Echoes in Eternity

I just finished watching "The Stoning of Soraya M." It's a film based on the true story of an Iranian woman stoned for a made-up charge of adultery because her husband wanted to divorce her so he could marry a young girl instead. Besides giving a close-up and unflinching look at a world much like that into which Jesus stepped a couple millenia ago and the vileness that surrounded Him, it also has heart-rending lessons to be learned about gossip, integrity, faithfulness. It's hard to watch, but one that must be seen by Westerners. You hear a lot of protests about the sex trade industry these days (and rightly so), but most of the people talking the loudest about that particular moral decay will rarely render a peep about the stoning, murder, and general abuse of women in Islamic countries. Perhaps that is out of ignorance or cowardice. If the former, this movie will do wonders for opening the sanitized eyes of soft Americans everywhere. See this film, and tell your friends about it!

But don't watch it with just a "look at what those evil, backward Muslims do to each other" mindset. Consider that while we may not stone each other and our culture may not put adultery so high on the moral weakness list that we execute because of it (instead, it's probably now just above not recycling), we still attack and accuse people with our thoughts and have a new set of social dos and don'ts to abide by. We don't gather our victims in the town square, but we certainly speak evil of them in the shadows and when the threads of civilization get strained are perfectly capable of monstrous behavior. Our dead don't lie in the street to be eaten by dogs; they just get dumped in the garbage by so-called doctors and abandoned by self-absorbed "parents." Our victims would count themselves lucky to live to the age of Soraya M. And somehow we dare consider ourselves the enlightened ones.