Ever So Briefly

As you can tell, I am not very consistent with blogging. Although I am an okay "self-starter", sitting down to write something isn't easy for me. But I wanted to add just a bit to the last post.

Although the Bible isn't a history book, it is a historical book. Certainly it contains things that are not history (parables), nor is it always to be taken literally (Jesus as a door, for example). Well, so what?

The "so what" is critical when it comes to Genesis 1-11. Are these chapters a historical account of the beginnings, or are they fable or myth written for a prescientific people?

Francis Schaeffer in his book Genesis in Space and Time addresses the issue, and I believe he is right. The rest of the Bible hangs on the truth of these first 11 chapters--a real first couple, an actual rebellion, a literal flood. Much of the cultural troubles we face as a society and a church stem from a nonliteral reading of Genesis. Gender, marriage roles, reality of evil, freedom of choice, stewardship of the environment, various races with a common ancestor--questions like these remain unanswered or answered with guesswork IF Genesis isn't historically true. If "In the beginning, God created...", then we have a basis for the answers to some vexing questions.