Pluck out my eyes

...so I may live for Christ

The pastor at my local church says that the "word" used for "Jesus saw through their duplicity" in the original text was "Jesus saw no faces".  That makes sense, if you understand that Jesus has supernatural powers that human beings do not.
However, the pastor used that as a segue to detour from that passage of scripture and talk about "seeing people as Jesus sees them" -- say what?  Jesus was a mind reader.  And I'm supposed to look at a person's soul instead of their face?  And what do I say to a person who is sad or happy or angry?  "Jesus loves you"?  Seems like it'd get old after awhile.  It would get old after awhile, even if it just so happens to be the only thing a person I hang with frequently needs or wants to hear.  I myself would no doubt be left with a desire to say more.  The Holy Spirit may even prompt me to say more.  But I'm not supposed to see faces.  Nooooo.  Faces are forbidden! 

I really wish there was a way to figure out when to believe what The Bible SAYS and what it MEANS to say. 

Jesus is quoted speaking as if The Holy Spirit was an emerging thing, something never experienced by the world.  Jesus is talked about as if his purpose as mediator between God and humanity was an upcoming Gospel rather than one that had already been around for a long long time before he physically stated "It if finished".  God is written of as being intolerant without Jesus.  If the last part is true, and there is - and ever was - hope for people other than King David and the 0.01% of the population - in and/or out of the Jewish community - that are likewise men after God's heart, then you have to believe that Jesus' mission was a promise that, being a promise made by God Himself, the rock that He is, was already fulfilled before mankind ever witnessed it to declare to others.

I can be fully capable and even more willing to carry out a promise that I make.  But to believe any promise that I might make leaves you a risk of being wrong.  If God so wanted to, He could do something that I and most other people even would perceive as utterly insignificant, so much so that it wouldn't even mentally register as a factor into weather or not I can keep my promise, and that one thing may hinder my ability to carry out this hypothetical promise.  God may not even be trying to humble me by doing it.  He may simply be keeping me from getting in His way carrying out His own promise that he made to some descendant of some family that He swore an Oath to back in the 1700s.  That's not to say that that God doesn't care if I'm humble.  He tells anyone who reads The Bible that humility is an important trait.  But even if there's some piece of The Bible that I either haven't read or didn't notice where God promises to make every promise maker a promise breaker for the purpose of humbling said promise maker(s), it still doesn't take away the fact that He knows what we as humans -- individually and collectively -- need more so than we'll ever.  Some pizza delivery company may re-introduce the idea of a 30 minute delivery promise.  But God's delivery schedule just may cause pizza orders to arrive late.  We can't know what God's delivery schedule is because we do not have untethered access to God.

Speaking of which, it occurs to me that some people on this Earth have probably achieved a level of success with their attempt at Christianity that allows them to hear God speak.  Those people didn't achieve that success without Jesus, but I think while a level of restraint is important when admiring someone's walk with God out loud, it is not necessary to take what they have accomplished and give all that credit to Jesus.  Jesus died a death -- willingly -- that was very painful and horrific.  He did so for the benefit of mankind because that is what mankind needed.  The only alternative to Jesus' crucifixion and subsequent resurrection would have been to just abandon us and set sail for some other part of the universe or kill us all.  More likely he'd kill us all and we'd be in Hell.  Instead he made a promise to The Serpent out of Love for His creation, as tainted as it had already become.  God didn't just do what He did selflessly.  He did what He did because that's WHAT and WHO he is.  We on the other hand don't even understand ourselves because we are so entrenched in this internal power struggle between Good & Evil.
Maybe this perception is just Me being Weird.  Most people, I take it, don't have a hard time following The Directions to reach The Consequence.  The Apostle Paul wrote as if he thought so, and my sister seems to think the consequence and the actions that lead to the consequence are the exact same thing (assuming her brain hasn't metamorphed into some other thing in the course of the 8 years or so its been since this conversation I'm recalling with her took place, which she seems to insist is a possibility I need to be mindful of).
If that is true, then the selfishness and cowardice that would prevent me from taking Jesus' place on the cross are indeed worthy of condemnation and the farther I can get away from that, the better off I'll be sooner than I deserve.