Christian: What is this?! "Matthew 5:30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away."?

Jesus was showing the futility of trying to overcome sin. No matter how drastic your actions, they are in vain. Look at the other example about plucking out an eye. You still have another eye to see women with, and so the problem remains. You can pluck out both eyes, but still imagine the behavior and action.

No one ever did that because no one is fool enough to take that in a fundamentalist way.

"Fast thou never so much,

wake thou never so long, rise thou never so early, lie thou never so hard, wear thou never so sharp;

yea, and if it were lawful to do—as it is not—put thou out thine eyes, cut thou out thy tongue of

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thy mouth, stop thou thine ears and thy nose never so fast, though thou shear away thy members,

and do all the pain to thy body that thou mayest or canst think: all this would help thee right nought.

Yet will stirring and rising of sin be in thee."

It's a warning from Jesus about the terror of being in Hell. That would make losing your right hand easy in comparison.

Of course God does want us to do anything that would hurt us. This is to be understood in a figurative sense. It’s talking about doing whatever is necessary to avoid succumbing to immoral desires or anything that is displeasing to God before it races out of control and overcomes you. This involves taking strong actions to avoid being tempted to disobey God’s righteous standards. This is done if a person wants to be pleasing to God and reap the benefits of his blessings.

Better that you were one handed than to steal.

This is a symbolic illustration, Jesus use many illustration in his teachings. Matthew 5:30 was one of his illustration, Jesus or his Father would never tell us do something that would harm us. Jesus meant, let me give you an illustration, if you want to stop smoking would you want to keep cigarettes in your pocket, or your house or your car, what would do. would you get rid of it because it may make you stumble, go back to smoking.

I'm guessing that it means to get rid of the temptations in your life.

It's for those who try to blame their body parts for the sins they do instead of owning up to it.

See how I own up to being bisexual? Some Christians complain about that. What does that say about them?

It's a hyperbole. A hyperbole is an extreme exaggeration used to make a point. It is like the opposite of “understatement.” It is from a Greek word meaning “excess.”Hyperboles can be found in literature and oral communication. ... They are not meant to be taken literally.

It will be one of their typical "triune reasons for excusing certain BuyBull passages":

1. It's just another passage they don't like, so they cherry-pick it away to the "optional" bin.

2. They'll claim "this one is archaic, so we don't follow that anymore, but the anti-gay one right next to it is for ALL TIME."

3. They change meanings of the words in the passage until they can stomach it, and THEN they'll follow it