It is very easy to recognise failings in others. The recent release of the Epstein files has brought this into sharp focus. Jeffrey Epstein appears to have been a serial user of women and girls, some as young as fourteen. Such actions are rightly reviled. It is easy to point such behaviour out and say how evil it is, in part because most of us, and most people, do not participate in that particular kind of evil.

Some Christian Facebook friends have posted and reposted with energetic enthusiasm about the need to, and their right to, call out evil. This has included accusations about business people, politicians, and film and music stars.

But the evil we are primarily directed to call out is the evil that resides in our own hearts. There are never any circumstances where it is right to pass on false witness or gossip, or stories which float across our timeline which we cannot verify, or to call people names, including politicians who have views that differ from ours.

In relation to this, and to Epstein’s offenses in particular, I have seen repeated use of Matthew 18:6: “If anyone causes one of these little ones to stumble, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” This is usually accompanied by some reference to how vile child sexual offenders are, and how they deserve everything they get. Of course offences against children are indeed vile and deserve matching punishment.

Whatever you did not do for the last of these, you did not do for me

But this is not what Matthew 18:6 is about. The words “little ones” here do not refer to children, though children can be included in that group. The underlying Aramaic word is “zeʿorē.” Although it is not etymologically related to our word zero, the similarity can remind us that Jesus is talking about those we do not see, people who are zeroed out. This can include unborn children, male victims of domestic violence, refugees, prisoners, people who are homeless or suffer from addiction or mental illness.

Most of us, by the grace of God, are not tempted to abuse children. But we all have blind spots, where our greed or political views, or sheer lack of interest, make certain groups of people invisible.

Rather than worrying and reposting about what other people have been doing or might have been doing, let’s take Jesus’ words to heart and start thinking more carefully about what we ourselves have NOT been doing; going out of our way to care for the little ones, the people society zeroes out.