Outdated Tradition

Hotels. Motels. Bed and breakfasts. Resorts. No matter where I go, where I stay, there is always a bible knocking around in a bedside drawer. Isn’t this tradition a bit antiquated?   

Unless I need consultation on how to punish my slaves or tend to my livestock, what’s the point exactly? You don’t need to believe in God to be well versed in the Ten Commandments; although, they’re a bit outdated too. (“You shall not murder” needs to make a serious surge to number one. It currently follows keeping the Sabbath day—“in it you shall do no work: you…nor your male servant, nor female servant, nor cattle,” wtf?—holy, and taking the Lord’s name in vain, as well as three others.) As long as you have the basics down, is it not permissible to take a couple days off from reading the scriptures?  

If I weren’t feeling so lazy I would turn to the internet to find out why it started. But like a bride who doesn’t want to know why she wears a veil or gets carried over the threshold, I, too, do not want to know why a bible must adorn a five-star hotel room. I don’t care. I just want it to not be there.

Libraries are free, but I don’t like to handle books that someone else read while eating Cheetos, following their cheesy fingerprints, page after page, to the dramatic conclusion. I end up spending more time wondering what else they did while reading than if the narrator gets out of her predicament. Considering the bible is the holiest of books, I imagine believers feel the same way about a community bible.

I think the bible is there to ensure patrons feel guilty about doing something “naughty” on the comforter so it doesn’t need to be washed after every guest.

If someone told me it was there because without it the hotel would burn to the ground, then sure, I’m all for it. Leave it in the drawer. But seeing how it’s 2011 and not all of us need a book to show us how to be morally responsible, give the bibles to a more fearful, superstitious community. Vacationing hotel guests hardly qualify.