[Written after nearly 2 days of no sleep while on airplane]

To be the salt of the earth as opposed to… just another grain of sand? I’m guessing the difference is the flavor.

So the Disciples were special because they were set apart from the grains of Sand to share the ZEST/salt of life with others. “Funny” enough, the religious leaders were also sand and followed a lesser form of the Lord’s righteousness.

20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

You know how someone can be a stickler for the rules and thinks that’s all it takes to “be good?” But those same leaders couldn’t see how even though they were “following the rules” by not murdering J directly, they were the ones murdering him in their hearts, with their intentions…just using someone else as the weapon. I think they were focusing too much on the syntax and were blind to the meaning behind the law.

That’s why Christianity is called Supersessionism, right? Because the previous system of “law = order” wasn’t working. It was too easy to totally miss the point or straight up ignore some rules. So in the New Testament, I could see how it came to value Obedience over sacrifice and were fed up by empty gestures of burnt offerings.

And look, there ya go. The rest of Matt 5 is Jesus teaching them to see the purpose behind the law and giving helpful life advice in plain language.

25 “Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on the way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. 26 Truly I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.

The lessons about the importance of intention in law make sense to me. As well as “eye for an eye, oaths, and love for enemies.” It’s a slippery slope when you think you have the right to get even with others who wrong you. In that case, you start plotting to do bad things towards them. That feeds darkness in your heart. Making an oath just sets you up for failure because circumstances and feelings change. People get weak or forget the oath. It’s kinda empty, pointless, lipservice when you have seen it so many times before where people make promises you know they can’t keep.

I am confused about the laws surrounding love though. What is adultery if not cheating on a spouse, but if that’s the definition, then how does a divorced woman commit adultery? And how is just looking at someone with physical desire adulterous — is it even when you AREN’T married? Because that isn’t specified.

28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.

That paints the picture of just a single dude checking out a single girl and that being a problem that requires drastic measures to correct.

It leads to denial of serial sinful behavior, I can see that. Hook up culture sucks so much Tinder has been emphasising in their marketing the potential for a REAL relationship meeting via their app.

If you have trouble not objectifying people, yeah probably delete certain apps and fix that issue before it causes you trouble. BUT I’m not just talking about that kind of shallow interest…

If you think you like someone in multiple ways, should you avoid them just to be safe?

Love for enemies makes sense because giving yourself an excuse to label anyone as an enemy, also would give you “justification” to hate/hurt them. A bad thing and another slippery slope.

But what even is love? Later, I think J says to lay down your life for your friend is love.

That’s a pure intention I can identify with. But it’s not even just life and death situations, is it? I could feel the spirit within me talking to people this morning and I could distinguish my own insecurity and fear under the surface. But we were working together well. One person went out of her way to look for a cart for me and entrusted her luggage to me as I had for her. Definitely my most important role in that moment was to protect her belongings. A simple thing like that is an example of friendship, huh?