JESUS AND THE LAW ON ONE SIDE

IT would be interesting to know what "biblical historians" George Pugh
(Letters, 7/5)was referring to in his response to Father James
Murray's article on the Wayside Chapel shooting-up gallery.

He argues that Jesus was breaking the law when he threw the money
changers out of the Temple in Jerusalem. But it is George Pugh who
errs. Jesus was throwing them out for breaking the law. Commonly
known as "the cleansing of the temple", tt seems a wild stretch of
holy Imagination to twist it to justify the Wayside Chapel's
waywardness. In fact, the cleansing of the temple today might well
mean sweeping out those who aid and abet the taking of drugs!

As for the "countless occasions when believers feel they have a
God-given right to break a secular law". It would be interesting to
know what these are. "Law-abiding" is what Christians have usually
prided themselves on being, certainly sometimes to their detriment,
even to the death. And civil disobedience is normally a protest
against a law: Not the breaking of it.

CHRISTOPHER DAWSON,
Surry Hills,
NSW