Mark 9:47
"And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell."
The current movement of fundamentalists pride themselves for taking every word of the bible literally as God inspired. Huge denominational shifts abound over the practice of baptism, but all protestant churches practice some form of baptism. Why is the practice of gouging out one's eye or eyes not practiced with equal fervor? The verse clearly alludes to the practice as a way of avoiding hell. The whole point of christianity is a belief system that will spare the faithful the torments of eternal hell. The gouging out of one's eye would seem a small price to pay if you truly believe in a place of eternal torment for the "sinner" and it would keep you from going there.
Hell is universally believed to be a place of eternal torment created by God for the unfaithful and unbelievers by modern day christians. I will address the problem of a loving God creating and religating his creation to a place of eternal torment at a later blog. Today I simply want to ask the question of why christians do not pluck out their eyes in order to avoid this hell that is so universally believed? In the above bible verse Jesus is suggesting such a practice. My problem with bible scholars is they cherry pick verses they prefer to be taken as literal. Jesus did not say this was not to be taken literally. To the contrary he seemed to fervently encourage such mutilation. The ritual of baptism is universal while the ritual of gouging out one's eyes to avoid hell is not practiced. Why? A "literalist" does not have the liberty of choosing to obey one verse and ignore a command in another verse. The reason christians do not gouge their eyes out is because it is a reprehensible thought. We as a human species are hard-wired for self preservation not self mutilation. This command by Jesus is literrally against our very nature and is a rediculous bible verse.
