Wow....thanks for taking me back to my younger days, growing up in a fundamentalist Church, where everything was taken hyper-literally and the "church leaders" seemingly had no capacity for abstract thought and creativity.
It's like the time when I was rehearsing a short guitar part for the Christmas play, and during a break I.....gasp....played a G chord a bit loud and they all freaked out, shouting "This is the house of the Lord! This is the house of the Lord!", as I stood there with a baffled look on my face saying "it's just a chord".