jump. By which we realize that I suck at analogies.)
I see that, the problem is that - in my experience, which I think is backed up by psychological research - negative reinforcement can make people fixate on the behavior. And the punishment in this case isn't literal. You don't literally get tossed into a lake of fire when you ogle somebody. There's no logical connection. And so the violent non sequitur draws more attention to what it's trying to discourage.
To borrow from a book title I saw years ago: If I scream "DON'T THINK OF AN ELEPHANT OR ELSE!!!!!!!" an awful lot of people are going to immediately be dwelling on elephants.
Ah, got it.
I read this differently from Hedgehog. I think that the threat of hell is included as a target in Jesus's hyperbolic challenge to (mockery of?) both sociological and theological points of view. I think it is possible, if not likely, that the very same people who believe in morally detachable body parts also believe in their own morally detachable status from others who commit the same behaviour.
It's an implicit "Rules for thee but not for me" idea being challenged. Or, if you like, a salvific version of an irregular verb:
You're a pervert who's going to hell.
I happen to have lively body parts with minds of their own, and I'm a good person.
Jesus is about to blow a cross-sized hole into the whole sin/salvation model that people had been operating under. This includes the hypocritical "rules for thee but not for me" crowd. The magnitude of sin is such that nothing less than the cross can address it. So these little pettifogging contests of "who is the worse sinner?" become pointless exercises in hypocrisy.
I had not picked up on that.
And then there 's the latent violence of the patriarchal gaze. I get, following @Leaf, that Jesus was talking about the lustful objectification of women's bodies in public places. But for me we're also talking, then as now, about a hypersexualised and fetishised sexist homophobic society that 'saw' slavewomen, concubines, sex workers, teen boys, homeless begging children, attractive young people in chains, women half-naked scrubbing out vats in the market, unveiled women, glimpses of deracinated body parts like breasts, legs, ankles, bare feet, or women weeping with hair undone and loose, naked whipped buttocks, bound and bruised wrists, pregnant swollen bellies, etc as objectified images for masturbation or acting out illicit desires.
How would anyone begin to address the inherent latent violence of the gaze without addressing what it might take for that violent predatory behaviour to be stopped at the outset? I'm surely not the only one here thinking about a woman drugged unconscious and raped by strangers every night while her husband stoodby and watched. Without her knowledge or consent.
So I do also lean towards this being about objectivisation, but also I'd tie it with Jesus' saying that what goes into a person isn't what makes them unclean, but what comes out. The root of infidelity isn't "out there" in the person to whom we're attracted - it's "in there" in our willingness to treat both them and our actual partner as means to the end of our gratification.
In the end it's about our attitudes to people, not our natural enough arousal.
And this is a gnarly pile of reflections that might boot this thread straight to Epiphanies...if so, that happens. But what the hell. That's apparently my vibe today. Anyway...
This feels like such a slippery slope for a guy. It's part of the reason why men and boys can get panicky about even discussing sexual violence, even now. The eye sees and the hand acts. And if society condones, then it condones. Under patriarchy, if that's the male head of household, that's the male head of household. Hence "call none father but your father in heaven" can paradoxically be turned to feminist use (credit Shane Claiborne with that reflection.) There are no "real men" but God. We should all be δούλους (that's Greek for servants, or a harder word.)
I'm not joking, being sarcastic, or making light of that.
I've observed (maybe lightly participated?) in conversations with an African American scholar friend about the profoundly uncomfortable intersection of lynching where feminism meets anti-racism. In that context, you begin to see lynching as Black men being scapegoated for the sins of white men, neither really acknowledging the systemic violence against women, because nobody wants to talk openly about that, as you have had the courage to do. And thanks. The shame is so unbearable that it's unspeakable, and it easily turns into wrath.
Per Freudian psychology, I think the mind decides the wrongness of it all has to go somewhere and - failing grace - if it's not into the self (where it belongs) it'll go somewhere else. Under Jim Crow, that's what Black people were for.
I think American society is still struggling with that. I think that's one reason some political actors - for profit - accuse their political enemies of sexual violence. It's an insult to real victims, elides the real perpetrators, and ties into the same tradition of using sexual violence as a way to get a crowd of people incited to moral outrage, greed converting lust into wrath.
And needless to say, none of this is right, to put it gently.
Mental sins seem like such a petty thing. Lust, just like greed, gluttony, sloth, and wrath and all of the other fell siblings, is just another appetite spun out of control. Yet somehow, you can read otherwise-respectable male theologians dancing awkwardly around this topic with a special handling that cash, food, sleep, and violence don't inspire. You can read pillars of the early church having some really messed up attitudes about women that - to 21st century eyes - expose some truly horrendous dysfunction. They should've had a chat with good old Dr Freud, but he wasn't born yet.
And it does start with the gaze. Good eye. Oof.
One thing I've thought about, and looking at my own past, is that a lot of Americans in my generation were taught about sexual predators as children - being identified as prey who must protect ourselves. And as we get older, it can be a bit of a hard shift to see ourselves as potential predators. Even if we couldn't have imagined such scenes as you describe because we were "raised right," it's an uncomfortable thing.
And going into the psychology of why men (and it's mostly men) do garbage like that is deeply disturbing work. It's not really fit for anyone, except those who are mature enough to know why you really shouldn't, and for those, the lesson isn't necessary. It's moral common sense.
If make an image from Dungeons and Dragons, it takes a rare paladin to have to go into hell and make a taxonomy of devils without turning into one.
Much simpler to say "Just don't go there. Ever. Trust me."
Though I think my prior (admittedly long and rather harsh) essay resolves and might resonate with your take. And by recognizing the internal state of sin, Jesus levels the ground between people who think they're better and people who realize they're not. And that's the fundamental basis of Christianity, which ironically a lot of modern American fundamentalists have missed: That we are not better people and that this religions does not guarantee short term moral results.
There's something about American commercialization, maybe, that we try to hasten what's really a long process, reducing it to a tract or a "once and done" conversion that leads to a lot of long term hurt as people get existential crises, Calvinist guilt. Am I really saved? How could I have screwed up if I was one of the good ones?
And then Max Weber comes along and tells people this psychosis is virtuous because the anxiety makes people work their bloody tails off...
And while people are still discussing all this soul crap, women and children are getting hurt and those are the stakes of the conversation. Souls, as it were. Deadly serious stuff.
Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:
But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
We're not talking about finding someone attractive or a wistful passing glance. We're talking about someone who has already gone all the way to her degradation and violation in his head.
I'm coming back to someone in that society at that time who wants to have sex with a married woman (considered the property of another man) even though he knows she may be stoned to death for adultery. That's the unspoken consequence behind what Jesus is saying and we know how he intervened when men gathered to stone a woman to death for adultery. Under patriarchy women would be punished for male lust.
Disclosure: I grew up mainline but was exposed enough to evangelical culture that it kinda sunk in without fully taking root. Trouble with mainline churches in America is that they didn't have a strong culture of their own and tended to sponge.
And I think that ties directly into rape culture, which is - as I'm now realizing - extraordinarily fucked up. People talk a lot about the virgin-slut dynamic, which for men becomes the virgin-rapist dynamic. And then you get married, and...we don't talk about it. It's all private. As it should be.
When sex is exclusively about marriage, courtship is the way in. Courtship in traditional cultures depends on lots of social rules to prevent mishap. But when I was growing up in the post-hippie era, the sexual revolution had obliterated traditional courtship and we grew up without any real rules beyond "don't get an STI and don't get yourself or someone else pregnant." Chaperones didn't exist. Teenagers just went and did their own thing and I was lucky to be cripplingly socially awkward.
And if you're ethically careful, sexually naive, and you get this "you so much as look at someone the wrong way, nobody tells you where that line is. So you better be safe! God's watching! All the time!
Middle aged, married almost 20 years, I can get my head around all that and be mostly sane about it. But for a stupid teenager it does take some exegeting.
And I think some part of me hasn't forgotten that experience. And per current events, I'm appalled to see there are apparently men considerably older than me who never figured out even the most basic ethical lessons around sex in the first place.
If that woman was a sex worker, does that alter anything? Prostitution then as now could be survival-driven for marginalised and stigmatised women. Augustine writes in his Confessions about how hard it was for him to resist the habit of finding women in bathhouses for sex, how he kept seeking solace in concubines and resisted marrying.
If the woman was scarcely in puberty (what we call under-age) would that alter anything? If the woman was a slave in the watcher's household? Or does this issue have to do with any kind of dehumanising habit of regarding another as there to be used for sexual gratification?
One contemporary way of thinking about the dangers of this 'gaze' of a man staring at a woman as a sex object is of course pornography, the 'addiction' to sexual imagery (featuring anonymous supposedly compliant women) as a masturbatory aid. At what point does a solipsistic porn habit become adultery? At what point does the sexual addiction become so debilitating that a man might consider chemical castration or turn to 'purity culture' as a refuge?
Right now in South Africa we have numerous reports on young women trafficked by Epstein to an island in the Caribbean for supposed modelling jobs. Adolescent girls spotted by a powerful dangerous man at upmarket bars, in hotel lobbies, invited to select parties. Many of the comments following on these reports blame the girls involved for being naive or ask why their parents didn't do more to protect them. What strikes me again and again about what Jesus says in Matthew 5 is that he puts the responsibility squarely on the lustful man looking at a woman. He doesn't say, "The woman's also to blame for exhibiting her face or body in public, she should know better," or "Fathers lock up your daughters." He doesn't say that women should not go out in public if they think they are likely to attract men's notice. Historically in rape culture men have tried to protect women from other men by curtailing women's freedom of movement. We know that doesn't work.
Jesus simply tells the man looking at a woman as a sex object to stop it. Whatever it takes.
There have been cultures in the past that had all the resources to build these absolutely insane networks of social machinery to allow men to slake their lust.
This is funny, and curiously timed. So, I recently read a book about the early 20th century in Europe, trying to get at pre-WWI culture without the wreckage of the World Wars getting in the way. And Austria-Hungary was a trip, a crazy polyglot empire where society was very carefully micromanaged to "keep the peace." Lots of arranged marriages and quietly miserable people. Vienna seems to have been a sanitized veneer over a den of vice. Curiously, I have ancestors from there, emigrated mid-19th century to America.
Seen this way, Freud's wackier ideas about everyone being oversexed and needing constant outlets for their constant frustration made sense. That was the social environment he was steeped in. The comically ridiculous sexual licentiousness of the upper class was partly built by these high society nobles who were congenitally unhappy, constantly chasing a dream, trapped in their ancestral expectations. Ecclesiastes life.
And I wonder if Jesus was seeing something like that. Rich patriarchal cultures begin to see joy as a commodity, and so prostitution evolves like a weed, or a wildflower. Because men (and probably some women) just want to escape. But that takes social engineering. And it gets complicated. And it can be fine, I have at least one friend who has worked in the industry and see no intrinsic shame in it, given appropriate professional guardrails and informed consent. But then men can get the wrong idea and begin feeling entitled when another human being goes from being a "thou" to a "that."
Growing up in a world of sinking poverty, you feel like a lot of this highly sophisticated political machinery is very dangerous because as soon as it collapses, people are forced to fall back on simpler rules. And rich people still feel entitled. *shudder*
That's where blunt statements like "Start to think the wrong way and you'll go to hell!" become more appropriate. These are apocalyptic rules. But then, these are apocalyptic times. And ours is an apocalyptic religion.