<p>6:23&nbsp;<em>But if your eye is bad, your whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!</em>- A bad or evil eye was an idiom for mean spiritedness. It continues the theme of materialism from the previous verses. To follow materialism is to be mean spirited- towards God. Speaking in the context of serving<em> either</em>&nbsp;God&nbsp;<em>or</em>&nbsp;mammon, the Lord uttered these difficult words: &quot;Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth... the light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness... how great is that darkness!&quot; (Mt. 6:19-22). All this is in the context of not being materialistic. The Lord is drawing on the OT usage of &quot;an evil eye&quot; - and consistently, this idiom means someone who is selfishly materialistic (Prov. 22:9; 23:7; 28:22; Dt. 15:9). The NIV renders some of these idioms as &quot;stingy&quot; or &ldquo;mean&quot;. A single eye refers to a generous spirit (1 Chron. 29:17 LXX), and a related Greek word occurs in 2 Cor. 8:2; 9:11,13 with the sense of &ldquo;generous&quot;. So surely the Lord is saying that our attitude to wealth controls our whole spirituality. Whether we have a mean or generous spirit will affect our whole life- an evil [stingy] eye means our whole body is full of darkness. Just let this sink in. If we are materialistic, our whole life will be filled with darkness, whatever our external pretensions may be, and there is a definite link to be made here with the &quot;darkness&quot; of rejection. The riches of Jericho are described with a Hebrew word which means both a curse, and something devoted (to God; Josh. 6:18). This teaches a powerful lesson: such riches of this world as come into our possession will curse us, unless they are devoted to the Father.</p>