When I made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1987, our tour guide showed us a millstone. It is a big rock the size of a table, flat on top, on which you grind wheat and corn into flour. It takes several men to move a millstone; they are huge!
Jesus says in the Gospel, “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believes in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone around his neck and cast into the depths of the sea!”
Jesus is talking about the sin of “scandal.” It must be a very terrible thing for him to speak like this. Mostly, when we hear the word used today, it means someone’s personal fault has become public in the media A prominent politician has an affair, this hits the newspaper and television, and we have a scandal. Some big executive was embezzling money, it becomes news, and there is a big scandal. For the most part, scandal for us means the publicizing of someone’s sins or crimes. But for Jesus scandal is something a little different.
Scandal means you lead someone else into sin by taking advantage of their vulnerability. In other words, you are in a position of important responsibility and others looked to you with respect and trust, and then you took advantage of that position to lead the person into sin.
Most often, scandal is committed by an adult, and the victim is a child. Or it is committed by an older sibling, or an upperclassman, who deliberately misleads a younger and more naïve child, taking advantage of his youthfulness, or his naiveté. Another way to describe the sin of scandal: to “rob someone of their innocence.”
Jesus hates this sin? “Better to have a great millstone tied about his neck and drowned in the depths of the sea, than to scandalize one of these little ones.” Jesus loves the innocence of children; he loves the openness and naiveté and eagerness of youth. Jesus loves those who are not old enough to know about terrible sins and evil and corruption. He loves this because that is how it was supposed to be, that is how God originally created us in the Garden of Eden.
But now we are robbed of that natural joy and trust. We lose our innocence as we grow up. How? Someone robs us; or betrays us, or hurts us, or takes advantage of us. Someone is cruel to us; laughs at us and makes fun of the fact we don’t know about bad things and do them. That is the sin of scandal.
So when it comes to “scandals,” we need to be worried about a lot more than the failures of certain politicians and corporate executives and Hollywood stars. What are some examples of true scandals that do terrible damage to children, and have the potential to corrupt children? What are some sins of scandal that would upset Jesus to the point he would want you drowned?
A big source of scandal is the media, which likes to report bad things other people do, but is also guilty of its own terrible sin. When was the last time you heard the news media speaking positively about the good things our leaders are doing? It’s always negative. People have a very low opinion about our own national leaders, and people are very disrespectful and critical. Why? Because the news media only fosters negative scrutiny. It teaches us to lose respect, it even teaches us to have contempt, and this harms us as a nation. It is a sin.
But worse than the news media is the entertainment media. It leads us into thinking that it’s okay to use vulgarity and curse words; it glorifies violence and promotes pornography, fornication, adultery, homosexuality and hundreds of other sins. So much of what is promoted and glorified in music, movies, and entertainment, is actually offensive to God and sinful. Seeing these things all the time makes them seem okay. In other words, the “little ones who believe in Jesus” are being led into sin. The entertainment media is one of the biggest sources of scandal in our world today.
