a single-eyed full-of-light person

For me, the above extract from Jesus’ teaching has been difficult to picture in my mind. Reading it again recently (and more carefully) the picture has become a tad clearer.

Have in mind that your living, breathing and thinking “body” is a single complete unit. That unit is the real and complete “you”. When Jesus used the word “body” (soma in Greek) he was including in that word everything about a living person. His or her mind, thoughts, spirit and emotions. were all included in his word “body”. 

Jesus stated, “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is single, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.” The problem about understanding what he meant by this hinges around the contrasting words “single” (or “simple”) and “bad” (or harmful”).

In one case, a person’s “eye”, being “single”, results in him or her – as a complete person – being “full of light”. In the contrasting case, a person’s “eye”, being “bad”, results in him or her – again, as a complete person – being “full of darkness”. 

But the contrast is strange. Is “single” really the opposite of “bad”? Surely “good” is the opposite of “bad”? And “multiple” the opposite of “single”?

 

I like the idea of a person whose “whole body is full of light”? Jesus did not teach that this came about when such a person had a good eye but, instead a “single eye”.

The very next words (after those in bold red above) spoken by Jesus that day on the mountain in Galilee seem to tell us that a “single eye” is an eye which is not diverted into serving self. He said -

It was this same Lord Jesus Christ who taught his disciples to pray the following -

 

It seems to me that the “eye” of a person who, for real, prays like that day-by-day is indeed “single”. But if a person has an “eye” for his or her own purposes and desires for self, that “eye” is “bad”. “Bad” because its effect is to make the whole person “full of darkness”. According to Jesus…

Will a person whose “whole body” gradually becomes “full of light” – because his or her “eye” is becoming “single” – will a person like that lose out in his or her daily life? Here is another thing which Jesus said during his keynote address to the crowds -