Suppose you're travelling to work and you see a stop sign.
What do you do?  That depends... 

1.   A post modernist deconstructs the sign (knocks it over with his
car), ending forever the tyranny of the north-south traffic over the
east-west traffic. 

2.   Similarly, a Marxist sees a stop sign as an instrument of class
conflict.  He concludes that the bourgeoisie use the north-south road
and obstruct the progress of the workers on the east-west road. 

3.   A serious and educated Catholic believes that he cannot
understand the stop sign apart from its interpretive community
and their tradition.  Observing that the interpretive community
doesn't take it too seriously, he doesn't  feel obligated to take
it too seriously either. 

4.   An average Catholic (or Orthodox or Coptic or Anglican or 
Methodist or Presbyterian or whatever) doesn't bother to read
the sign but he'll stop if the car in front of him does. 

5.   A fundamentalist, taking the text very literally, stops at the
stop sign and waits for it to tell him to go. 

6.   A preacher might look up "STOP" in his lexicons of English and
discover that it can mean: 1) something which prevents motion,
such as a plug for a drain, or a block of wood that prevents a door
from closing; 2) a location where a train or bus lets off passengers.
The main point of his sermon the following Sunday on this text is:
when you see a stop sign, it is a place where traffic is naturally
clogged, so it is a good place to let off passengers from your car. 

7.   An orthodox Jew does one of two things: 

     1)   Take another route to work that doesn't have a stop sign
so that he doesn't run the risk of disobeying the Law. 

     2)   Stop at the stop sign, say "Blessed art thou, O Lord our God,
king of the universe, who hast given us thy commandment to stop,"
wait 3 seconds according to his watch, and then proceed. 

Incidentally, the Talmud has the following comments on this passage:
R[abbi] Meir says: He who does not stop shall not live long.
R. Hillel says: Cursed is he who does not count to three before proceeding.
R. Simon ben Yehudah says: Why three?  Because the Holy One, blessed
be He, gave us the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings.
R. ben Isaac says: Because of  the three patriarchs.
R. Yehuda says: Why bless the Lord at  a stop sign?  Because it says:
"Be still, and know that I am  God."
R. Hezekiel says: When Jephthah returned from defeating  the Ammonites,
the Holy One, blessed be He, knew that a donkey would run out of the
house and overtake his daughter; but Jephthah did not stop at the stop sign,
and the donkey did not have time to come out. For this reason he saw his
daughter first and lost her.  Thus he was judged for his transgression at
the stop sign. 
R. Gamaliel says: R. Hillel, when he was a baby, never spoke a word,
though his parents tried to teach him by speaking and showing him the
words on a scroll.  One day his father was driving through town and did not
stop at the sign.  Young Hillel called out: "Stop, father!"  In this way, he
began reading and speaking at the same time. Thus it is written:
"Out of the mouth of babes." 
R. ben Jacob says: Where did the stop sign come from?  Out of the sky,
for it is  written: "Forever, O Lord, your word is fixed in the heavens." 
R. ben Nathan says: When were stop signs created?  On the fourth day,
for it is written: "let them serve as signs." 
R. Yeshuah says: ... [continues for three more pages] 

8.   A Pharisee does the same thing as an orthodox Jew, except that he
waits 10 seconds instead of 3.  He also replaces his brake lights with
1000 watt searchlights and connects his horn so that it is activated
whenever he touches the brake pedal. 

9.   A scholar from a Jesus seminar concludes that the passage
"STOP" undoubtedly was never uttered by Jesus himself, but
belongs entirely to stage III of the gospel tradition, when the
church was first confronted by traffic in its parking lot. 

10.  A  NT scholar notices that there is no stop sign on Mark street
but there is one on Matthew and Luke streets, and concludes that
the ones on Luke and Matthew streets are both copied from a sign
on a completely hypothetical street called "Q".  There is an
excellent 300 page discussion of speculations on the origin of these 
stop signs and the differences between the stop signs on Matthew
and Luke street in the scholar's commentary on the passage.
There is an unfortunate omission in the commentary, however; the
author apparently forgot to explain what the text means. 

11.  An OT scholar points out that there are a number of stylistic
differences between the first and second half of the passage
"STOP".  For example, "ST" contains no enclosed areas and 5
line endings, whereas "OP" contains two enclosed areas and
only one line termination.  He concludes that the author for the
second part is different from the author for the first part and
probably lived hundreds of years later. Later scholars determine
that the second half is itself actually written by two separate authors
because of similar stylistic differences between the "O" and the "P". 

12.  Another prominent OT scholar notes in his commentary that the
stop sign would fit better into the context three streets back.
(Unfortunately, he neglected to explain why in his commentary.)
Clearly it was moved to its present location by a later redactor. He
thus exegetes the intersection as though the stop sign were not there. 

13.  Because of the difficulties in interpretation, another OT scholar
emends the text, changing "T" to "H".  "SHOP" is much easier to
understand in context than "STOP" because of the multiplicity of
stores in the area. The textual corruption probably occurred because
"SHOP" is so similar to "STOP" on the sign several streets back that
it is a natural mistake for a scribe to make.  Thus the sign should be
interpreted to announce the existence of a shopping area.