The Barefoot Bum captures the essential moves in the game. A correspondent had spent considerable effort in describing a so-called “Message-Incident Principleâ€, which was supposed to guide the process of understanding the true meaning (or, perhaps, meanings) of scripture, and Larry summarized it thus:
- If the text fits your preconceived notions and doesn’t get you laughed at, it’s literally true
- If you can’t swallow the text, arbitrarily choose a metaphor to read into it
- If you have to swallow the text anyway, invoke a miracle to choke it down