My wife grew up in the South Pacific where English is not the native tongue. She still speaks Samoan from time to time. It can be a little awkward when we get together with her family. We will sit around a table to eat, enjoying company and conversation. Suddenly, someone will utter what sounds like unintelligible vowel noises and my wife and her family will start laughing. Meanwhile, we in-laws stare blankly at one another, hoping we were not just the butt of a joke.
If I ask my wife, “What did your mom just say?” she usually replies, “Oh, you wouldn’t get it. It doesn’t translate well into English.” I guess I had to be there (even though I was there!)
Translating from one language to another can be tricky business. Some things just don’t translate well, and to prevent from being lost in translation, you need to be somewhat familiar with both languages. Such is the case with Matthew 6:22: “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light.” The NIV's “good,” however, doesn’t quite get the meaning. Neither does the ESV's “healthy." Another version says “clear,” others “sound,” and still others “generous.” Perhaps the closest to the original meaning of the Greek word is from the good ol’ King James - Single. But even that is hard to make sense of. If your eye is single the whole body will be full of light? Single as opposed to what?
The actual word Matthew used was haplous, and like some of my wife’s Samoan words, I think this one just doesn’t translate well into English. Things like, good, healthy, clear, sound, and generous aren’t exactly wrong but they don’t capture the meaning Jesus was trying to convey.
The context in which this appears makes it seem like “generous” is a decent option. Jesus advises his listeners not to store up treasures on earth but treasures in heaven. We can store up for ourselves all kinds of stuff here on earth, but they are subject to destruction by moths or rust. What cannot be destroyed are still in danger of being stolen from us. What is more, if we are fortunate enough to protect our treasures from decomposition or theft, they finally get divvied out to our next-of-kin as soon as our funeral is over. Even if I have stored up enough treasures so that my children may inherit a better life, I won’t be around to see it.
Verse 24 may serve to reinforce the point as well. “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money." While money itself is not inherently evil, it can create a temptation for us to turn our allegiance away from God to something more tangible. The right choice is to let God be our master, not money.
So considering all this, an appropriate translation for haplous may in fact be “generous.” You can’t take it with you, so why not be generous and invest in others? After all, we cannot serve two masters, and so what better way to show our allegiance to God than by being generous with our possessions that we cannot take anyway? We should have generous eyes by giving to others and thereby store up treasures in heaven.
All of this is true. We cannot take anything with us when we go. The stuff we accumulate is subject to theft, destruction, and being an item on a will. The stuff we accumulate also competes with our allegiance to God. We should be generous with our belongings. However, I think Jesus is making a deeper point than simply how we treat our possessions. It seems silly, but the King James Version is most accurate translating haplous with “single,” not “generous.”
While generosity is a high virtue, storing up treasures in heaven goes beyond giving away our stuff. For one thing, perfectly good atheists can be incredibly generous and never store up treasures in heaven. At the same time, we can store up treasures in heaven without any money at all. How we spend our money is only one small part of how we store up treasures in heaven. We store up treasures in heaven when we share the gospel. We store up treasures in heaven when we weep with someone who is weeping. We store up treasures in heaven when we help our kids with their homework. Praying with a friend, chatting over coffee, giving a hug … the list goes on and on. These are tangible ways we can store up treasures in heaven and they do not have to involve money.
And while "generous" is an incomplete translation for haplous, “money” is an incomplete translation for mammon. Mammon is the best translation for “Mammon.” Broadly speaking, mammon can be anything that one places trust in. Since many people put trust in money, “money” becomes an obvious translation, but mammon can be other things. Some people’s mammon is their skill and ability, that which gives them their way of life. Some people’s mammon is the government. A job, a horoscope, a group of trusted friends, Obamacare, a 2016 Republican presidential nominee who will repeal Obamacare—all of these things can be a person’s mammon, and all of these and more have the potential to replace God as our ultimate source of confidence.
Jesus says emphatically, You cannot do it! You must not serve two masters! You must not store up treasures on earth! You must have a single, haplous eye!
The actual meaning of haplous suggests “being motivated by singleness of purpose... single, without guile, sincere, straightforward”* (BDAG, 104). It is hard to convey all of this using just one English word. For better or worse, the best translation for haplous is haplous.
A haplous eye has the force of the old Flamingos song, I Only Have Eyes For You. Jesus is telling us that our eyes ought to be singularly focused on God and nothing else. When our eyes are looking solely at Jesus, our treasure cannot help but to be in Heaven. When we are focused completely on God, there is no room for mammon to steal our attention.
This, then, is what leads Jesus to continue with telling us not to worry about our lives. If we have our eyes fixed on God alone, and our confidence is in Him alone, we have no need for worry, only to “seek first his kingdom and his righteousness.” Then “all these things will be given to you as well” (Mat. 6.33).
A farmer once told me that when plowing a field, if you concentrate on keeping the tractor straight by focusing on the steering wheel, or what is immediately in front of you, you will be surprised at how crooked your first line in the field will actually be in spite of your efforts. Then all the other lines you try to plow will be equally crooked. If, instead, you focus on one object at the end of the field, whether that be a tree, a rock, or a fence post, and just stare at that while you are driving your tractor, your first line will be straight, almost without even trying, just like it is supposed to be.
This is what Jesus has in mind, telling us to have haplous eyes. If we keep our sight and attention fixed on God alone, our whole life will be full of light, absent of any darkness, straight, just like it is supposed to be. If we keep our focus completely on God alone, we will need neither treasures on earth nor mammon. When we look at Jesus and only him, we have no need to worry.
Do you have haplous eyes, or is your body and soul full of darkness? Is God the source of your confidence and contentment, or mammon? Are you storing up treasures on earth, or investing in lives for the cause of eternity? What matters in life is not how kind or generous you are, noble as those may be. Instead, what matters is this: What are you looking at? If your eyes are focused on anything but God, you are looking the wrong way.
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