Even though my memory is not as sharp as it used to be, I cannot remember the last time I was so dumbstruck by something I read in the news. The issue was allegations of inappropriate behavior by Senate-candidate Roy Moore some thirty years ago. The conduct described by the women was more than troubling; that Mr. Moore denied it was not surprising. That was disappointing, but not unexpected.

What I found most distressing was the fact that more than a few of Mr. Moore's defenders chose to quote or reference the Bible to endorse the alleged behaviors as being within the bounds of acceptability. I was dumbstruck that anyone would be willing to bend what they consider holy words to support unsupportable activity.

I tried an experiment and googled "prove anything with the Bible." There were more than 35,600,000 results in less than a second! I perused a few of the responses. The focus of the comments ranged from "the Bible is infallible" to "science proves the Bible's truth." Only a few (granted I did not look at all 35 million of them) addressed the issue of adjusting Truth to one's personal truth. We can recognize that by judicious reading and careful selection of partial verses and ideas, one can use the claim "we learn in the Bible..." to justify almost anything. In this case, the basest of behavior.

I see two lessons from this incident. The first is to recognize the  malleability of text, from the Bible to the Constitution, to be read to support a predetermined position. It's easy enough to grab a verse here or a phrase there to show that a core document defends my position on any given topic. Even though the Truth does no such thing. The second lesson is we need to be willing to stand up and say "No! That's not what the words mean. The text does not mean that."