One must look deep into the thought to understand it properly.
If taken literary it won't make sense, just as Christ's saying won't make sense if taken literary: “If your arm causes you to sin, you'd be better of if you cut it off.”
Do you think God needs people with no arms and eyes?
One must cut off the negative desires, the desires that bring more harm than good to his spiritual development.
The desire to serve God should be in you when you eat and when you sleep, when you work and when you rest.
Divine Blessings,
DS
Then -(probably before you took the time to read my link)-you replied: "One must look deep into the thought to understand it properly. If taken literary [LITERALLY] it won't make sense, just as Christ's saying won't make sense if taken literary [LITERALLY]: If your arm causes you to sin, you'd be better of if you cut it off. Do you think God needs people with no arms and eyes? .."
No, I don't, because I'm not a confused "literalist" / "fundamentalist".
"..Religious truths are conveyed through symbolism and analogy (with the assistance of grace), more like a great work of art than a mathematical equation. Although not merely logical, it would be a grave and simplistic error to suggest that the great revelations are illogical, any more than a Shakespearean sonnet or one of Beethovens symphonies are illogical.
"Rather, they are translogical. ...
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"..one of the baleful consequences of religious literalism or fundamentalism (which is not actually fundamental, but a very modern deviation) is that it places religious knowledge on the same horizontal plane as empirical or rational scientific knowledge.
"...our intellectual conceptions--our gnosis--are only true insofar as they reflect the Word. Real truth is not a construct or acquisition of the ego, but something to which we humbly submit. .."