He who has no sin...

I watched a heart-wrenching movie last night titled The Stoning of Soraya M. It is the story of an Iranian woman with 4 children in an abusive marriage. I will not give away any "spoiler" details, but the woman, Soraya, is wrongly accused of cheating and stoned by her own family and town. The story was uncovered in 1994 by a French-Iranian journalist and turned into a book, later adapted into a movie. As I lay in bed and thought about the reality of oppression I cried. I thought about how many people in our reality are tortured by injustice and left to die.

I thought about the church, and I wondered where we have been. And, then I wondered if we can even do anything. I looked at the world and the way that we have twisted beauty and the things that used to be good, and I wondered if we can even do anything at all. I was overwhelmed by the amount of pain. But, most of all, I thought about the women. It's not that there are not men who are unjustly imprisoned and beaten. It's not that there are not men who are manipulated and pushed around. It's just that I am a woman, and I am free. And there are so many women who aren't. I lay in bed and I wondered about how many women have cried out to Allah to help them as they are stoned even today, how many women dig in trash piles to try to provide for their homeless families. I thought about the thousands of women roaming the streets in Red Light Districts and the women who climb up the corporate ladder just to rise above their lack of identity. And my heart breaks. What are we to do, in a society where it is acceptable and even expected that women are a sexual icon and a household hero? What are we to do when religion promises that women are inferior and deserve to be punished for their gender? What are we to do when there are no men to intervene and to protect the beautifully created woman from cultural slaughter?

I don't know.

And my last thoughts before I fell asleep were, what would Jesus have done if He had been there with Soraya M.? He was there, with a different woman, thousands of years ago. And he stood there, and He declared that the man without sin should throw the first stone. He delivered the "adulterous" woman from death, to life. He crossed the culture, and He stepped between her and the stones. He intervened. When, how, will we stand in between the stones and the condemned and not simply be horrified at the sight of blood?

I don't know. May God have mercy on me when I see, feel, and understand and do not move.