Isn’t it strange that things with the potential for good can so easily be misused to produce evil results?  Smartphones, for example, were heralded as a great advancement in workplace productivity because they consolidated the functions of a phone, an organizer, and a laptop in a single device.  Very quickly, however, smartphones degenerated into distractions, then obsessions, then cesspits of time-wasting and misinformation. 

Catholicism has not been immune to the degradation of good ideas into regrettably bad practices. 

Limbo, for example, was invented as a theological answer to a practical question raised during the Middle Ages.  At a time when infant mortality rates were very high, it was unfortunately common for the infant children of practicing Catholics to die before it was possible to baptize them.  Those faithful parents worried about the eternal fate of their unbaptized children.  The Church’s answer to this question was Limbo, a place of natural happiness for those who were deprived of baptism through no one’s fault. 

Curiously, a teaching intended to bring consolation and hope to parents eventually decayed into a superstition that compelled non-practicing Catholics to baptize infants who would never be raised in the Faith.  A remedy that was supposed to give hope to the faithful devolved into permission for faithlessness. 

Like a superhero-turned-villain, Limbo could have used its powers to do good, but it succumbed to the allure of evil.  Some of Jesus’ teachings have fallen victim to similar degradation.  There are examples of this lamentable deterioration in today’s Gospel. 

This Sunday’s Gospel reading is a continuation of the Sermon of the Mount.  In this section of the Sermon, Jesus explained his interpretation of the Law of Moses.  Individual interpretations like this one were common at the time, as they comprised the foundations of the various religious reform movements founded by prophets and rabbis. 

In this Sunday’s reading, Jesus provided his expansive interpretation of the fifth, sixth, and eighth commandments.  He said that it is insufficient to avoid murder, adulterous relationships, and blasphemy because the commandments’ prohibitions include all violence, all untrustworthiness, and all coercion. 

Jesus applied this inclusive interpretation to the Commandments to counteract the minimalism of some of his contemporaries.  He said that there is insufficient virtue in avoiding murder if one’s heart is filled with hatred or thoughts of vengeance.  Similarly, extramarital relationships need not include sexual activity to qualify as adulterous.  Finally, swearing oaths by indirect reference to God is no less blasphemous than swearing an oath using God’s Name; a simple “yes” or “no” suffices for honest people. 

These very sensible interpretations of the Commandments were meant to raise people’s religious and moral actions above the bare minimum of avoiding capital crimes and fraud.  Jesus was not recommending a neurotic degree of scrupulosity; rather, he was recommending humility and honesty in all one’s relationships. 

Unfortunately, these teachings have become the subject of obsessive behavior and moral rigorism.  Jesus did not intend for faith and morals to be practiced as a competitive sport in which one tries to best other people or inspire God.  In fact, both perfectionism and self-righteousness are guarantees of being far from good and far from God. 

Jesus’ teaching presents faithful religion as an instructional exercise that teaches one how to grow into being a good person.  He said that good people don’t commit murder, but neither do they hate, plot revenge, malign, threaten, or deceive.  This degree of moral rectitude can be attained easily by all people because it doesn’t require extraordinary ability or exertion.  

Jesus’ teaching does, of course, require an honest effort.  It isn’t enough for one to avoid the worst sins.  It is only enough for one to avoid all sin – to the best of one’s abilities.  Inevitably, when those abilities fail, as they always do, it is enough for one to repent.  Anything less than this standard, or anything more, degrades Jesus’ teaching into self-destructiveness.