April 29, 2009
Casting Stones
Commentator Matthew Slick makes a good observation when he says, “The man who strikes first admits his argument has run out.” I can see this played out between Stephen and members of the Synagogue of the Freedmen in Acts 6. The Jews argued with Stephen and discovered “they could not stand up against his wisdom or the Spirit by whom he spoke”. Being poor losers, they stirred up the people, the elders and the teachers of the law. Stephen was stoned to death, in essence, for winning the argument. In today’s church we’re much more civilized…we just throw verbal stones. If we can’t win an argument we simply stir up others by labeling the perceived offenders as troublemakers, gossips and dissenters. There’s more than one way to stone a person into silence.
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Gail;
-----Matthew Slick’s comment must be viewed in light of the fact that God commanded stoning as certain treatment for a variety of sins. Even the rebellious child was commanded to be stoned, and which of us have not observed how quickly arguments run dry when trying to deal with the rebellious child. Stoning was the act of ultimate intolerance for evil and the most poignant expression of the uselessness of debating it. But stoning was given by God into the hands of the righteous, not the unrighteous.
-----The strength of evil is its ability to usurp the tools of righteousness. The Progressive movement of Western society has usurped our entertainment industry, our news media, our schools and universities, courtrooms, and government because nobody has had the guts to lead in simply stoning it to death, without argument. It has even usurped many churches. And it has done all this by practicing the principle you have illustrated. Standing upon the shoulders of arrogant men having come to popularity before them, pop leaders have cast verbal and intellectual stones, given public validation by useful circumstances of the present moment, at the enduring truths established by God. When they have fulfilled their wanton desire for popularity among the sheep, then they become shoulders for the next generation of usurpers to stand upon. Altogether they form a trestle for simple working folk to pass from the freedom of reason and common sense over to the slavery of conformity with popular thought. At some point in the future the civility of casting verbal stones will again turn to the barbarism of letting blood. Confer Revelation.
-----The righteous man will not cast verbal stones when his argument fails to win. Rather, he will abandon his thinking when he has found it demonstrated to be wrong, for righteousness is bound to humility. But humility is not without meekness, and meekness will strike against wrong simply because what is wrong must be deterred. Casting stones is not the problem, it is simply a tool. Casting them at the wrong target, at the wrong moment, or for the wrong purpose is the problem. And that is less a problem than not casting them at all, thus allowing unrighteousness to run away with the whole flock of sheep. It is time for the righteous to take up the tools of righteousness having been usurped from them. It is time to publicly call fools fools, liars liars, and evil evil remembering that, although a brother in the Lord may sometimes act foolishly, misrepresent a point, or even make a great mistake, he is not a fool, a liar, or evil, but one of the redeemed.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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