Overheard at Table 2

Perry: I've been thinking.

Tennyson: That's always a dangerous thing.

Perry: about what we were discussing at study last night, about the television shows.

Kari: How they're all cra - spberries?

Perry: Yeah, about what passes for family shows these days, everything goes, every sort of perversion can be put into a marriage, how everyone is just allowed to do whatever they want, so long as it feels good and doesn't hurt anybody.

Tennyson: It's called hedonism.

Kari: Sometimes called Epicurianism.

Tennyson: For the philosopher who developed it.

Kari: Still valid.

Perry: Whatever! What I was thinking when I woke up was this: what if the reason why it's so pervasive is that this is actually a modern construct - not the ancient version of Hedonism - or Epicurianism - but actually a recent misinterpretation of the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Tennyson: What really amazes me is not that you said that but that I'm not now at this moment staring at the black smoking stain of what was you right after the lightning bolt struck.

Perry: Seriously! Jesus taught us that we should be loving to everybody, equally. What if the anything goes mentality, including what we call perversions, is peoples current UNDERSTANDING of the mandate of God to love everybody?

Kari: God didn't specifically state that it's OK to be gay, lesbian, bi, experimental, lewd, lascivious, and giving to any pleasure.

Perry: I'm not talking about what God did or didn't say. I'm talking about how people have internalized the message. Their ingrained interpretation of His message of love and living in peace and harmony. That's why it's so prevalent in this society, because (to lift a quote from Auntie Em) we've "told the truth but told it slant."

Kari: I think you're reaching at straws, and personally it really hacks me off that you think that God's message should somehow get misinterpreted, because God's word is perfect.

Tennyson: But we are not. A text message can be sent perfectly, but if the receiving phone is offline, the message won't get through. Same with a radio signal, it can be transmitted fine, but if there is interference, you'll hear it garbled.

Kari: So God's the radio tower and were those little battery charged one-speaker radios that they had way back when? And we're like the little kids under the blankets trying to tune in rock and roll stations from across the Channel?

Tennyson: And the radio interference . . . that's called the World.