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Until We Learn To Forgive, This Country Goes Nowhere
“There are no winners in a culture war”
“You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness”
-Cheryl Strayed.
In one of the parables that I still hold dear long after leaving the church, Jesus sees a woman who’s about to be stoned for the crime of adultery. Men surround her, holding their carefully chosen rocks, desperate to transform this woman’s body into lifeless flesh, drooling over the joy of following the rules when those rules allow them to act like animals.
Jesus places himself in their path and draws something in the sand as they go red in their faces and rant him at about regulations and order and society. He stands up and says “let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” Unable to argue with that logic and ashamed, the men slink off back to their homes where they can eagerly await the next chance to smash someone’s face with society’s approval.
That sort of behavior is what Jesus was killed for. He was a man holding mirrors up to mobs, showing them how snarling and animalistic they really were.
