I would like to meet Aaron Ralston some day. He strikes
me as a man of uncommon character. The avid outdoorsman was descending
into the
heart of Blue
John
Canyon near
Moab,
Utah
recently
when part of the rock wall he was climbing suddenly gave way. Ralston
was not
quick enough to evade the falling material, and a massive 800-pound
boulder
pinned his right arm into the side of the narrow chasm.
For the better part of five days Ralston fought to keep
himself alive and pondered different escape scenarios. He licked clean
the
wrappers from the four candy bars he had eaten on the way to the
excursion. He
consumed the two burritos he had packed for energy. He sipped from his
water
supply, but by the third day, his canteen was empty and he began to
dehydrate.
He tried chipping away at the rock with his pocket knife, but to no
avail. He
tried moving the boulder by rigging a series of pulleys with his
climbing gear,
but that effort failed too. Despite all of his impassioned attempts,
Ralston
exhausted his supplies and his escape seemed hopeless.
Then Ralston considered the unthinkable. He realized
that he would not survive unless he took drastic action, and so with
little
more than a resolute spirit, the Aspen
mountaineer broke two bones in his wrist and then amputated the latter
part of
his right arm just below the elbow with the dull blade of his pocket
knife.
Before long he was free. After fashioning a tourniquet and
administering first
aid, Ralston managed to rappel down to the bottom of the canyon floor
where he
eventually hiked out [eight miles] to meet rescuers.
That true-life story
[http://hike.mountainzone.com/2003/news/html/030502_amputate-arm. html]
serves
as something of an illustration of what the Lord taught nearly two
thousand
years ago. He said, “And
if your right hand causes you to
sin, cut if off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you
that
one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into
hell”*
(Matthew 5:30 NKJV).
Jesus was not promoting bodily mutilation. He certainly never meant for
us to
interpret His words in a literal sense and actually hack off our body
parts.
Rather, He was employing a figure of speech—a hyperbole, or
exaggeration, in
order to make a point. He was saying that we must “cut
away” the source of our
sinful desires; we must “amputate” those things
that cause us to be tempted. I
appreciate Tim Hall’s insight on this passage. He observes:
“Dear Christian,
without radical, corrective surgery, our spirits will die (cf. Matt.
10:39; Luke 13:3).
Have you
made an appointment with the
Great Physician? Have you scheduled surgery?”
“[Ralston] surely must
have considered the ramifications of cutting off his arm. Never again
would he
have the use of that limb. Life would be forever changed. He would need
to
learn new ways of doing the routine tasks of life, and some activities
would
have to be abandoned altogether. But the choice was clear: Did he want
to live
or not? Keeping the arm would mean death in the wilderness. To live
would
require leaving his arm behind. Do we want to live or not?
Sometimes we have
to make hard choices. Something that has been a part of us all our
lives is
keeping us from total devotion to God’s will. Can we find it
within ourselves
to “cut it off”? Or will we die in the wilderness
of sin with our imperfect
self intact?” [Tim Hall,
“Cut It Off!” Forthright Magazine,
http://forthright.antville.org/ stories/340415/; emphasis
mine—mb].
*For more insight to
this passage, go to
http://www.oakhill.org/outlines.html—“Have You
Scheduled Surgery?” (Matt.
5:27-30).
Have
You Scheduled Surgery Yet?