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t whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in
me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
Woe unto the world because of offences! For it must needs be
that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence
cometh!
--Jesus Christ, Matthew 18:6-7 | | Even if Solomon’s words were “the Law” of God—and Solomon never made such a claim—then we have already seen that they would not be “the Law” for Christians today. Beyond that, however, if Christians hope to understand the Scriptures from Jesus' point of view, then we need to know that some Old Testament laws were much more important than others, that Jesus fulfilled some Old Testament laws completely, and that some sins are much worse than others. | | In Matthew 12:11-12 we see that Jesus approved men “breaking the Sabbath” if they rescued a sheep that had fallen into a pit. My old preacher friend and mentor, the late Al Bristol, taught that Christians often must choose “the lesser of two evils,” rather than have a perfectly good choice or bad choice. Helping the trapped sheep was more important than “resting” on the Sabbath. Jesus also noted that helping people on the Sabbath was much more important than helping a sheep. | | What would we say if we saw a man force a sheep to spread its hind legs so the man could beat the sheep’s sex area with a board? The man would likely face some animal abuse charge in nearly every state. Certainly most preachers would condemn such cruelty. Yet many of these same hypocrite preachers would “praise the Lord” if they saw the same man force a child or adolescent to “spread her legs and bend over” for a school-style “paddling.” The preacher himself might beat a child or teen in that fashion if he ran a "Christian" school. Didn't Jesus value a child much more than a sheep? | | Among the sins of the Pharisees we read in Mark 7:5-13 that they taught their non-Biblical traditions, such as washing their eating utensils in a religious manner, while neglecting more important matters like attending to their parent’s needs. Jesus said, despite their pompous appearances, that their worship was in vain. Offending Jesus’ “little ones” is about as bad a sin as can possibly be committed. Forcing adolescents to “spread their legs and bend over” so a man can beat their sex areas with a board can lead to many violent and sexually perverted thoughts in the victims, as well as in the adult hitters and witnesses. It can negatively affect the sexual development of children for life. When the kids grow up to have unstable marriages and sex problems the same self-righteous, child abusive, hypocrite preachers condemn their victims to hell. However "screwed up" the Pharisees were, they could no doubt take hypocrisy lessons from our “master hypocrite,” paddle-whack preachers today. | |
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