A favorite fundy illustration is imagining that God’s laws are like a line drawn in the sand and that breaking a law is crossing that line. Not content to leave well enough alone, the fundamentalist then goes on to add this inevitable statement: “A lot of you like to stand with your toes right on the line when you should be as far away from the line as possible. Let me tell you where I think you should draw the line…”

But it does not end there. Not only must one re-draw the line, one must then build an impenetrable wall on the new line and shoot anyone who attempts to cross it. One must fortify this wall with obscure passages and long-winded preaching rants full of illustrations of those who crossed the line to their own doom. This is known as having “standards.”

In time, one may forget entirely that this line isn’t the one God drew at all. In fact, some may even decide to draw another even further afield, rejecting those who hold a different line as being too worldly.

Fundies aren’t the first ones to indulge in this kind of thing, however. Jesus even had a few things to say about some old-school line re-drawers. For details, check out Matthew 23.