Throwing Stones

I teach my kids that it is never okay to throw rocks at passing cars, but the other day, I picked up a rock to chunk at oncoming traffic.

I live on a dirt road where there isn’t much coming or going, but as I was walking, a little white pickup truck barreled down the hill. There is water on either side of the road. The driver left the blacktop at about seventy miles per hour. What else was I going to do?

I stooped and picked up the largest rock I could find. If I couldn’t get far enough out of the way, I hoped I would slow him down with the rock before I slowed him down with my face plastered to his windshield. 

This story has a happy ending. Just as I reared back to throw the stone, he swerved, and disaster was averted. 

After he had gone his way, I dropped my rock and made a mental note to amend my maxim for my children. It is rarely okay to throw rocks at passing cars.

When is it okay to throw stones?

Well, we know that when the woman was caught in the act of adultery, the Pharisees throught they had the law on their side that justified rock chunking.

Jesus challenged this notion with His oft quoted answer: “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”

Even the Pharisees set their rocks down at that one.

Perhaps they had been comparing her behavior with their own. Perhaps they wanted to make her behavior a public spectacle. We do know that their primary motive was to test Jesus so that they would have some charge to bring against Him when the time came.

They did not consider the holiness of God. They never mentioned the affront to His character that her behavior represented.

Jesus was the only one there who considered those things. He was the only one there without sin who could have thrown a stone, but He didn’t.

As the Pharisees deliberated His words, He bent down and wrote on the ground. Perhaps as He bent, He considered the shepherd who, long before, had bent down to select five smooth stones from beside a brook.

The shepherd had no thought of his own righteousness or his own ability. Instead, he had heard a giant utter blasphemous words against his holy God.

“Who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the Living God?” he asked. 

He was the only one willing to stand against sin, and in his shepherd’s pouch, he carried only five smooth stones. 

God used one of those stones that day to destroy the enemy and work victory for His people. One boy, willing to throw a stone at the right time, let everyone know that Israel worshiped a God who was alive, a God who was powerful.

So, when should we throw stones? When the giant of sin defies the holiness of God- in our own lives, in the lives of our families and friends, and in the culture around us- and then, like Jesus, we show compassion to the repentant sinner, offering him- or her- a hand up.