rough day yesterday

I had a rough day yesterday. I listened to a preacher on the radio and I wanted to really pay attention to what he said. He talked a lot about how scripture should be taken seriously. He told the listening audience that churches today were heading in the wrong direction because they have moved away from a literal interpretation of the bible. He went on to describe the bible with big words like inerrant, infallible, authoritative and some other ones that I can't pronounce.

So after I heard his message, I vowed to finally take scripture seriously. I was done with the wayward interpretations of the liberals. Scripture had to be taken literally and I was determined to do so. God demands nothing less.

I figured the best place to start was one of the Gospels. Since Matthew came first, I began reading through the whole book. It was awesome! While Jesus was being tempted he said, "Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God." And since I was knee deep in scripture, I skipped breakfast.

The hard part came when I got to the Sermon on the Mount. It said, "Anyone who says,'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell." I know I have called people a fool quite a few times. I began to get really nervous. I always thought that I was saved by grace through faith but I see that I was wrong. Hell is real and if I keep calling people "a fool" then I am headed there. I began to sweat as I read on.

"If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away." Wow, taking scripture seriously was going to be hard. I knew it would take commitment but I didn't realize what I had gotten myself into. I figured a butter knife would be the best tool for the job. I knew I had lusted after girls before, so it was time for my right eye to go. I leaned over the bathroom sink, dug the knife in as deep as it would go and gave a quick thrust downward. Sure enough, my eyeball came out. Blood began to gush into the sink and I had to snip the cord that was attaching my eye to my head. But I just stuffed my socket with cotton balls and got back to reading.

"And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away." Here we go again. I pulled the axe out of the shed and put a stick in my mouth. I knew this was going to hurt. I was proud though. With one swift chop using my left hand, there went my right hand, straight into the trash. I was feeling a bit light-headed now. I was losing a lot of blood. But I knew God wanted me to take scripture seriously. And the preacher on the radio told me this meant taking scripture literally, so I knew I was doing the right thing. A little dizzy and covered in blood, I got back to my bible. I thought to myself, "Maybe this is why in some bibles Jesus words are in red."

I read on. I was encouraged by these words, "But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing." This was going to be easy for me because I no longer had a right hand. So as long as I kept my feet from knowing what my left hand was doing, I would be good to go.

I made it all the way to the part that says, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." I knew this would be the end. I had a healthy savings account waiting for me when I walked into Bank of America. And I knew I must obey God's word. I told the lady at the counter to please put my heart in a safe deposit box for me. I knew I wouldn't have long after my heart was removed from my chest. My hunting buddy came with me. He knocked me out and then opened me up with his deer knife. He sliced all of my connecting tissues, arteries and veins and politely handed my heart to the nice lady at the counter.

I was dead. I was also a bit confused. I wasn't sure how a person could make it past the 21st verse of the 6th chapter of Matthew. Why was there more in the New Testament? If people really took scripture seriously, if they really took it literally, then no one would be alive to preach about it. That is when I realized that the guy on the radio didn't really know what he was saying.

I realized that the preacher didn't mean that we should take all of scripture literally. He just meant that we should take literally the parts that he took literally and take figuratively the parts he took figuratively. In short, all he was really saying is that we should read scripture the way he reads it. I sure wish he would have just said that.