Glimmer of Hope

Published January 5, 2005

As was most unusual among religious leaders of his time, and indeed among a good many later ones, Jesus Christ was a peacenik. He said one should love one's enemies -- the most difficult of all precepts to live up to. It was necessary, he said, to turn the other cheek rather than to run away or to fight back.

He even rejected the use of force, purely symbolically, when some of his supporters tried...