Thou shalt not kill
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time“Thou shalt not kill” is the biblical commandment Christopher sets against the record of Christian participation in wars. Its force in this passage lies in the gap between an unqualified prohibition and the repeated historical breaches he names: the Crusades, two world wars, and the Gulf War.
The Rule and Its Contradiction
Christopher invokes the commandment while explaining why rules are difficult to trust when people do not follow them consistently. He gives the biblical prohibition as a clear instruction, then points to Christians killing people in conflicts across different periods. The contrast makes the rule’s wording seem absolute while its observance appears anything but.
Rules in Practice
The passage places the commandment alongside Christopher’s examples of everyday rule-breaking by his father: driving above the speed limit, sometimes driving after drinking, and often not wearing a seat belt. These examples differ greatly in scale, but serve the same immediate purpose in his reasoning: a rule’s existence does not guarantee that people obey it. His concern is not only what rules say, but whether their boundaries and application can be understood and relied upon.
Significance
The commandment becomes part of Christopher’s broader account of the confusion caused by rules that do not match people’s conduct. He does not resolve the contradiction between the prohibition and Christian participation in war; he identifies it as evidence that rules are often broken. The example therefore presents moral authority through Christopher’s concrete, literal reasoning: a rule can state what must not happen, while history shows that it happens nonetheless.
