Generosity and stinginess in God’s kingdom.

Matthew 6.22-23, Luke 11.34-36.

Some of Jesus’s teachings tend to get skipped entirely. Sometimes because they’re too hard to understand—and they’re not really; we just need to learn their historical context. Today’s Sermon on the Mount passage is one such example.

And sometimes because we just don’t like them. Libertines hate what Jesus has to say about still following the Law, ’cause they don’t wanna. Hypocrites hate what Jesus has to say about public acts of devotion, ’cause it’s way easier to do that than produce good fruit. Ingrates hate what Jesus has to say about loving the “unloveable,” forgiving the “unforgivable,” and going the extra mile. Mammonists hate what Jesus has to say about money—and today’s passage is about money, so it’s likewise one such example.

Yep, it’s about money, not opthamology. But because people are unfamiliar with what ancient middle easterners meant by “good eye” and “evil eye”—and presume they’re about what Romans and westerners mean by it, and think they have to do with all-purpose blessings and curses—we interpret this passage all kinds of wrong. Or claim it’s too obscure, and skip it, and focus on the verses we understand, and like better.

Well. In Matthew, right after saying we oughta keep our treasures in heaven, Jesus says this:

Matthew 6.22-23 KWL

22“The body’s light is the eye.

So when your eye is clear,

your whole body is illuminated.

23When your eye is bad,

your whole body is dark.

So if the light in you is dark,

how dark are you?”

Luke 11.34-36 KWL

34“The body’s light is your eye.

{So} whenever your eye is clear,

your whole body is illuminated too.

Once it’s bad,

your body is dark too.

35So watch out

so the light in you isn’t dark.

36So if your whole body is illuminated,

without having any parts dark,

the whole will be bright—

as if a lamp could shine lightning for you.”

In both gospels the King James Version uses these words to describe the eye:

• Ἁπλοῦς/aplús, “all together,” is translated “single.”
• Πονηρὸς/ponirós, “bad,” is translated “evil.”

Why? ’Cause that’s how William Tyndale translated it, and that’s what the Geneva Bible went with. It was tradition. The translators were simply following the tradition handed down by the Vulgate, which turned aplús into simplex/“single,” and ponirós into nequam, “wicked.” Thanks to St. Jerome’s inaccurate interpretation in the 390s, Christians misinterpreted this passage for centuries, and continued to misinterpret it this way even after they learned ancient Greek for themselves and tried to retranslate it into English.

These are middle eastern idioms. Jerome translated those words literally, and thought he was right to; and a lot of translators likewise think they’re right to translate idioms literally. They’re not. Idioms need to be interpreted. Literal interpretations of idioms always give people the wrong idea. If I describe an eager student as “bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” then have that phrase translated into Chinese, my poor Chinese friend would be stunned to hear she has a tail at all, much less a bushy one. And wait, doesn’t she have brown eyes?…

By aplús and ponirós, Jesus meant how I translated it: A clear eye. One with neither blurry vision nor cataracts. Or a bad eye; not an evil one, though it might certainly feel evil to you when your eyes don’t work. When your eyes are cloudy, vision’s a problem, and you’re gonna be in the dark. When your eyes are healthy, you see just fine: Light could enter your body “as if a lamp could shine lightning for you,” Lk 11.36 which interestingly is exactly how 19th-century arc lamps worked.

But even so, Jesus isn’t trying to teach anatomy. “Clear eye” and “bad eye” aren’t literally about eyes. They’re about generosity and stinginess. This is, as I said, a teaching about money.

Intentionally missing the point.

And because it’s about money, a number of Christians wilfully miss the point about this teaching. They don’t want it to be about money. They want it to be about light. Jesus is the light of the world, so they wanna tie it together with that idea and talk about Jesus’s light getting into us. Goodness, truth, wisdom, knowledge, insight, inspiration, supernatural discernment—anything but instructions about how we’re to stop worshiping our money.

When the eyes work, our bodies have light; when they don’t, things are so dark. And that’s as far as these Christians will go. Working eyes are good; light is good; kinda stating the obvious there Jesus. So let’s keep our eyes open. Let’s only look at good things. Let’s only focus on revelation from God. Or “Be careful little eyes what you see” and all that. Shun evil. And all sorts of other things we can drag from our culture, and overlay upon the verse.

As D.A. Carson in the Expositor’s Bible Commentary initially puts it—getting it wrong, as usual—

“The eye is the lamp of the body” Mt 6.22 in the sense that through the eye the body finds its way. The eye lets in light, and so the whole body is illuminated. But bad eyes let in no light, and the body is in darkness. Mt 6.23 The “light within you” seems ironic; those with bad eyes, who walk in darkness, think they have light, but this light is in reality darkness. The darkness is all the more terrible for failure to recognize it for what it is. cf. Jn 9.41

This fairly straightforward description has metaphorical implications. The “eye” can be equivalent to the “heart.” The heart set on God so as to hold to his commands Ps 119.10 is equivalent to the eye fastened on God’s law. Ps 119.18, 119.148, 119.36-37 Similarly Jesus moves from “heart” Mt 6.21 to “eye.” Mt 6.22-23 Moreover the text moves between physical description and metaphor by the words chosen for “good” and “bad.”

—D.A. Carson, EBC at Matthew 6.22-23

Carson does finally get to the interpretation I’ll explain in the next section, but only briefly. Most of the exposition is about moral goodness and badness. And that’s on purpose. He’d rather talk about moral goodness and badness. He’d rather we talk about moral goodness and badness.

And if you’re a sloppy preacher, who’s skimming the Expositor’s Bible Commentary so you can make sure you’re interpreting the bible correctly, and you come across these first paragraphs about Matthew 6.22-23 and find they confirm what you’re preaching, you might not even bother to get to the end, and find out what the verses actually mean. You’ll just figure, “Oh good; I’m on track,” and go on with your sermon.

Nope. The proper way to interpret this passage is to ask ourselves what Jesus’s culture would think he meant by it. What would a first-century Jew think a “clear eye” and “bad eye” might mean?

What about the context of the previous passage? Remember, in Matthew Jesus just spoke about treasures in heaven, Mt 6.19-21 and in the next passage he’s gonna talk about how we can’t serve two masters, namely God and Mammon. Mt 6.25-34 So… the previous passage is about wealth, the next passage is about wealth, and this passage is about… eyesight?

Now in Luke, the topics are a little less obvious. It’s preceeded by Jesus’s statement you don’t hide a lamp, but stick it on a stand; then followed with a story where a Pharisee objects to Jesus eating without ritually washing, and Jesus objects in return about prioritizing dead ritual over living religion. Lk 11.37-41 The overarching theme in Luke isn’t wealth, but our hidden bad attitudes. Still not eyesight.

So let me finally get to the proper meaning of this clear eye/bad eye idiom.

The context: Generosity.

In first-century Jewish culture, and for centuries thereafter, good eyes and bad eyes had to do with generosity versus stinginess. A “clear eye” is what the Mishna, a compilation of first- and second-century Pharisee teachings, calls an עַיִן טוֹבָה/ayín tová, a “good eye,” the key to a straight path; as contrasted with an עַיִן רָעָה/ayín rahá, “evil eye.” Avot 2.9 By these terms, Rabbi Eliezer was talking about generosity versus envy.

Rabbi Joshua called the evil eye a יֵצֶר הָרָ֖ע/yechér hará, an “evil mind,” the self-centered impulse in everyone which can develop into the sort of hatred for others that’d be perfectly happy to send people to hell. Avot 2.9 It can corrupt even charitable good deeds by making ’em self-centered. Avot 5.13 A good eye is one of the three traits the rabbis expected of their students: Like Abraham, they must be generous, modest, and humble. (As opposed to Balaam, who was grudging, arrogant, and proud.) Avot 5.19

In this context, we realize Jesus’s talk about how those with clear eyes are full of light, and those with bad eyes are full of darkness, as wordplay. God is light; Jesus brings light into the world; Jn 12.46 he wants us to be full of his light. And if you have good eyes—if you’re generous—you oughta be full of his light. If you have bad eyes—if you’re stingy—it’s gotta be all kinds of dark in you. Profoundly dark.

Wordplay tends to evade the literal-minded. I’ve heard a few of them actually insist wordplay’s a form of darkness—why would Jesus not just say what he means, and mean what he says? Why’s he gotta be clever and subtle, and make us think? That’s some of the reason they struggle with this interpretation: They couldn’t deduce it with their own wit. They had to look at history books and commentaries, like any good scholar would; but they’d like to think they’d never need any of those reference materials, ’cause they have the Holy Spirit. That, folks, would be Balaam-style pride talking.

Another reason the meaning of this lesson evades people: They’re not generous. They’re not gracious. They believe people oughta merit grace. Give to the needy only if they’re worthy, or if it’s gonna pay off for them in the long run—it’ll help the needy get back on their feet, and they’ll stop being needy and pay it back. If the needy are a lost cause, give ’em just enough to keep them alive (if that), and give up on them. It’s not even close to generosity—to storing up treasure in heaven. It’s venture capitalism, disguised as charity.

The economic system of God’s kingdom.

Because of our fixation on money, we totally miss the fact in God’s kingdom, money doesn’t work like it does in our kingdom. At all.

Too often, Christians attempt to apply human economics to God’s kingdom. Sometimes it’s capitalism, which is about wealth creation. Sometimes socialism, i.e. wealth redistribution. Or communism, which shares the wealth; or Marxism, where the government wholly owns and dispenses it based on the whims of politicians.

Because Christians claim we base our beliefs on the scriptures, we try to defend our existing favorite systems by proof-texting verses which appear to defend ’em. In the United States we have a whole cottage industry of “Christian” financial advisers like Dave Ramsey, who teach common-sense capitalism (which is why they’re usually not wrong) and throw in a lot of Psalms and Proverbs to make it sound like all their teachings come from God. They do not. It’s all Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, same as every Econ 101 course, with loads of other theories thrown in. Smith believed his “invisible hand,” which creates wealth and guides the marketplace, is Providence, remember?

Here’s why they’re all wrong: Earthly economies are based on scarcity. There are a limited number of resources. Wealth has to be created, and we must conserve and defend it once we’ve got it (or, if you’re not capitalist, spread it around). Government must keep its greedy little mitts off it (or, if you’re not capitalist, spread it around) and let it work on its own.

And God’s kingdom doesn’t function like any of these earthly economies. Because it has no scarcity. It has unlimited resources, run by an almighty king. Nothing runs out. Not even time. Nobody even dies. And it runs on grace, not merit.

In the kingdom, wealth doesn’t come from us. Comes entirely from God. Farmers nowadays figure their crop yields are the result of diligent hard work; farmers in ancient Israel only worked hard during planting and harvest. They put the seed in the ground, then went home and waited for fruit. Didn’t water; that’s what rain was for. Didn’t use pesticides; didn’t think to, but expected God to largely keep the bugs away. Wealth grew entirely without their input. Mk 4.26-27 They understood how the kingdom works: We put in minimal effort, and God grants us spectacular yields. And throws in additional blessings just for fun, solely out of love.

The crowd of 5,000 could’ve gleaned their own food, but Jesus fed ’em anyway. The folks at the Cana wedding could’ve begged more wine from the neighbors (probably unsuccessfully), but Jesus created some anyway. He gave ’em free healthcare, and inspired Christians to make it one of our most common forms of charity. Yet in the United States not only is it big business, but if it’s not profitable, insurance companies won’t bother to pay for it; you can go ahead and die.

Mammon has screwed with a lot of American Christians’ thinking. That’s why our eyes are bad: We’ve replaced God’s grace and generosity with “If you don’t work, you don’t eat.” God ordered farmers to leave the corners of their fields for the needy to glean, Lv 19.10 but try to enact any such thing nowadays, and these Christians will bellyache it’s a handout, it fosters a culture of dependency, that no government should take from the rich and give to the poor; that it’s immoral.

(Of course, offer these same folks a tax break so they can afford college, childcare, healthcare, to buy a house, to give to charity, to mitigate business expenses… and all this “handout” talk evaporates. Nothing about how other people are gonna have to compensate for the tax dollars they no longer have to pay. “Handout” is in the eye of the beholder.)

The kingdom, I repeat, runs on grace. An attitude of generosity is just the sort of fruit we oughta see in people whom God has been so infinitely generous towards. Regular, casual grace: Doing for others. Giving to others. Not just to loved ones, but strangers. Not just what we can afford; sometimes we go beyond what we can afford, simply because they have need. True generosity will sometimes pinch, like when we put our lunch money in the offering plate. We go the distance, not the minimum.

Sadly, we don’t see it as often as we should. Christians love and trust their money more. We’ve been trained to from very young ages. We’d much prefer to think of this passage as nothing more than a metaphor for having a heart set on God… not a rebuke of those who have a heart set on their money.