ays it is wrong for one to be angry with his brother, but at the same time he criticizes the Pharisees and Scribes (Scribes were those who were professional letter writers, as the populace, including Christ, were illiterate -- Christ left no written works). Here again was opposition to advancement, because he attacked those who had tried to improve themselves by learning to write.
Then Christ advises men to agree with "thine adversary quickly, lest he deliver thee to the judge and put thee in prison." This is the opposite of the previous advice for men to be cowardly and to fail to stand by their principles. Here Christ warns the people they will pay the uttermost farthing before they come out of the prison. The connection, or the importance of this connection, is not clear.
Christian philosophy is morbid. Christ not only reminds the people of adultery, but says that anyone who has desires for a woman, which if carried out would result in adultery, is an adulterer anyway. Thinking of a crime makes the thinker just as guilty as the criminal who commits such a crime. The thinker does no damage, and it is ridiculous to compare the two. Men who are attracted by pretty women, as nature intended them to be, cannot rightly be called sinful because they have normal desires. Had there been a just God he would not have created men with desires and then condemned them to eternal damnation because they thought of the desires.
Practical men will say that the man who has the desire to do something wrong, and who suppresses that desire is a more courageous man than the man who has no desire at all. From a reasonable standpoint, if no wrong is done, no blame should attach to the individual. It is only the extreme of fanaticism which would hold otherwise.
"If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out" also seems to be fanatical and unreasonable advice. If something is wrong with the hand or eye, the condition should be corrected. It is no crime for a man to feel desire when he sees an attractive woman. It is natural, and to ask him to pluck his eye out for having followed his natural tendency, is the most debasing kind of philosophy.
Then comes one of the cruelest most fanatical causes of unhappiness the world has ever known. That is Christ's commandment against divorce, except for one cause, adultery. No matter how cruel a man might be to a woman, no matter how stingy and mean he would be to her and her children, no matter how sexually mismated they might be, no matter how much of a shrew she might be no matter how mean to the children, or each antagonistic to the other, no matter how much they may have grown apart, even if one had developed filthy habits, they were to stay together in unhappiness and misery, leading to crime and insanity. A sensible commandment would have been, "Live together if you can, but when life is unhappy for either of you, then separate and try to be happy with some other mate." The refusal of the Catholic Church to grant divorce and, through its political influence, to refuse to permit nations for centuries to legislate for civil divorce (not even now permitted in such backward states as priest-ridden New York), has been a great cause of unhappiness, crime, misery, insanity and murder. Christ's outburst was not based on the studies of science, medicine, psychology, and intelligence, but was a fanatical, magnified repetition of the old Jewish laws.
Next Christ commands against taking oaths. This leads to laws against swearing. Saying "By God," yes or no, seems to be no crime and a meaningless and harmless phrase to any reasonable, intelligent man. It is a childish expression, but of no importance, yet it has been magnified by the Church and severe penalties have been imposed upon those who wanted to have their right to use the kind of emphasis they desired in their speech.
Christ objects to people swearing "by the head," which seems to be an inconsequential matter and a method of speech, and a trivial matter for a great philosopher or a God to concern himself with. "For 