Every 6 months or so a Muslim country makes headlines in the West for being about to stone a lady caught in adultery or the like. We in the West think this is terrible! How inhumane, uncaring, horrible and terrible these Muslims are! So we begin a campaign to put pressure on them to free this innocent lady. The lady somehow becomes a virtuous woman caught in a terrible situation. 'We need to teach these people to be civilised, merciful, compassionate.'
From the Muslim perspective though, they find a lady caught in adultery and they think this is terrible. Adultery to them [and the Bible] is an attack on family, an attack on marriage, an attack on everything that is sacred and civil. They must act so that adultery and divorce and family breakdown don't become rampant and destroy everything they hold dear - so it doesn't destroy civilisation, she must be an example! Suddenly the West gets involved screaming 'set the adulterer free!'
The Easterner's think, 'What kind of people are these Westerners? Don't they understand that adultery is a cancer that will destroy marriage, family, society? Here they are condoning adultery, celebrating adultery, making a hero of the adulterer! If they do this what will society become?' Then they look at our society and see sky high divorce rates, porn everywhere, family breakdown and they conclude, 'this is what will happen!' We don't want to become that! We want the opposite!'
We think they must be terrible people for wanting to stone the adulterer - they aren't, it's because they are trying to be good people they want to stone the adulterer.
They think we must be terrible people for wanting to free the adulterer - we aren't, we want to show mercy and forgiveness [although more and more in our society do want to celebrate adultery!]
We don't get each other at all. The West needs to approach such issues completely differently. We need to say, 'You are right, she has done a terrible thing! Adultery is bad - we should know, we're suffering the consequences of it! You need to punish her! BUT, we have learnt that death is perhaps too extreme a punishment. What if it was your daughter, or your mother, - and can any of us claim total righteousness? We have learnt from Jesus, to give people a chance at a second chance. Yes there needs to be punishment. She is not a hero of freedom and liberty - she is a sinner. How can we work for her salvation, but also remind people that adultery is not good, not good at all.'
Isn't this Jesus' approach? 'Does no one condemn you? Then neither do I, but go and sin no more.' Jesus maintains incredibly high morals, but also showed incredible mercy.
My main problem with stoning the "adulterer", is that the man gets off scot-free. It is only the woman who is stoned. If the woman is going to be punished (preferably in a more humane way), the man should be also - in fact, he should be punished more severely, as the men in that society have the power.
ReplyDeleteHi Vivienne, I agree. There are many inconsistencies in such stonings. For some reason the women is seen as the temptress when in my experience it is men who more often can't keep their trousers on. What I am trying to say is that for better East/West relations we need to calm the vitriol [thus Jesus writes in the dust] don't judge, but try to understand each other, even if we disagree. Then we might be in a better position to work on it.
ReplyDeleteCheers.