The old-timers among us will
remember the television personality Art Linkletter. His interviews with
children on his TV show House Party
put surprising twists into, well, just about everything. Here’s an interview he
conducted with a child on the subject of biblical nonviolence:
Art: What are
you learning at school that you can tell us about?
Child: They
teach you not to fight with your friends.
Art: How do they
do that?
Child: They read
from the Bible, where Jesus says, “Thou shalt not kill.”
Art: I’m happy
to hear that they’ve stopped the killing on the playgrounds this way. But tell
me, have you been punished lately?
Child: Yes.
Art: What for?
Child: Hitting a
kid in the face with a cupcake.
Art: Why did you
do that?
Child: It’s not
in the Bible.1
There are two time-honored ways of
looking at the scriptures that go all the way back to the time of Jesus. There
were two schools of thought in those days: one represented by the great Rabbi
Shammai, and another by his arch-rival, Rabbi Hillel. The divisions between
them persist in Jewish thought to this day.
They even persist in Christianity,
if you dig deep enough.
Regarding the Mosaic Law, Shammai
taught, “If it’s not in the Law, it is not permitted.” Hillel, on the other
hand, had a more moderate view. He said,
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