I was in the third grade and living in southern Idaho on a 500 acre farm when I was first told by my cousin that Santa Claus is not real. My heart sank and for the next days I began to wonder if anything my parents had told me was true? Then, in the kindness of time and enfolded by God's surrounding grace, I discovered the real story of Saint Nickolaus and in it the magic of humans given over to the love of God.
I've been making some new friends on a pastors site filled with those who want to courageously hold onto the magic of a God narrative, larger than life; indeed the human face of revelation, where the real, powerful, moving and very human story is traded in to 'keep the Santa Story' version alive. One pastor, speaking from the heart of modernity and enlightenment reasoning blamed the rise of “Biblical Criticism” and the literary study of who, when, why of the Biblical texts as reducing the authority of “thus saith the Lord”.
Yesterday's debate was around Genesis 1 - 2:4. Is it a scientific account or ancient poetry expressed in liturgy? Was it part of the Moses narrative or do we, more likely, get something closer to the origin story of Israel in the 2nd narrative account where the Creator bends down into the dust of the earth with Adam to fix something terribly human Adam is lonely?
Those who held the 1st account as science were convinced that to re-frame any part of Genesis pre-historic (before Abraham) narrative as anything other than actual history is opening a can of worms, the fruit of false teachers. The sad thing is that it is those who want to frame it in terms of science is the real re-framing of it. But i digress.
My response:
The vast majority of Spirit filled pastors and theologians of every Christian tribe—including the Church of the Nazarene (CoTN)—have long moved away from the very wrong perception of Genesis 1-2:4 as a scientific account of Creation. (Now admittedly, it is the 1st thing that comes to mind in a modern world view (17th-21st century) that thinks in terms of cause and effect and so looks to Divine Words of origin to lay it out. Never mind the impossibility of creating the earth, stratosphere, seas, plants on days 1-3, before the creation of the stars and galaxies, including our own sun on the 4th day.
One of the pesky little things that science has given the Church in the last hundred years is higher/lower criticism; the ability to see and trace what God clearly did in allowing very real human writers, worshippers, priests and shepherds to take the 'Story of God with us' (with our ancestors) and tell it orally over hundreds of years, write it down (1st Hebrew, Semitic alphabet around Joseph's time and discovered in caves of the Sinai)1 as poetic/liturgy to finally be gathered in its current form during or just after the exile. In other words the knowledge of the Divine Presence has been handed down over centuries and written as literature by humans, inspired of God.
So what do we have in our hands in Genesis 1-2? The revelation, radical in its time, of a Creator whom from within the ancient primordial fear of water and darkness (the place of demons and the lust filled, jealous warrior gods creating chaos) brings life. This God's very Spirit breathes over and shapes chaos into order with ever increasing goodness until this God forms humans (male and female), declaring us very good.
Now I suppose God could have dictated the science of Creation to humankind (in Hebrew—Adam), but it would be about as interesting (not to mention understandable) as if I were given a textbook on Einsteinium physics.
Instead God incarnated His Story within the questions, fears, chaos that all ancient peoples would get, including we 21st century humans who wrestle with many of the same fears. Look at our movies.
When the final gathering of the O.T. Books into one Bible was completed by the priestly class they started with a bookend liturgical poem (probably emerging from within David or Solomon's Temple worship) as an introduction. Then they take the far more ancient oral Story of Creation (Genesis 2:5-25) as narrative; where this incredible God walks with Adam (humankind) in fellowship and says 'something is not good'—Adam was lonely. God reaches down and gets dirty 2 (won't be the last time in this incredible narrative) in order to make Eve from within Adam to allow both to be more fully human. Chaos replaced by Shalom.
But then... Chapter 3.
So, all the questions that ask if I believe Adam was a real person or if creation happened in six 24 hours days are boring and irrelevant compared to the ones asked by an ancient tribe called Israel, whom God formed and raised up; inspired in the original events, the Story that emerged, as it was gathered into its final form that we hold and again in the reading, each Sunday, as the People of God gather.
The Bible is compelling. Fundamentalism isn't.
Terry :)
1 Note: "WalkinGThe Bible" by Bruice Feiler, pg #211-213 2 Only a God breathed and very human written memory of the God who gets down into the dirt with us could have captured the Christmas Story in all it’s real and tragic human cost. See today’s video: https://youtu.be/ZjaTmIquT9U
3 For an interesting and obvious attempt to make scientific sense of a "young earth" model of a universe that is measurabley billions of years in the making, watch this podcast of a "young earth" physicist attempt to reconcile our current understanding of the universe with his Biblical view of human-kind being only seven thousand years in the making.
Titled: If the Earth is only Six Thousand Years Old"
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