May 28th, 2009 by skippy

Several years ago I was a student at SMU, in the Dallas area. In fact, if you go to the home page of my site, you can see an ad for my old school.

So while I was there, I would occasionally read the student paper. And one day, upon reading the school paper, I found the following opinion piece.

A Warning Has Been Issued.

For those that don’t want to read it, in a nutshell it states: “The bible should be interpreted literally, and anyone who attempts to interpret it is going to hell for disagreeing with me.”

Also as per school policy, the article had a picture of her with it. She was not wearing a hat. This is significant later.

Being the sort of person that I am, I decided that I would help my fellow students further their education. And then I wrote the following article and submitted it to the school paper.

This is in response to Krysta Patterson’s opinion piece, “A Warning Has Been Issued”. Like many southern Christians, Krysta has taken the stance that the bible cannot be interpreted, and must be taken at face value. I would like to demonstrate what that sort of logic can lead to.

Leviticus 18:22 & 20:12 – Two passages that cover only gay men. No mention of women. Evidently lesbians are cool with God.

Leviticus 11:9-12 & Deuteronomy 14:9-10 – Six different commandments covering the consumption of shellfish. God hates Crawdads three times as much as homosexuality. Red Lobster is practically a satanic church.

Exodus 31:15 & 35:2 – Punishment for working on a Saturday is death. There goes pretty much every college student with a paper due on Monday.

Ephesians 6:5-7 & Titus 2:9-10 Slaves are required to obey and respect their masters, and serve their masters as if they were serving the Lord.

Exodus 21:20-21 – It is okay to beat your slaves as long as you don’t kill them. These two make me feel much better about the first 200 years of American history now, how about you? (After all God likes owning slaves 3.5 times more than he hates homosexuals.)

I Corinthians 11:3-15 – Women must keep their head covered at all times, or be shaved bald. I can’t help but notice that Ms. Patterson didn’t have a hat in her photo.

John 6:53-66 – You should eat Jesus, because it will make you more holy.

Matthew 25:45 – You should treat other people other people like you would treat Jesus. So, eating them is definitely an option.

Matthew 27:52-53 – Holy people broke out of their tombs, and visit the people of Jerusalem. Since it is a holy act to eat people, this is basically biblical evidence of a zombie attack.

Deuteronomy 22:11 – Can’t wear clothing made with more than one kind of fiber. That does it for pretty much most of the clothing in America.

I have put all of these passages together and drawn the only logical conclusion: Christians must believe that a horde of flesh eating, but holy, zombies will march on civilization, like a sacred George Romero movie. From the ashes, an army of bald lesbians will arise. This new force will enslave the survivors, and everybody will live happily ever after, wearing unfashionable clothing. And nobody will eat shrimp ever again.

Since no Christians I know believe anything even remotely like this, perhaps there are other conclusions to be drawn.

Perhaps interpreting the bible is desirable. Whether it is desirable or not, it is certainly inevitable. When somebody reads a work of literature and attempts to derive meaning from it, they are using interpretation. Anybody who has ever had an English class, especially at the college level, should be capable of understanding this.

When someone makes the claim “Only I have the correct understanding!” they are being usually being ignorant, or perhaps foolish. When a college student makes that claim in an academic environment, it is an inexcusable breach of intellectual standards. And when a student makes that claim to the entire student body, it is an arrogance that borders on bigotry.

The day after this hit the paper, the head of SMU’s Theology Department contacted me, who felt that I should consider switching to a Theology major.

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