Mob Mentality
"I had a dream," a young man says to his pastor. "I was standing before Jesus. It was like I was dead and I was standing at the gates of paradise. I could see a great shining city in the background. I felt an urgency to want to be there."
The young man pauses for a moment, causing the pastor to speak. "And Jesus approached you?"
"Not at first. He was sitting on the ground, by a great wall. There was just sand, you know. Everything was dusty. The sun was hot. I could feel it. It wasn't that way in the city. I'm not sure how I knew that, but where we stood, it was dusty and we seemed to be baking in the sun. He, Jesus, smoothed out an area on the ground and was drawing meaningless figures in the dirt... or maybe I should say dust. Everything was so dusty."
"Meaningless figures?"
The young man nods his head. "They weren't letters or anything that might make words. He just made swirls with his finger."
"Why do you suppose he did that?"
"I don't know. I expected to see a list of sins."
"Why did you expect that?"
The young man went quiet for a few moments, finally he says, "There was weeping. There was a woman, a young woman. Her clothes were torn. Her knees were scraped. She seemed frightened."
"Did you know why she was frightened?"
"Not at first, but as I watched her, I realized I was part of crowd. The entire crowd was made up of men, no women. They were dressed oddly. A few of them met my eyes. There was rage among them. They were a mob of sorts. They held stones... pieces of jagged rock."
"And what did Jesus do?"
"Nothing really. Not at first. He kept running his finger through the dirt. I tried to see what he was writing."
"Again, why did you expect to see a list of sins?" The pastor asks in a calm voice.
"I read that he might be doing just that."
"I see."
"Someone behind me shouted that she'd been caught in the act. I was afraid they were going to begin hurling the stones at her. The crowd was so loud... and she just cowered against the wall... expecting a horrible death. And Jesus looked up at the crowd. He didn't even stand. From his lowly position on the ground, he looked up. He spoke. I know the words. I could have recited each syllable with him. I heard a few stones drop and a few men walked away. Then I heard more stones hit the ground and the rest of the crowd wandered off."
"Mob mentality," the pastor says. "The men were upset that their violence against this woman wasn't going to have a chance for justification."
"The woman was still crying. That's when he got up, Jesus, and approached me. I had a stone, a jagged piece of granite. I had it raised over my head. I was going to throw it. But Jesus took my hand with his. I felt sick. I knew I intended to throw the stone."
"You judged her sin."
"Without reason."
"Perhaps," the pastor says. "Tell me what happened next."
"I dropped the stone and I turned away. The city wasn't mine to enter. But he spoke to me."
"And."
"He said that she had been forgiven. Her sins were many, but she had been forgiven. He said, we should recognize our own sins, before we throw stones at another for theirs. He said that is why the other men left. None of them were sinless. Most of them had sins just as vile as the woman. But none of them knew that his blood would wash away their sins... if they just believed... in him."
The pastor gets up from chair and walks toward a window looking out over the front of the church where he preaches. After a moment he finds the words he wants to share with the young man. "He spoke to Samuel. In the same way he speaks to you and me. Some might say, 'It is all foolishness. It was only a dream written down in a book of fables'. But they would be wrong. He has spoken to you. His hand reached out and touched yours. It is good that you dropped the stone... make sure to never pick it up again."
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Donald-P.-James-Jr./author
Comments
Post a Comment