Moscati - I adore you.
Look, guys - if the Genesis story of Creation were 100% accurate, the world would be roughly 6000 years old. There are histories - actual
histories - that go back further than that.
Take India. For the longest time, India’s accounts of her own history were discounted by Western historians, in part because they did not mesh with the Bible’s Creation story. Then they started finding ruins. In particular, they found one town, complete with harbor,
in the middle of the desert. It was built on the banks of a river - a river that hadn’t gone through that part of the world in more than 6000 years!
That’s not even touching things like carbon dating.
Point is, there is evidence - pretty darn solid evidence - that the world, and humanity, is a lot older than Genesis gives it credit for. Putting your fingers in your ears and going “La la la, I don’t believe you” doesn’t change that.
Now, there’s two options. On the one hand, you can accept that your God occasionally speaks in metaphors, myths, and allegories. It’s not actually that big of a leap - His Son taught via parables, after all. (Where do you think He learned it? Maybe from His old man?) And, when dealing with primitive tribes like the forefathers of the forefathers of the Jews, who would have been the ones to originally receive these stories, what’s going to go over better? A detailed account of the chemical processes involved in the Big Bang, followed by an exhausting explanation of genetics and evolution? Or a much-simplified story that still covers the basics (first the universe, then the earth, then plants, then animals, then humans) and also includes a couple moral and theological lessons? Be honest here. You’re talking to shepherds who wouldn’t know a chromosome if it bit them. It’s absolutely not far-fetched to think that God, in His mercy, would tell them a story they could actually understand, trusting that their g’g’g’g’g’great-grandkids would eventually figure out how to fill in the missing details themselves.
And
then, take into account the fact that much of the Old Testament was passed down via oral tradition before it ever got written down - because a lot of it pre-dates literacy! Study any storytelling culture, and you’ll learn - storytellers streamline. They simplify. And they occasionally fudge details in the interest of making a better story. Given all of that, it would be reasonable to conclude that Genesis is, quite simply, a good story - one that contains a good deal of
truth, but not a whole lot of* fact*.
Alternately, you can believe that Genesis is word-for-word precisely, literally true. Which would mean not only believing that storytellers for centuries passed the account down without changing a single fact (itself a not-so-minor miracle), but also that your God intentionally planted false evidence (like carbon dating and the ruins in India)
just to mess with our minds. Now… I don’t know about you… but that kind of seems like a mean thing to do. I’m not convinced I’d want to worship a God who would do something like that. He would seem a bit of a prat.
So the question is… do you worship a God who engages in adolescent pranks… or one who understands humanity’s limitations, gives us all the knowledge we can currently process, and gradually reveals more to us as we grow?
It’s academic to me; I’m not a Christian. But for those of you who are, I think how you decide reveals a lot about who you are and how you view your relationship with God - and who you believe God to be, come to that.
(p.s. - “myth” is not a dirty word, but for the record, neither is “fairy tale.” As one who’s made a study of such things, the noble fairy tale certainly does not deserve to be stuck in the Disney ghetto. Just sayin’.)
