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VIOLENCE
Threat & Control |
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Theological Reflection “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” (John 8.7) Men brought her before Jesus, that woman caught in the act of adultery. She can’t have been a single woman - they can’t be so caught. It made no difference then if the man was married, he could have more than one wife so he would simply marry her, add her to his family. No matter if she had been raped and really didn’t want to marry him, that was the way to ‘keep things decent’. So this woman must have been married herself to be accused of adultery, but then where was the man? For, in that case, he too was guilty of the same sin: the law states that he must not (even) covet his neighbour's wife and "If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbour, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death." (Leviticus 20:10) So where was he? Let off scot-free as so often happens, in every part of the world. No-one to condemn him as one woman’s word was not considered sufficient in law - then and still, it would appear, today. "Shame her or shame her family and bring disgrace on them, even just threaten to do so, and we are safe." And the perpetrators of abuse get away again. Jesus looked down, courteous, avoiding seeing her in disarray as the other men stared at this spectacle: undressing her with their eyes, if she wasn’t undressed already. Holier than thou. But how many of them, given the chance, would have paid for a go themselves? Yet he, refusing to stoop to their level of needing to control another person, takes the threat out of the situation, turns it on its head and asks quietly: "are any of you without sin?" And they are forced to recognise the truth of their own lives. What can any of us answer to that question?
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