Jesus, WikiLeaks

One day some Jewish scribes and Pharisees caught a woman in the act of adultery and brought her to Jesus Christ, who was teaching his followers on the temple premises at Jerusalem.  “Master, they said, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. Our law-giver Moses has commanded us to stone such sinners. What shall we do with her?”

They wanted to test Jesus, who had been preaching brotherly love. They would be able to find fault with him whether he spoke in favour or against following the law. He did not answer immediately. He sat looking down and writing in the sand with his big toe. Smelling victory over the charismatic preacher they insisted on an answer. Finally, he lifted his face and said: “He who is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.” Again he looked down and continued writing in the sand.

After a while Jesus looked up again. There was no one except the woman who had been accused of adultery. All the accusers had left the place quietly.

“Did anyone condemn you,” asked Jesus. When she said no one had, Jesus added: “Nor do I condemn you. Go, sin no more.”

(Based on the Gospel of John, Chapter 8, verses 1-10)

This was an instance of superb framing: let him who has not sinned cast the first stone.  If Jesus had said that she should not be stoned, the Pharisees would have accused him of violating a law given by Moses. That would be almost blasphemous. If he had said that she should be stoned, they would have accused him of being cruel in spite of preaching love. They were hoping to trap him into one of the two positions, both untenable.

But Jesus framed the issue in such a way that they were dissuaded from pursuing the case. They didn’t know how to respond. They left.

If, however, we critically analyse the answer Jesus gave, we can see that the Pharisees needn’t have retreated with the tails between their legs. There are different kinds of sins and different kinds of punishments to match them. That a person has committed Sin A is no justification for his not being entitled to carry out the legally sanctioned punishment for Sin B. The accusers need not have left unless they had all committed adultery; in that case, it would have been difficult for them to carry out stoning.

But the framing was so powerful and so unexpected that they were unable to think critically and reframe it. Often we are easily persuaded by such framing because we don’t subject it to critical evaluation. Let us take the way the United States government pressured companies such as Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal to choke WikiLeaks, Julian Assange’s website that published thousands of leaked cables from American embassies. Those documents are definitely embarrassing to the American government and some of its allies. But that is not the way the issue is framed by the US. WikiLeaks has to be strangled because what it is doing is an irresponsible, anarchist assault. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called it “an attack against the international community.” According to State Department legal adviser Harold Koh, secret diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks, “place at risk the lives of countless innocent individuals.”

When some companies including Google were pressured by China to restrict information available to Chinese citizens, the very same Hillary Clinton was in the forefront of the critics of the Chinese government and supporters of Internet freedom. Referring to the events in China she said, “information networks are helping people to discover new facts and making governments more accountable.” The need for freedom of information was the basis for such criticism.

We need to ask whether such framing is appropriate before buying the American argument against WikiLeaks or any argument from any source of power.