Bible Study With The Bishops: Stoning

Reading Plan Text for April 25: John 10:30 -42

My ninth grade English teacher ran us through an extensive and varied reading list, ranging from Shakespeare's Macbeth to T.H. White's The Once And Future King to Truman Capote's In Cold Blood--and a whole lot in between. One morning she showed us a short film, The Lottery, based on Shirley Jackson's short story (which we hadn't read). The film was then about five years old, so the "ordinary-ness" of the town depicted in the film wasn't dated to us. Even so, it became quite clear to us that something wasn't quite right about what was going on in this town. The culmination of the story, the stoning of lottery winner Tessie Hutchinson, left most of us in a state of shock. You can see the entire film on YouTube (part 1 and part 2).

I haven't thought about that film in years, but it came to mind when I read today's passage from John.

The two incidents--the stoning of Tessie Hutchinson and the planned stoning of Jesus--have little in common, except perhaps for the mob mentality. In the film, the stoning is a ritual sacrifice, while in John, and the rest of the Bible, it is a judicial punishment.

There are still places in the world where stoning is used to punish transgressors, primarily women allegedly caught in adultery (only rarely is the male transgressor punished, if he is even considered to have been guilty). In some Muslim countries the death penalty for homosexual acts is stoning or hanging, though documented cases have been almost entirely hangings. And then there are the "good Christian folks" who advocate stoning as an appropriate punishment for homosexuals because it's in the bible. So is stoning children for being disobedient, but maybe they'd like to institute that, too?

It's all about power and control. Someone once said, and I can't put my hands on the quote just now, that the best way to judge a society is to look at how it treats its minorities.

We don't seem to be doing a very good job...

Peace,
Jeffri