“If art imitates life, scripture likewise reflects it in both holiness and horror.” – Phyllis Trible
Often in life we yearn for the holiness, love, and goodness found within scripture to trickle into our own lives. In doing so, we often try to find ways to numb, block out, or ignore the horrors that are weaved in between its pages and our own stories. In the recant of Psalms 135: 5-15 there are words of praise, creation, holiness, and power in the name of the Lord. This Psalm sings a song of deliverance of the chosen people and omnipotent power in their favor. Yet, intertwined are the realities of children being struck down, nations obliterated, kings assassinated, and the genocide of many nations.
Culture often feeds a rhetoric that there is a right and wrong, black and white, simple and clear, and the solution is often a demand of war, violence, incarceration, boarders, death and destruction – separating people into good and bad, black and white. However, what culture doesn’t want you to know, is that, simplicity in regard to human beings is a myth.
Jesus has given us examples time and time again in the New Testament of how a life of disarming and deescalating is the third and wholesome way forward for all beings to live in harmony and peace together. And it all starts with a simple statement, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
-Sarah Knapton