One of the hardest truths to accept about human nature is how quickly people divide into sides when pain, conflict, or controversy enters the picture.

 

It happens everywhere:
families,
friendships,
churches,
workplaces,
communities,
politics,
relationships.

 

People naturally gather others around their version of events, their emotions, their hurt, and their perspective. Once sides begin forming, compassion often starts disappearing. Listening becomes harder. Assumptions become easier. Eventually, people stop seeing human beings and start seeing positions to defend.

 

That realization became the foundation of Throw Your Stones.

 

Throughout my life, I have watched people judge one another harshly while quietly carrying wounds, failures, sins, and struggles of their own. I saw it working in hospitals. I saw it in business. I saw it in relationships. But strangely, it became most visible to me after I started spending more time in church communities.

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That does not mean churches are uniquely bad. Quite the opposite, many people in the church showed incredible kindness, love, support, and compassion during difficult seasons of my life. Some stood beside me when I was overwhelmed emotionally and spiritually. Some reminded me what grace truly looks like.

 

At the same time, however, I also began noticing how quickly people sometimes distance themselves from others once situations become messy, public, uncomfortable, or morally complicated.

 

During the legal struggles involving my chiropractic office, many allegations and assumptions began circulating around me. Some people stopped talking to me entirely. Some quietly disappeared. Others chose sides before ever hearing the full story. The same thing happened again during my divorce. Friends began separating themselves into teams as if human pain could somehow be simplified into winners and losers.

 

What hurt most was not disagreement itself. It was realizing how quickly people sometimes abandon connection once someone no longer fits comfortably into their image of who that person is supposed to be.

 

The strange part is that I never truly viewed my ex-wife as my enemy. I still don’t. I see two people who reached a point where they could no longer survive well together. Pain existed on both sides. Hurt existed on both sides. Yet many people around us instinctively turned the situation into something adversarial, as though they needed to determine who was righteous and who was wrong.

 

That instinct exists everywhere in society today.

 

People often feel pressure to publicly align themselves with one side or another. Conversations become less about understanding and more about loyalty, image, or group identity. Once someone is labeled, misunderstood, accused, divorced, struggling, addicted, different, or controversial, many people become uncomfortable extending grace because grace suddenly feels risky.

 

That tension becomes even more difficult inside faith communities because Christians speak often about mercy, forgiveness, and compassion while still wrestling with the same human tendencies everyone else carries: judgment, fear, pride, tribalism, and self-righteousness.

 

One of the things I have struggled with personally is watching how certain sins become socially unacceptable while others are quietly ignored or normalized. Sometimes people speak about the failures of others with incredible harshness while overlooking pride, gossip, cruelty, greed, hypocrisy, bitterness, or their own hidden brokenness.

 

Jesus confronted that exact behavior constantly.

 

The woman in John chapter 8 was surrounded by people ready to condemn her publicly while conveniently ignoring their own sin. Christ did not deny the existence of sin, but He exposed something deeper: human beings often feel more comfortable throwing stones than extending grace.

 

That reality is uncomfortable because all of us do it in different ways.

 

Sometimes we throw stones with words.
Sometimes with silence.
Sometimes with gossip.
Sometimes by withdrawing from people when their struggles become inconvenient or uncomfortable.

Sometimes we throw stones simply by deciding someone’s worst moment now defines their entire identity.

 

What makes this even more complicated today is how social media and the internet have changed the way people throw stones.

 

In earlier generations, judgment often stayed inside small groups or private conversations. Today, accusations, opinions, outrage, gossip, and public humiliation can spread to thousands of people instantly. Social media gives people the ability to participate in someone else’s pain from a distance without ever truly knowing the full story.

 

The internet has made it easier than ever to form opinions quickly, react emotionally, and publicly condemn people before understanding them fully. Many times, people become headlines, screenshots, rumors, or fragments of their worst moments instead of human beings carrying complicated lives and struggles.

 

What makes this dangerous is how easily public judgment begins feeling justified when large groups of people join together. The louder the crowd becomes, the easier it is to forget there is still a real person standing underneath the weight of all those stones.

 

Technology itself is not the problem. Human nature is. The internet simply magnifies what has always existed inside people: the desire to judge quickly, choose sides, feel morally superior, and distance ourselves from the failures of others.

 

That is why grace, humility, and discernment matter now more than ever.

 

What challenged me most while writing this song was realizing how easy it is to desire mercy for ourselves while struggling to offer the same mercy to others. Every one of us wants understanding for our own failures, circumstances, pain, intentions, and weaknesses. Yet when looking at someone else, we often see only behavior instead of the wounds, fear, confusion, trauma, or brokenness behind it.

 

The older I get, the more I realize how dangerous certainty can become when it lacks compassion.

 

Most people are fighting battles we know very little about. Some are carrying shame they have never spoken aloud. Some are surviving heartbreak privately. Some are struggling with addiction, loneliness, fear, betrayal, trauma, or questions they are terrified to admit out loud. 

 

Many people quietly leave churches, friendships, and communities not because they stopped believing in God, but because they no longer felt safe being honest about their humanity. Some avoid churches altogether for the same reason.

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That realization breaks my heart because the church should be one of the safest places for broken people, considering every single one of us stands in need of grace ourselves.

This song is not about pretending truth no longer matters. It is not about excusing harmful behavior or pretending sin does not exist. It is about remembering that none of us stand above the need for mercy.