When I was growing up, it was all the rage to avoid conflict with your child by offering them two choices. Secretly, both choices were options the parent could live with. The parent could never lose. For example, rather than fighting about wanting to go barefoot, the parent would ask, "Do you want to wear your blue or your red shoes?" Either way, you ended up in shoes.
Or they wouldn't fight directly about eating dinner; the parent would just ask, "Do you want fried chicken or spaghetti tonight?" Either way, you ate dinner.
But that stuff never worked on me. I knew if Mom was offering me two choices, it was a trap; she was working me over. I remember one time she asked me something like, "Do you want the pink bubble bath or the purple bath bomb with sprinkles?" For a moment, she caught me doing the mental math between those two choices, but when I heard the bathwater start, I immediately recognized that false dichotomy. I just turned and ran out of the house. I recall the flap-flap-flap sound of my mother's house slippers behind me and within minutes I was caught, de-clothed like a skinned rabbit, and plunked in the tub with no bath bomb at all. Turns out, there really wasn't a choice.
But when we read how often Jesus was offered a false binary of choices, you see His brilliance. Over and over He just turns those options into a mirror that causes both sides to see themselves in a way they had not been able to before:
At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?" John 8:2-5 NIV
So the choice the Pharisees offered: there was (1) stone her, which pitted Him against Rome, or (2) let her go, which painted Him as soft and easy on a clearly identifiable sin.
Jesus doesn't pick a side. Yes, the law is the law. And the sin is a sin. But Jesus is about to turn the table on false choices:
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her." John 8:6-7 NIV
Suddenly, everyone is examining their own ledger instead of hers! In a single, perfect response, Jesus protects the woman while also protecting the crowd who had come there to do violence. He protected them from becoming murderers that day. And every single one of them – the accusers and the accused – walked away from that experience changed. Neither side destroyed, and both sides ended up on the same level playing field of imperfect people.
When in my anger I want to judge – I want to tear down – that is the field where, over and over, I need to be reminded that I am culpable.
by Carie Grant
