Dear Concerned Reader:

While I question your prurient interest in the passages you mention, I, as a Christian Lady, am not the person to turn to for such answers. As a concerned mother and founder of Bringing Integrity To Christian Homemakers, it would not behoove me to allow any smut into my Christian home. And, frankly, one is hard pressed to find a book more salacious than the one written by the Blessed Lord, the Bible.

It is my considered opinion that certain portions of the Bible are completely inconsistent with Traditional Family Values and are no more suitable in a Christian home than a copy of Hustler. To protect my lovely Christian children from lurid and purely gratuitous tales of unwholesome carnality, I have, in consultation with my Pastor at Landover Baptist, redacted all of the offending portions of the now-Good Book.

This means that the Bowers' Family Bible contains no scripture addressing Adultery (Deuteronomy 28:30), Prostitution (Deuteronomy 22:28,29), Sexual Mutilation (Samuel 18:25,27), Exhibitionism And Public Sexual Intercourse (II Samuel 16:21,22), Forced Sexual Slavery (Deuteronomy 21:11,13), Bestiality (Leviticus 20:16), Rape And Gruesome Sex Killing (Judges 19:22,29), Whoredom (Ezekiel 23:2,20), Sexually Aggressive Tramps (Genesis 39:7,12), Incestuous Rape (II Samuel I 3:1,14), Offering Daughters To Strangers as Sexual Door Prizes (Genesis 19:8), Drunken Incest (Genesis 19:31,36), Multiple Sex Partners (Kings 11:1,3), Infanticide and Abortion (Isaiah 13:16) (Ezekiel 9:6) (Psalms 137:8,9) (Amos 1:13) (I Kings 15:16), Cannibalism (Deuteronomy 28:53), and Masturbation and Coitus Interruptus (Genesis 38:9) -- just to name a few passages off the top of my head (I am too much of a lady to even allude to passage that relate to people eating their own feces!)

After numerous swipes with a big, black marker, the Bowers' Family Bible Old Testament looks like a letter sent by a GI during WWII after the war censors got to it. Nevertheless, I have to say, blacking-out all the smutty scriptures has allowed us to read the entire Old Testament in roughly 3/4 the time it takes the other families on our street to read their disgusting, unChristian version. And this has allowed the Bowers family to read the Old Testament more often than any family I know, which means that we are, in turn, better Christians than any of our neighbors. Further, our children have not been sullied by the filth in the Bible. And, as a result, Mr. Bowers and I have not had to answer awkward questions -- except for the perennial "Why would a God who knows everything and loves everyone do all this crap?" that Prudence impudently whines before Mr. Bowers beats the stuffing out of her.

So Close To Jesus, Delta Allows us to Pool Our SkyMiles,