Steven Mitchell, as you may know, has written a lot of serious books about Buddhism and also about Christianity and other faiths, at Harvard. He did a very interesting little book on the teachings of Jesus, in which he attempted to present them, as best scholars can determine, in chronological order rather than the way they are organized in the current version of the Bible. And he says the very last encounter Jesus had with his religious adversaries was when they brought him the woman who was caught in the act of adultery, and it’s in the eighth chapter of the book of John, and they were attempting to catch him in some religious error, some doctrinal error, and he was into practice—he had already been attacked for performing miracles on the Sabbath, for saving lives on the Sabbath—and his answer was that the Sabbath was a day to keep holy and he didn’t sanctify it by refusing to do his father’s work to help the needy. So in this case, they bring in this woman who’s weeping and crying and throw her on the ground, and they say, “Master, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. Mosaic law says we should stone her. What say you?” And in the Scripture, it says that he kneels down and draws on the ground—doesn’t say what he was drawing—and he stands up and looks at them and says, “Let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone at her.” And he kneels down again and doesn’t even look up. And it says, “And they, being convicted by their own conscience, went away, beginning with the eldest, to the youngest.” And then he stands up and says, “Woman, where are those who condemned you? There’s no one here to condemn you?” She says, “No, Lord.” And then, in the King James version, he says, “Then neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”

So it’s this thought that… The whole Scripture is full of… The book of James, which is very much debated in Christian circles—particularly among conservative fundamentalists, who have a tough time with it—says faith without works is dead. “Show me your works and I will know your faith,” you know?… For 500 years now, we’ve been struggling—the Protestants of the world at least have—over the relationship of faith to works. But there is no doubt that while there is no explicit reference to, let’s say, homosexuality in the New Testament, no explicit reference to abortion, there are hundreds and hundreds of references to the imperative of acting to help people who are in genuine need, who are less fortunate than you, whom you can help, and you’re supposed to do it without regard to your own economic or social standing. The only test is whether you can make a difference in someone else’s life without disadvantaging or really hurting someone in your circle of primary responsibility—you know, your family. It’s fascinating.