Recently, I saw something I had not noticed in previous readings of chapter 8 of John’s Gospel. The chapter begins with a story of a woman caught in adultery. People picked up stones to kill her. The chapter ends with a similar response from people who did not understand the message of Jesus and decided to stone Him to silence His voice. John 8 is a chapter about stones.
Over the years, I have noticed how religious spirits function. When a person violates the perimeter of its narrow understanding of a greater truth, it will become so upset with those violations it will resort to violence, imposing a theological or relational death sentence on anyone who dares to confront its limited interpretation of reality.
When we don’t understand a deeper revelation of God’s love or those who affirm such revelations, resist the urge to pick up a stone of disapproval when the religious crowd becomes enraged and invites us to follow their murderous path. From Heaven’s perspective, the sound of stones falling to the ground from the hands of misinformed accusers is a sweeter sound than the sound of impact from the hard, stone-like dismissals we throw out to silence another person’s opinion about the depths of a truth we do not yet fully understand.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Garris Elkins
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