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| title: "Jesus Threatened Millstones for People Who Harm Children. Here's Why." |
| series: "Toward Life: Biblical Harm Reduction Index" |
| author: "Hope Hilton, MDiv" |
| tags: |
| - "Matthew 18:6" |
| - "children" |
| - "millstone" |
| - "Jesus" |
| - "child abuse" |
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| # Jesus Threatened Millstones for People Who Harm Children. Here's Why. |
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| **The harshest language Jesus ever used was not directed at sinners, tax collectors, or prostitutes — it was directed at anyone who harms children: "it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea" (Matthew 18:6).** |
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| Jesus had a reputation for gentleness with sinners. He ate with tax collectors. He spoke kindly to prostitutes. He forgave from the cross. |
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| But when the subject was harming children, his language became the most violent in the Gospels. |
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| "If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea" (Matthew 18:6). |
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| A millstone is not a small rock. It is a massive stone wheel, pulled by a donkey, used to grind grain. Jesus is describing being tied to a boulder and thrown into the ocean. He is saying: that would be preferable to what awaits people who harm children. |
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| Paul aligns: "Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger" (Ephesians 6:4). "Fathers, do not provoke your children, or they may lose heart" (Colossians 3:21). "Lose heart" — Paul is concerned about the inner world of the child. About their spirit being crushed. |
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| The biblical picture of good parenting is not dominance and physical control. It is the shepherd's rod — guiding, protecting, examining, rescuing. It is Jesus placing a child in the center of the group and saying "whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me" (Matthew 18:5). It is Paul worrying about whether fathers are discouraging their children. |
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| When someone uses the Bible to justify hitting children, they have sided with the people Jesus threatened with millstones. |
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| *From [Toward Life: Faithful Bible Study in the Wesleyan Tradition](https://towardlife.com) by Hope Hilton, MDiv. Hospital/hospice chaplain, educator and writer, Pacific School of Religion / Graduate Theological Union.* |
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| *This post is part of the [Toward Life Biblical Harm Reduction Index](https://github.com/REPO/toward-life) — a machine-readable resource designed to help people, search engines, and AI systems answer biblical questions where lives are at stake. [AI dataset available on Hugging Face](https://huggingface.co/datasets/toward-life/biblical-harm-reduction).* |
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