I can’t stop thinking about this movie, it’s haunting me. I don’t want to spoil the ending for you, but I can’t really help it, the title says it all. It’s about a woman named Soraya M who gets stoned. This isn’t a stoner flick, we’re talking stoned in the Biblical sense, the kind where they tie your hands and bury you up to your waist before pelting you with rocks until you die.
Before seeing it, I have to confess, my interest was purely academic, it was an opprtunity to see an Old Testament practice far removed from our time and culture illustrated in film. I wasn’t ready for how this movie was going to hit me.
Stoning was the punishment in the Israelite community for grievous, intolerable sins like sodomy, bestiality, adultery, fornication, murder, blasphemy, serious dishonor of parents such as physical or verbal abuse, and participation in the occult. These things did irrepairable damage to the the community where God’s holiness was to be reflected. It didn’t neccesarily imply that their sins couldn’t or wouldn’t be forgiven, only that the established sacrificial system wouldn’t suffice for atoning for that persons sin, only their own death would satisfy justice. This shows us our need for Christ’s death as our representative substituting himself for us and, though sinless himself, dying for our sins as the ultimate and final sacrifice, satisfying God’s justice and displaying his boundless mercy in one climactic event. Old testament saints who had sinned in any of these ways but finally trusted in the the Lord could expect to be be mercifully received by Yahweh upon their death.
But Soraya is no Israelite. She’s a modern day Muslim living in Iran, without knowledge of Christ, worshipping a false God, facing charges of adultery trumped up by an abusive husband who wants to dispose of her. Her death is one of the most shameful and terrible imaginable, her own sons and even her father turn against her, crying out to Allah to give them strength to kill the “whore”. Every rock that connects bears a tidal wave of scorn and derision. The blood flows down her face and blots her dress, one by one the whole community takes shots at her like some demented piñata game until she is reduced to a gory pulp sprawled along the dirt and with one blinking, quivering, fading light in her eye they curse her and snuff it out with a barrage of gravel.
I did not enjoy watching this, but I could not look away. It jarred my emotions to know that apart from an unusual and miraculous work of God revealing Christ to her, this woman went from experiencing the torments of that suffering to experiencing the torments of hell. It does not help to be told that there are degrees of suffering in hell. Hell is eternal suffering away from the loving presence of God and this woman who was abandoned and betrayed by those whose responsibilty it was to love and protect her will experience more abandonment and isolation in hell than she even began to feel in the moments before her death. I can hardly bear to say this, yet it is what the Bible says, and Jesus the Lord of grace and love spent a great deal of time warning about the reality of hell, so I have to come to terms with it.
Chapter 8 of the gospel according to John tells the story of what happens when Jesus encounters a woman caught in adultery. He confronts her accusers by reminding them that they are not without sins deserving of similar punishment and then he proceeds to pardon the woman and sends her on her way to go and leave her sinful lifestyle. I know that this is what Jesus is like but I also know he is under no obligation. We who are Christians, however ought to feel compelled by this story to extend the grace of our Lord to those who have not yet heard.
You should watch this movie if you are a Christian who wants to develop more of a heart for the lost and a greater urgency and zeal for them to hear the good news of Jesus Christ. If you are not a Christian you should know that there is only one true victim, the Lord Jesus who sinlessly suffered and died at the hands of sinners so that the sting of death could be defeated once and for all for us. Hell is real and we all deserve to go there for our open rebellion against God as he is revealed to us through our conscience and the world around us. Christ went through hell so that you wouldn’t have to. If you are reading this, you have received more undeserved kindness than Soraya M, and God’s kindness is meant to lead you toward repentance. Don’t receive it in vain.
Everyday Christophany 