Creation In Genesis: The Facts
Is the creation account in Genesis factual? If it isn’t, can it be considered true? Whose rules are we playing by?
The Story
Back To The Beginning…
We got problems with our feet I started having back problems fairly young, making regular trips to the chiropractor when I was still in primary school. In my teens I started having serious issues with my knees. And by my early 20’s I was getting pain in my hips so bad that that sometimes I was nearly crippled. Throw in some regular neck pain and you’ve got an otherwise fit and healthy young man getting pretty anxious about his body falling apart way too early. Turns out, it was all because of my feet. Both of my feet are a bit flat, but the right one is worse, resulting in me standing lopsided and my joints and soft tissue holding more of my bodyweight instead of my skeleton. Issues with my feet created issues with my knees, which created issues with my hips, which created issues with my spine… which created issues with my shoulders, which created issues with my neck. Now I wear orthotics, and life is much better! Modern Christianity has a bit of a problem with it’s feet. There are several issues with the way we tell the Story at the start, and those issues compound to […]
Gaping Holes In The Common Story
The Common Story filters parts of the biblical Story out. It causes us to gloss over or write off huge parts of the Story because they don’t fit neatly with our traditions and doctrines.
The Common Story
As I mentioned in my first post, I believe that the Story we’re most often telling as Christians is woefully inadequate. There are many pieces missing, and ideas that have been over simplified. The result is an overarching story that ends up being distorted and inaccurate. But before we get to reassessing it, let’s have a look at what Story we are telling. The most common way of telling the Christian Story, or the Story of The Bible, is that it is made up of four main parts – Creation, Fall, Redemption, Restoration. A quick search on Google or YouTube will produce plenty of results that all say something fairly similar. You may not have heard it put in those four terms, but the standard modern Evangelical way of telling the Story is something like as follows: In the beginning God created a perfect world. The height of His creation was humans, whom He made to be in perfect relationship with Him and to enjoy Him forever. Unfortunately, the first humans Adam and Eve disobeyed God, and so sin and death entered the world and relationship with God was broken. We call this The Fall. Since then, all humans are […]
The Story And The Shape
What Does It Mean To Be Christian? I’ve been a Christian my whole life.But what does that even mean, to be a ‘Christian’? Many people have many different views on what exactly being ‘Christian’ is. Many don’t even like using that term. How does the average believer navigate through the vast sea of opinions, traditions and subcultures to walk out the Christian life with confidence? Welcome to The Story And The Shape. “Hold on a second!” I hear you say, “You think everyone else is confused about Christianity except you??” Well no, of course not. I’ll be expressing some of my thoughts here, for sure. But this is about much more than my voice. There are many people way smarter than me who have a tonne of super important stuff to say. The problem is, a lot of it is just inaccessible to the average believer. It’s not necessarily physically inaccessible, but seriously, who has the time to read countless books about theology and ecclesiology that you can barely understand? Especially if don’t know what ecclesiology even means! Most of us aren’t academics and scholars and that’s ok. We’re not meant to be. But that’s where I’m coming in here. I’m a […]