Nicole Johnson - Dropping Your Rock: The Freedom to Choose Love Over Judgment

DROPPING your
ROCK

ALSO BY
NICOLE JOHNSON

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www.freshbrewedlife.com

DROPPING your
ROCK
Choosing Love over Judgment

Nicole Johnson

2002 BY NICOLE JOHNSON

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,
or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a
registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Scripture quotations noted NIV are from the Holy Bible: New International Version.
Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society.
Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House.
All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations noted KJV are from the King James Version.

Scripture quotations noted NKJV are from the New King James Version,
Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

ISBN 0-8499-1779-4

Printed in the United States of America

02 03 04 05 06 07 PHX 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Women of Faith
and Barbara Johnson

Contents

A lmost since the beginning of time, human beings have had a brutally simple way of dealing with wrong: rocks. Someone would point out the offender in the camp or the family or the clan, and everyone would come running. Picking up a cold, hard ballot of stone, they would violently cast their vote against wrong, again and again and again, until it was gone. It was their way.

But one hot day in the Middle East a man stepped in front of the rock throwers and changed things forever. A woman had been caught in the act. Not hearsay, not suspicion, not circumstantial evidence. Caught in the very act of adultery. Dragging her out, the men forced her to stand in front of the crowd as they pressed in on her angrily with rocks in their hands.

Clothesif she had any on when they caught herhad been torn off. Hot tears spilled down her cheeks in shame or maybe anger. Where was the man? Was she his hearts love or just the afternoons activity? There is no way to know. Either way, he wasnt there; she was alone, and they were on her. Theythe self-proclaimed upholders of moral righteousness, the superpious pillars of the community armed with their bludgeoning hypocrisy and crowd-pleasing indignation over wrong. Her stomach was knotted so tightly she could scarcely breathe. Her dignity was shredded, her spirit drenched with dread, but her hands were clenched in defiance. Shed sinned and been caught, and now she was dead-ended in a circle of judges with rocks in their hands.

Have you ever noticed how good it feels to throw a rock really hard? Your hand feels the weight of the stone, and when you let it fly, theres a tremendous release. Is that what they felt that day? That each persons rock carried the weight of the communitys judgment? It had become a familiar scene. No, they would yell as they threw. Wrong! Caught! Punish! They would throw and throw, their fury fueled by each other as much as by the crime until the one in the center was still. And then they would revel in the grim release of sin avenged.

Problem is, rocks dont hit sin. Rocks hit people.

And thousands of years later, they still do.

Oh, were too sophisticated nowadays to be flinging granite, but the words we throw in judgment and outrage are as hard and cold as any stone of old. And the release we feel when we let them go can be just as exhilarating.

Four teenagers get killed on a Friday night, and we hurl our rocks: Well, they shouldnt have been drinking. No, they shouldnt have, but does that ease the guilt and the pain for their parents?

A young woman gets raped leaving a party, and someone says, She was wearing a short skirt, and she deserves exactly what she got. We drag her into the circle and throw our rocks.

A businessman goes to jail for a poor decision involving other peoples money, and we growl, He can rot in there as far as Im concerned. Never mind his wife and kids, we pile the rocks as high as we can.

A woman confronts someone rudely about an indiscretion in her life and later phones a friend to report, And then I told her exactly what I thought of that sin. Whap! Now that woman will be in no danger of appearing soft on wrongwhile the woman she hit will wear the bruise.

As we throw, we convince ourselves that if the rock lands in just the right spot, it can knock out something evil. You remember the story of David and Goliath. Plant the rock squarely in the forehead of your foe, and your side wins. If our goal is to kill our enemy, this could be the answer. But if we hope to change a friends heart, it definitely is not. We can sometimes knock sense into a person with a rock, but we cant knock out sin.

Remember the scene in the movie Forrest Gump where Jenny goes back to her childhood house after years of being gone? She stares at the old shack where her daddyher trusted daddywould come to her bed at night and use her like a trash receptacle. She picks up a little rock and flings it at the house, breaking a window. She stares and stares as tears start to sting, and then she hurls another rock as hard as she can. She throws and throws, another and another, flinging and crying until she collapses on the ground. Quietly and in his simple way, Forrest pronounces, Sometimes there just arent enough rocks.