My close-up

Naturally, the philosopher king wants to put me in his wedding, just to increase the hotness factor. He wants me to do a reading. Three guesses which one it is.

You got it on the first guess??? How the heck did you do that?

Maybe it's because EVERYONE picks the 1 Corinthians passage about love being tender, juicy, sweet and so on. Matt says I am not allowed to laugh maniacally during the reading.

For your consideration, I offer these alternative Bible passages about weddings (I still think that the best stories are the ones they don't teach in Sunday school):

Genesis 34: In which Jacob's daughter Dinah makes the mistake of walking outside, where a fellow named Shechem sees her and rapes her. But he talks to her really nicely, so it's all OK. Plus, he wants to marry her. So his dad goes and talks to Jacob, who's not very happy about this because number one, he's a rapist, and number two, he's a Hivite. Jacob's sons say that the wedding would only be OK if everyone in Shechem's city gets circumcised. If everyone gets the surgery, they'll share their land and women with the people in the city. The Israelite women must be pretty hot, because the men in the city agree to this arrangement. Three days later, "while all of them were still in pain" (remember, they didn't know about sterilizing their medical equipment between circumcisions), two of Dinah's brothers kill all of the men in the city. Then their other brothers loot the city and carry off their women, children, money and animals. Oh, and their sister, too. Jacob's not very happy about this either, because now his reputation is shot to hell. But his sons think it was worth it, because Dinah didn't have to marry Shechem. No word about what Dinah thought of this.

Judges 14: In which Samson sees a really hot Philistine girl and demands that his parents "get her" for him. He rips a lion open with his bare hands and then eats the honey that bees make in the carcass. (YUCK.) He then makes up a riddle about this story and feels really proud of himself when the people at his wedding can't guess the answer. They turn violent and threaten to kill his bride and her family. His bride gets him to tell her the answer -- Samson's not great at keeping secrets from women -- and she tells the others. Samson goes nuts and kills a bunch of people. His wife is given to his best man. No word about what the woman thought of this...or of being burned to death in the next chapter after Samson has his revenge for losing her.

Matthew 22: In which the king throws such a lame wedding party for his son that nobody wants to come. He sends his servants to remind the guests that they're supposed to be at the wedding, but they walk away. A few grab the servants, mistreat them and kill them. (How bad could this party have been?) The king sends his army to burn the entire city down -- take THAT!!! He then sends the rest of his servants to gather up people from the street to come to the wedding. They all come, because they've heard about what happened to the people in the other city. But one guy shows up in his regular clothes, because he wasn't wearing wedding clothes when the king's servant found him in the street and forced him to go to the party. The king tells his servants to tie the guy up and throw him outside.

Now, I think these stories are much more exciting than "the greatest of these is love". Don't you?