Do Not Let Your Left Hand

             But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, (Matthew 6:3)

 Then the King will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

 Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?”

The King will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.”

 They also will answer, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?”

He will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”

Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” (Matthew 25:34-46) 

I have often wondered how one was supposed to do something without the left hand knowing what the right is doing. For that to make any sense, there has to be a way in which the left hand might know what the right hand is doing. Recently, I read an explanation offered by Dallas Willard that makes sense. It’s all about doing something without thinking about it, just as an automatic thing. A great example is driving a car. Most of the time, our left and right hands probably are too unaware of what the other is doing.

In Paul Tournier’s Guilt and Grace, I encountered the same idea, that we do things that make us feel guilty, or for which others say we are guilty, without realizing that we’re doing them. In White Fragility, Robin Deangelo writes of the same slavery – that in simply living without deciding to do or to not do, we commit sins against others.

And Scripture agrees. Leviticus 4 repeats the phrase “sins unintentionally” four times. I’ve tended to think that it meant that we did something and later discovered that Scripture said it was a sin, but it could just as easily mean that we do something we don’t even realize we’ve done, when we do something on autopilot and someone later says, “You sinned against me.”

The old chestnut about the road to hell being paved with good intentions may be true, but could it also be paved with unintention or inattention?