Quote from "Searching for Sunday"

I've been reading the book, searching for sunday: loving, leaving, and finding the church by Rachel Held Evans. It is an excellent book that I can relate with in so many ways.

Today, as I reading along, I read this passage and I loved it so much! She told about the scene in the Bible where the woman caught in the act of adultery is there with all of the men who were her accusers and also Jesus.

"'Where are they?' Jesus asks the woman after they have gone. 'Has no one condemned you?'

'No, sir,' she replies.

'Then neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.'

We tend to look down our noses at these ancient people with their religious codes regulating everything from the fibers in their clothing to the people they touched. But we have our own religious codes these days. We have our own scapegoats we cast from our communities and surround with Bible-wielding mobs. We have sins we delight in taking seriously, biblical instructions we interpret hyperliterally, issues we protect over-vigilantly because it helps us with our sorting system. It makes us feel righteous.

'Let's not forget that Jesus told the woman to go and sin no more,' some like to say when they think the church is getting to soft on other people's sin.

To this I am always tempted to respond: So how's that working out for you? The sinning no more thing? Because it's not going so well for me.

I think it is safe to say we've missed the point when, of all the people in this account, we decide we're most like Jesus. I think it's safe to say we've missed the point when we use his words to condemn and this story as a stone.

Billy Graham once said, 'It is the Holy Spirit's job to convict, God's job to judge, and my job to love.'

Perhaps it would be easier for us to love if it were our own sins we saw written in that dust and carried off by the wind."

♥ Melody