What I’m Thinking: Down-to-Earth Challenge

This week I’m thinking (or trying to) about Jesus “raising the bar” on the commandments. The prohibition on murder, for example, becomes a ban on anger.

That burden isn’t all that easy; that yoke isn’t light.

Here’s a transcript:

Well, after a week away, I confess I’m finding it something of a challenge to be thinking at all.

Which leads me to the fifth chapter of Matthew, and that portion of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in which he is extending a challenge to his followers, taking the classic commandments of ancient Israel and making them just that much more, well, difficult: That much more of a challenge; that much more strenuous.

“Thou shalt not murder” becomes: “Do not be angry with your neighbor.”

After all, those are in fact the down-to-earth day-to-day realities that form so much of our lives. As harmful as a murder is – and it’s dreadful – each day the anger that we demonstrate to one another in our families, amongst our friends, and with countless strangers – well, doesn’t that set our society back just a little bit more, cumulatively?