Learning from Jesus: pointing fingers, throwing stones
It's a common saying (though it lays no claim to being inspired scripture) that when we point a finger at someone else we are simultaneously pointing three fingers back at ourselves. The men who brought an adulterous woman to Jesus had no answer to his masterly response, and one by one slunk sheepishly away.
The woman's accusers were not the people who had been wronged by her adultery - not her own husband nor the wife of her sexual partner. They were pharisaical busy-bodies, prying into the lives of their neighbours, on the pretext of upholding the law (and, in this case, trying to entrap Jesus). In a stroke, Jesus laid bare their hypocrisy.
Judging others is a favourite pastime of Christians - whether the 'others' are Christians whose beliefs and lifestyles differ from our own, or the shapers of our liberal secular society who offend our values. Judging and criticising are however endemic throughout human societies, universal symptoms of our fallen human nature. But why are we so prone to a critical attitude?
First of all, perhaps, because we think that everything that goes wrong has to be someone's fault (but, of course, not ours). There is something in our culture that encourages us to seek a scapegoat both for our own failures and mistakes and for things that can best be described simply as bad luck.
But much of the problem, surely, lies within ourselves. Whether we were brought up by parents who constantly found fault with us; whether blaming others - in the workplace or the home - reinforces our sense of virtue (though none of us of course is without sin); the problem springs from an insecurity that is always on the defensive. But Jesus, in the security of being the only one really without sin, said to the woman 'I don't condemn you either'. The Bible urges us to be gentle, forbearing, generous-spirited, forgiving - 'as God in Christ has forgiven us'.
One final thought: did the woman's husband have the right to judge her? Certainly, but he was also the one who had the right to forgive.
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