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Biblical Wanderings: Mark 9:43-48
🕑 Added 2024-03-14 16:49:41 +0000 UTC“If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and enter into Gehenna: into the unquenchable fire, where the worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. If your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two feet and be cast into Gehenna: where the worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be cast into Gehenna: where the worm never dies, and the fire is not quenched.”
It’s always a challenge for me to structure these writings. If I walk in with a structure in mind, then there’s no truth to it. It’s hollow. I’m running an experiment with the conclusion already written - I have to warp everything to fit into the structure. A neat little moral conclusion to satisfy you readers - to satisfy me, too! I need some answers. But we have to start with some questions.
First off: what is Jesus talking about here when he talks about cutting off body parts? I’ve already challenged myself to start with the literal meaning, but this has always seemed too gruesome to me. I’ll start with a milder image, then. I remember seeing an interview of a child with cancer who described a technique they’d been given to deal with their pain, a sort of mental “shutting the lights off” as they focused on individual body parts, patches of pain. When we’re in deep physical distress, we find ways of living through it. There are rooms inside ourselves that can shelter us. I remember watching from a cave in my mind as the worst of my histamine reactions surged through my limbs.
I think this is a decent starting point for this parable. We are not what we think we are. We are not the structure that we exist within. Every morning, we hop inside our bodies - sometimes it’s painful. If we are completely associated with our bodies, then physical pain can be unendurable, and you don’t need to chop your hand off to encounter physical pain. We all get our share in our lives. To be in a healthy relationship with your body means not being completely entangled with it.
So let’s talk about “stumbling” next. We saw this word back in Mark 6. There, it was a story that got in the way of you believing what’s going on in the present moment, what’s happening in front of your eyes. If we apply that meaning here, maybe we start to unravel a bit more of what Jesus is talking about. If our hands, our feet, our eyes are telling us a story that’s not true, then they’re not doing what they’re built to be doing. They’re built to sense and take in the present moment, and give an honest report to the little soul sitting in the control room of your brain. But when they stumble, suddenly the reports aren’t correct. We see money on the table and start to envision all the things we could buy with it. Then, suddenly, we’re putting it into our pockets. But what was actually going on? All we really saw was money on the table. All those visions of the results of that money were just delusions. So maybe we can start to make a distinction between our real eyes, who only look at the money and say, “that’s money” - and those secondary, imaginary eyes that behold a luxurious future.
I think it’s these secondary, imaginary limbs that Jesus is talking about severing. They arise within us all the time, and they’re like grit in our system. They get in the way of allowing us to see what our actual limbs are telling us. In the early 1900s, Russian filmmaker Lev Kuleshov made a short film and showed it to audiences as a test. It starts with a shot of a bowl of soup. Then it cuts to a guy, looking at the camera with an ambiguous expression. Then it shows a girl in a coffin. Then it goes back to the same guy, same expression. Then it shows a lady sitting sensuously on a couch. Same guy, same expression. You get the idea. Anyways, allegedly, the audiences talked about the power of the guy’s performance in each sequence. He sees some soup he forgot to eat, he’s regretful. He sees a girl in a coffin and he’s in mourning. He sees the woman on the couch and he’s filled with lust. But it’s the exact same shot of the guy each time. There’s no actual change in what he’s emoting. But what the audience’s inner eyes were reporting to them was different from what their actual eyes were perceiving. They were trying to keep up with a narrative.
We walk around with these false eyes all the time. I look at my room, and get a report back - “what a mess! This is the room of someone who doesn’t take care of things. You’re going to get some sort of disease living like this. You’ve probably already got one.” I find it almost impossible to see what’s actually in the room, which really is not that messy. My false eyes are blocking out the real ones. And even if it does need some tidying, that narrative is useless to me because it clouds out the options that I do have. If the room could potentially be cleaner, what are the specific items that are causing it not to be? I need my real eyes for that. Or I’ll pull up a working mix of a song and get the report: “this sucks. I’m through as a musician. People are going to laugh at this album.” I have to tune out my false ears and let my real ears tell me: “the guitar is a bit quiet”. We have no ability to advance until we cut off these false appendages. That’s why Jesus talks about “entering into life”. When we’re trapped by these false reports, we’re stuck in limbo, where we can’t advance with time. Those thoughts of worthlessness, those cyclical stories that play out in our minds, that’s the fire that can’t be quenched. You can’t change those stories by racing around trying to change the world, because they’re not true stories to begin with. What is a true story? Come back to yourself - see, hear, and remember. What’s actually going on? Never use those false reports as your starting point. Cut them off, and find your real ones.
Comments
Ai Miller
I feel like I've talked about Terry Eagleton before while commenting on one of these, so apologies in advance (but also he's one of my favorite writers so not sorry!) but in How to Read Literature, he discusses the problem with "realism" as a way of measuring a story as good or not ignores the fact that our lives are not narratives, that we place narrative ONTO our lives but that is not in fact a "realistic" portrayal of life. (This is why arguing about a character's actions or motivations as "realistic" is frustrating to me, because it ignores that characters are tools, not people, but that's a whole other kettle of fish.) So what we do here, when we see the money on the table or the messy room, is narrativize our lives, place significance where there is none. This isn't necessarily a bad thing--I believe strongly in storytelling, especially as an imaginative political act that can have real-world consequences (I'm also reading Practicing New Worlds by Andrea Ritchie right now, which discusses the importance for imagination and imaginative practice for PIC abolition in ways I find pretty compelling)--but it does mean it helps to be removed, at least one step, from the stories we tell about ourselves and others, or at least to recognize their power over us. This of course, is developing a critical relationship to narrative, and it also I think helps us to be able to be swept UP by narrative/story as a practice or exercise--both feel important to do.
damian
i agree with you! the ability we have to stablish connections is what keeps us going. we hold this power within ourselves. today i was scrolling through my timeline on twitter and saw a comic with the sayings "o que fazemos com os dias ruins? / arte." (translation would be something like "what do we do with bad days? / we make art.") (the verbs "make" and "do" both translate to "fazer" in portuguese.) i believe it communicates with what we're talking about here, kind of... being an artist and being in touch with other artists is what makes me remember i'm human (sometimes living in this city makes me forget that.) if it wasn't for art, we wouldn't be here in the first place talking to each other and that's why i'm glad we are able to connect through it! also, that's really sweet! thank you 💞 unfortunately i don't get to see the beach very often. if i ever feel a wave of tranquility together with fresh air hitting me out of a sudden, i'll assume it was you!
Greylyn Morningstar
ANAÏS NIN, “We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
Luka Buchanan
also, thank you sm for the well wishes!!! it definitely still feels like a million years away, but i’m so so so excited!!
Luka Buchanan
ugh reading this brought a tear to my eye, i feel like our lives are similar in some ways! i live in perth, australia which has a population of only ~2.2 million and is also one of the most isolated capital cities in the world (we are surrounded by a LOT of non-city space), so i also feel small and isolated at times, i guess in an adjacent way. but perth is definitely a LOT less chaotic than são paulo!!!!!! a city of 13 million… i can hardly imagine it… i’ve been to new york city a few times - definitely the most populated place i’ve ever visited - and the city chaos is definitely a shock. no wonder you feel a dissociation! my sympathies are with you, but you are protected by a loving energy!! the ability to connect with one’s body and the loving energy of god/the universe/the earth/the ether is inherent in us all, even when we feel lost and pained. next time i’m at the beach (i’m very lucky to live in driving distance of some truly peaceful and beautiful beaches), i will think of you and try to telepathically send you some calming salty beachness!! (i also feel self-conscious of long replies, but i also feel strongly that it’s a gift to feel very passionate about something, to feel so compelled to think and speak! a special and wonderful thing)
damian
also congrats on your top surgery! wishing you the best 💕
damian
thanks luka! it makes me happy knowing that you appreciate what i have to say (i always get a little nervous before posting because i feel like i often get too personal but maybe that's not a bad thing!) (sometimes i get a little insecure about my english too 😭) i can understand why you feel like this about this parable! at first i also thought it was talking about punishment... probably because that's what church teached me when i was younger: to fear god and his words. i guess i can say that's one of my (many) unhelpful narrative 'limbs'. this series is being responsible for a big rebranding of the bible in my head, ngl. and yeah, i associate my struggles with self-image with these narratives as well; to be honest, they are the ones that make me suffer the most. i don't really know how to name them because they are not about my body or appearance but rather about my place in society: who am i as a trans guy living his early 20s with no money in a city together with 13 million people? it's hard to let go of these feelings. they make me act and feel that way too: defensively, constantly threatned... i feel so small, a little gay ant in the middle of a big and chaotic são paulo. just as you said, trying to get rid of them is a daily effort and i feel like they come back sometimes (they come back a lot, actually). i like to keep in mind that getting better isn't linear! things will return a few times until they are completely gone.
Carmen✨
Those are big, tough feelings, but you are not alone in them ❤️ Also congrats on the upcoming surgery!!!!! 🙌🏼 🎉 hope everything goes well !!
Carmen✨
It’s not easy :’) especially bc I have a lot of friends who I kept in touch with via social media (their art and pets and in DMs- but we can text!) I’m also chronic chismosa* and need to be in everyone’s business so … the social media cleanse helped with that too 😅 But thanks! 😊 *gossiper
Luka Buchanan
oh man social media definitely feels like a nasty rotten limb sometimes ahahah. congrats on getting off it, it mustn’t be easy!
Luka Buchanan
but also i can’t help but have these big emotional feelings about my body as i move through the world; to interpret this parable self-ward i guess i wonder if the big body feelings count as the narrative that causes me to stumble - to react defensively, to feel threatened by others without need, to be prone to thinking a lot about myself and what others think of me. what, then, does it mean to rid oneself of this narrative? surely it’s not a one-and-done - surely we are shedding limbs all the time. it seems like it’s an active daily effort to notice the narrative and let it go. do these metaphorical limbs grow back? it feels like they do. or perhaps it’s phantom pain.
Luka Buchanan
i always appreciate your insights, damian!! i definitely feel ??? at this parable, it seems so extreme and brutal, and i initially interpreted it as a threat of punishment. i guess that’s my own unhelpful narrative ‘limb’! however i like your interpretation; it makes me think of top surgery, lol!!! (my surgery is at the end of this year and i will have been waiting 3 years for it by then!) better enter life “maimed” (titless) than walk around stumbling bc of the emotional pain these thangs cause! 😌 (mostly joking, not sure if this parable can be extrapolated like this lol)
Carmen✨
I liked the part about the false eyes we sometimes see the world with. Recently Ive been feeling really down on how hard juggling everything I need to do is bc the tasks never end (a messy room is very relatable ahhh) and what my false eyes make me do is compare myself to others. To my friends, coworkers, girlfriend, roommate, people from HS and college I haven’t talked to in years but feel some type of way about their updates… to strangers?! The best thing I did for my mental health last year was get off social media…. (I could only be happy for so many engagement and new baby announcements after my messy breakup 😭) I also sometimes automatically think yeah I am the worst , can’t do anything right, I suck at everything bleh but it’s a nice reminder to turn off that critical eye and see what’s actually going on that what others perceive of me is usually more positive and loving than how I see myself :’D Every time I think I’m bad at any of my 8 in 1 jobs someone at school tells me I’m doing good and that they’re grateful for me being there. And when I really think about it I’ve been managing pretty darn well! I’m not the disaster I convince myself I am. Gotta chop out those critical false eyeballs and see the real picture even though it’s hard sometimes. We still wanna strive to be better but realistic right? We need to work with who we are not some idealistic “who I want to be” that chasing that won’t get us anywhere! thanks again for the insightful reflexive post 💕 Also, you do not suck as a musician ;)
Luka Buchanan
damn, a very challenging one this week…
damian
i like that you drew parallels between lev kuleshov's experiment and what jesus is talking about here. kuleshov's short movie resulted in a method called kuleshov effect, which is used by many filmmakers to this day; it emphasizes the importance of film editing and how the associations we create between images change our perspective of what we are watching. it's really interesting! my favorite part about what he did, though, is that it reveals us that we add our own context to art when we interact with it. the frames we see in a movie can be as neutral as possible – like the images (alone) he used in his experiment – and we'll still find a way of attributing emotions to it. very interesting link you did between these emotions and the narratives we create about our lives. i also tried to go with the literal meaning of "cutting off body parts". i think that if one of our "hands" is causing us problems – or pain – it is reasonable that we get rid of it. we shouldn't keep a "hand" that brings us suffering just in order to have two "hands". if we change the word "hand" to "thought", it kind of makes sense, doesn't it? sometimes we need to recognize that some thinking patterns aren't good for us and we need to let go of them so we can see things clearer. not that it's easy, but it's an important exercise. (i was SO excited about today's study i could barely pay attention to my classes HELP. guess i'm a film nerd.)
Bita
One thing that fascinates me about being human is how we tend to perceive things quite differently than they actually are, yet in a way, there's always some truth to it.
