SEXUAL SIN…3/13/08
by SteveIf you’re a CNN fan as I am, you’ve no doubt gotten caught up in the latest sexual scandal in politics. Everytime I hear of another politician who has cheated on his wife and gotten caught, and I watch the sharks start to circle, I think of the story in John 8 where a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery was brought before Jesus. Imagine this terrified woman, her clothing ripped and torn, or maybe even stripped from her, because women were usually stoned naked. Try to imagine her embarrassment, the humiliation, the fear…for she knew that in a few moments she would die a horrible death.
The Pharisees thought they had Jesus where they wanted him…trying to force him to contradict the law of Moses that such women should be stoned. Jesus’ response was to stoop and write something in the dirt. We don’t know what he wrote, but whatever it was, it was so powerful that along with his famous words, “Let he who is without sin among you cast the first stone,” those who couldn’t wait for the stoning to begin started to ease away from the scene until it was only Jesus and the woman.
How did he treat her? Did he launch into a sermon on the evils of adultery? Did he tell her how sorry she was for being unfaithful, or being involved with a married man? Did he heap scorn on her to make her feel even worse? No. He spoke gently to her, saying, “Woman, where are those who condemned you?” And when she looked around and saw they were all gone, she responded, “No one, Lord.”
And Jesus answered her with some of the most remarkable words ever recorded, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”
Compare those words with what he once said to the Pharisees: “You snakes! You generation of vipers! How can you escape being sentenced to hell?”
What does that say to us about Jesus’ assessment of sin? Don’t think that he was making light of adultery. He wasn’t. But it seems obvious that for him, sins of pride, cruelty, and hypocrisy are worse than adultery! We seem to think the exact opposite.
Leslie Weatherhead noted many years ago that sexual sins label a man or woman for life. But pride, bad-temper, gossip, cruelty, and social injustice are hardly even thought of as sin at all. If sins were punished in our society by Jesus’ assessment, we’d all be in jail!
I think it would be wise for us to hear again Jesus’ words: “Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults — unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging! It’s easy to see a smudge on your neighbor’s face, and miss the sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, ‘Let me wash your face for you,’ when your whole face is distorted with contempt?” It’s this whole traveling road show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor.” (From Peterson’s THE MESSAGE)
If we were to heed those words, we just might break out into the old Negro Spiritual, “It’s not my brother, not my sister, but it’s me, O Lord, standin’ in the need of prayer.”
RSS
Apply yesterday’s commentary to this – it’s not what matters! Prostitution and homosexuality get treated by so many as if they were a highly contagious disease which will wipe out our children, while history continues to demonstrate even the powerful and affluent are occasionally brushed by both. I just don’t get it – I don’t meet new people, shake their hand, and wonder what they do in bed! It doesn’t matter! History is littered with Greats; writers, artists, politicians, warriors – in short, Leaders – who had lists of quirks, proclivities, follies, aberrant behaviours, prejudices, etc. In other words, the people from the past *We* hold in highest regard did some pretty weird, occasionally horrific things. Bill Clinton was so far from the first President to have a fling in the White House as to be laughable, and the country continued happily along regardless. No doubt, his won’t be the last, and the country – What Matters – won’t alter then, any more than it has in the past. Hungry people won’t notice, homeless people won’t care, the dying won’t be concerned. Many millions of people will have raised a voice and wasted countless hours over someone they don’t know doing something that won’t affect them, while that which mattered, those things they truly could have done something about, get ignored. How did we become a people who will raise ourselves in righteous indignation over a Governor who hired a prostitute, yet teach our own children so little about sex and it’s responsibilities that one in four teenage women now have had some form of STD? Indeed, “Let he who is without sin among you cast the first stone.” Better still, if we must cast stones, let them be from a field, that others may eat, or piled as walls, that others may have shelter, towards something ‘what matters’.
Bj
That’s quite a sparkling, clean mirror you have put before all of us! Today’s blog is so true – actions such as you describe create a weariness in me that I sometimes have trouble overcoming. I could say more in reply, but it appears that Berry has said it all. Thanks to both of you..
Debra – now if we could get people to *look* in that mirror, before looking around and summarily passing judgement! It’s not that what we see in the mirror is bad, it’s just not perfect – any more than the people around us. The last statistic I saw said that seventeen percent of the population was ‘not very nice’. The problem with that is everyone forgets about the other 83%! We dwell so much on what’s wrong, we lose sight of what’s right – all those ‘good’ people around us. And we *all* have done things we shouldn’t, we *all* got in trouble with our parents, and we all survived the mistakes you have to make to learn. That mirror reflects a pretty decent person, the vast majority of the time.
Me? ‘Said it all’??? Hardly. I’m just one voice, one viewpoint, one more imperfect person. While I sincerely appreciate the compliment, please don’t let my words stifle anyone else’! It’s through this sort of discourse we may learn.
Bj