The Eye Is the Lamp of the Body

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

“The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness.”
(Matthew 6:19-23, New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition)

“The main design of gospel ministry,” the 18th-century Welsh Quaker John Griffith wrote in his Journal, “is to turn the children of men to the grace of God in themselves, which will teach them to work out their own salvation, and diligently to seek the Lord for themselves.”

The Religious Society of Friends has placed great value on that personal engagement from the very beginning. Few things bothered George Fox and his first comrades more than what they called “professors,” people who merely professed faith, saying all the right things but doing little if anything to work out their own salvation. You had to commit yourself to the cause, so to speak—cultivating a heart and eyes that would turn away from treasures on earth in favor of a more divine reward.

“Christ saves not as he stands without at the door knocking, but as he is let in,” Isaac Penington advised, a century before Griffith (emphasis added).

“Keep out the light of his spirit, keep out Christ: let in the light of his spirit, let in Christ.”

If you did not let in the light, Penington warned, “Christ can never come to be formed in [you]… And then [you] may talk of Christ, and practise (sic) duties (pray, read, and meditate much), and gather comforts from promises, and run into ordinances, and be exceeding zealous and affectionate in all these, and yet perish in the end.”

(Here I issue our standard disclaimer: Not all contemporary Quakers share the passion that early Friends had for Christ. If you would rather call the Saviour they celebrated “God” or “Spirit,” or something else entirely, go ahead. Whatever name you use, you will recognize the divine connection when it takes place, and even as devout a Christian as Penington felt “it were better for thee to learn his name by feeling his virtue and power in thy heart, than by rote.”)

My Quaker faith expresses itself through the ongoing effort to become the sort of person whose faith in Spirit can see me through the hardships I may encounter in life. It’s not that I believe in a God who always stands ready to shield me from trouble—but when I do face difficulties, I try not to waver in my trust that something good can come out of the experience, as long as I continue to live out the testimonies of Quaker faith and practice. (I don’t always succeed, but thankfully when we waver, we always have the option of returning to our starting point.)

What happens when you don’t believe that Spirit will see you through the hard times?

If you fall prey to the mindset of the secular, capitalist world, you might find yourself believing that money can solve your problems. Money becomes your heart’s treasure; your eye seeks out ways to store up more and more of it for yourself. Over time, to play out a metaphor common among early Quakers, the light inside you begins to flicker and falter, until it goes out, and darkness consumes your body.

Each of us faces this challenge in our individual lives, but we can also face it as a spiritual community. The Religious Society of Friends has existed for more than three and a half centuries, enough time to have become an institution like the churches against which its founders rebelled. A much smaller institution, but an institution all the same—and one that inspires fervent enthusiasm among many of its members, especially those who have explicitly chosen Quakerism over their original faith traditions. 

Personal enthusiasm and historical momentum combine to generate a powerful instinct toward preservation—we must save this wonderful religion, this splendid meetinghouse! In that moment, we can easily fall prey to the secular myth that nothing allows an institution to thrive and endure like money, the more the better. From there, we may find ourselves making decisions based on projected financial outcomes rather than spiritual rewards, until we risk becoming a meeting of professors, saying all the right things while steadily dying inside.

Nobody wants to worship in a meeting like that. So we must constantly put in the work to keep our eyes focused on spiritually healthy treasures and our bodies full of light. Only then can our lives, even more than our declarations of faith, serve as a ministry authentic enough to inspire others to diligently seek what we have found through our Quaker faith for themselves.