Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Christianity

  • Must I Give My Life?

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    Does the command of Jesus to love one another mean that I have to give up my life?

    I’ve been involved in debating that issue over the last couple of weeks on the Compuserve Religion Forum.. It seems to me that the issue is not very debatable, that it’s clear that a faith that was founded by someone who gave up everything, including his life, and underwent the greatest possible humiliation in doing so, would regard giving up one’s life as the highest ideal.

    But is it a command? Is it something we’re expected to do? Is it a sin if I don’t?

    First let me make some distinctions. I don’t think Jesus is telling his disciples they need to run into every burning building. Nor is he telling his disciples they need to abandon all wisdom. Sometimes no life can be saved, and the risk is not appropriate. Sometimes you will just die without accomplishing anything. But when the you get to that final case, the one where you are quite certain your life will be lost, but you can save someone else, Jesus is giving you an example.

    I’m not saying that Jesus expected us to be perfect. He knew we weren’t. Paul said that he had not attained (Philippians 3:12-16). The author of Hebrews said we should go forward toward perfection (Hebrews 6:1). That doesn’t mean we’re always going to live up to it. But it does mean that providing excuses for doing less is not an option. We need to hope and pray that we can live in that manner. Probably you, like me, are not 100% certain of what you would do. Unless you’ve faced that situation, I’m not sure you can be. But the example has been given, the ideal portrayed.

    Most particularly, I think, this applies to situations in which one is faced with the necessity of compromising with evil in order to save one’s own life. The standard scenario for discussing this is the holocaust. To put it simply, most of Poland’s Jews died; most of Denmark’s were saved. Why? Because in Denmark people stood up to the Nazis as a nation, together. Each person contributed what little they could. In Poland, there were many, many individuals who made an effort, but for the most part, people chose to save their own lives.

    Their position is easy to understand. Each one might have felt that they would only lose their lives if they took action. But each action in standing up to evil can help generate actions by others. Good can grow and multiply, just like evil.

    Thank God for those who do stand up, who live up to the ideal.

  • The Importance of Small Actions

    Recently Rosa Parks passed away. Many people mourn her passing, and rightly so. She made a major difference in American life.

    But in another sense, the attention paid to her is strange–not “bad” strange, but “good” strange. We tend to notice people who do the big things, the spectacular things, the very public things. We tend to ignore the people who do the small things, except for those few occasions when one small thing leads to so many others. But most of the time, most things that are done in the world are accomplished by many people doing small things.

    I think that’s a major reason why so many people think so much of Rosa Parks. She’s an example to the rest of us of what can be accomplished by doing simple things. She’s a challenge to us, because what she did, practically anyone could have done, but she did. And that’s the difference!

    Too many times we are so concerned with finding something spectacular to do, while we neglect the little things that we need to do from day to day. Perhaps you can’t challenge the commentators on TV when they are saying something you think is either stupid or morally wrong. But you can say something to your neighbors and friends about it.

    I have a pet peeve about customer service. I really like retail stores to provide excellent service, and I intensely dislike impolite people in those positions. The other day I was standing in line at a major retailer, and there was a elderly lady ahead of me who was somewhat slow, a bit weak, and her hands shook. She was not dressed well, and her order was not large. The cashier spoke courteously to the lady. She walked around her counter to scan a heavy item, one that most customers could have put on the counter. She treated the lady like one of that store’s most valued customer.

    As I watched, I said to myself, “You’d complain if she mistreated that lady. Somebody needs to know she’s doing her job and doing it well.” So when I got to the counter, I asked how I could provide feedback to her supervisor. There was the inevitable moment when her look asked me, “What did I do wrong?” I assured her that I simply appreciated the courteous, professional manner with which she had dealt with the previous customer. “I was just doing my job. I was just treating her the way I would want to be treated.” I did find her supervior, who also gave me a look of surprise that I would go out of my way after checking out to find her, and report something good about one of her employees.

    I think that cashier was doing the sort of thing Rosa Parks did. I don’t mean to belittle Rosa Parks’ accomplishment in any way. What I want is for us to be challenged to take that extra step, speak that extra word, challenge that common (but wrong) way of doing things, and make life just a little better for the next person.

    This can take many forms:

    • Political action. At a minimum, vote! Even better, study out the various campaigns and talk to your friends about them. If you’re so inclined, get involved in a campaign.
    • Give feedback. Remember, however, to give positive as well as negative feedback.
    • Speak up! When someone is saying something wrong, say something. When someone is doing something wrong, say something. When they’re doing something right, say something!
    • Never be stopped by the thought that something is just a little thing.

    Rosa Parks just refused to give up her seat on a bus.

    Look what a profound impact that action had.

  • Spiritual Warfare with a Comfy Chair

    Before you start reading this, let me warn you that I sometimes make weird connections between one event or word and another.

    Last night I attended a portion of a 24 hour praise and worship marathon. Since I like my comfort pretty well, I took along a nice, comfortable, folding, cloth chair. As I sat there listening to and participating in the music, I told a few of my friends who stopped by to greet me that I was conducting spiritual warfare from a “comfy chair.” This was good for a number of laughs.

    When I got home I remembered another connection. In one of the Monty Python episodes several characters, representing the Spanish inquisition, keep on appearing in the scenes. This is the episode that uses the phrase, “Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition!”

    In one of those incidents the inquisitors are preparing to torture someone, and they call for the “comfy chair.” The victim has to sit in the comfy chair, presumably being pressured into confessing. It makes for a good laugh. Those who have seen it will know that it views much better than it tells.

    But this weird chain of connections got me back to thinking about spiritual warfare and what it is; more importantly, what it is not.

    Spiritual warfare is one metaphor used in scripture for the struggles of the Christian life. It’s a bit ironic, though many people who teach and claim to practice spiritual warfare miss the irony and tend to take this literally. Even though Paul tells us that our struggle is not against “flesh and blood,” that is people, many people use spiritual warfare against people. Often this is covered up by saying that one is just going after the spirit, not the person. But many times this distinction is not upheld in practice, and a person can be just as much despised for being troubled by the spirit of something as if they are blamed for all their behavior themselves. “A spirit made me do it” doesn’t work any better than “the devil made me do it.” In addition, it is easy to equate spiritual warfare only with battling “spirits” (however one conceives of them), rather than with all the broader struggles of life.

    The first response to this is to read carefully the way in which the metaphor is used in scripture. Clearly, the broad difficulties of one’s own Christian life are intended as the primary topic. Spiritual warfare involves battling against those things that keep one from moving forward spiritually. Applying this metaphor to one’s own spiritual life avoids the difficulties that result from trying to fight other people through spiritual means, such as negative prayers, accusations, and spiritual or emotional pressure.

    The irony, of course, is that our weapons of warfare are supposed to be contradictory to the normal nature of war, and thus there is the irony of the whole metaphor. Let me illustrate from the gospels. Jesus suggested a procedure for dealing with someone who had offended you in Matthew 18:15-17. One was to go to the person alone first, then with two or three witnesses, and then in front of the whole congregation. If this process of successive efforts to resolve the issue didn’t work, you were then permitted to treat that person as a gentile and a tax collector. But how was it that Jesus treated the tax collectors? Well, he went and ate with them. One of the accusations against him was that he associated with the wrong people.

    That’s why I think that the comfy chair is the perfect adjunct to spiritual warfare, just as it was a very humorous torture implement in the Monty Python episode. What does the comfy chair represent?

    • Love for one’s neighbor
    • Hospitality, even for those we don’t like
    • Non-judgmental attitudes
    • Listening to people with respect
    • Treating people with respect
    • Recognizing that just because our neighbors are different doesn’t mean they’re bad

    Ultimately “comfy chair” spiritual warfare is the kind of spiritual warfare where we refuse to get frustrated, where we treat people with respect, and where no matter what the form of attack may be, our response is one of love–not smothering, manipulative love, but rather the kind of love that results in treating other people as they would like to be treated.

  • Worship on a Pale Horse

    In a number of worship services that I’ve attended lately, I have been looking for a word to describe what I experience. Unfortunately, I think I have found that word–pale. (I’ll get to the “horse” thing later!) I don’t intend this as a criticism of any particular church or worship service, nor of any particular style of worship. This “pale” feeling has come over me in a variety of situations and in worship services of just about any style over the last few years.

    I believe that a worship service can be full-blooded no matter what form the service takes. I have been in services that were intensely traditional, high church, contemporary, blended, charismatic, or largely philosophical in style and hardly recongizable as worship at all, and I have found examples of all of these that seemed full blooded–not pale at all. I have personally experienced times of worship that were not in a church building. These include time alone or with a few friends out in nature, times when I was engaged in helping people, or simply moments of meditation. All of these seemed to be full-blooded.

    What do I mean by full-blooded?

    I simply mean a spiritual experience that has integrity and that is directed toward taking the worshipper toward the intended goal. “Pale” worship seems to me to be worship engaged in because we just know we’re supposed to be in church at that particular moment. We attend a worship service because we always do. The church puts on a worship service because that is what churches do. The form of the worship service is determined by what people expect.

    Individual worship experiences, such as time on the beach or in the mountains, or time spent seeking God in your own home are not done just because they are “the thing to do.” But even one’s devotional or meditation time can come to be simply a form or an empty ritual. Please don’t misunderstand me. Ritual can be a good and important thing in a person’s life. Ritual is not bad. The problem is when one goes through the ritual without looking at the meaning.

    Sometimes people use individual experiences as an excuse to leave regular worship and go off on their own. If a person is finding time to be with God, getting social contact, and has some sort of accountability, I have no particular problem with alternatives to the traditional weekly church service. But this can be an excuse to leave a worship service that is not satisfying, and replace it with nothing at all.

    And here is another point. I have been told that calling a worship service “satisfying” or complaining that one has not been “fed” is not valid. Worship, after all, is about God, about presenting worship to God. At one time I agreed with this, at least in part. But even then I had to suggest that one cannot serve God without being refreshed, filled, and yes, satisfied. Jesus himself suggested that worship had to go beyond the expressions pointed Godwards.

    Not everyone who says to me, “Lord! Lord!” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. –Matthew 7:21

    Worship here is not the expression of one’s praise for God, but rather one’s actions, and I believe I am on solid ground in saying that the primary thing that Jesus commanded was to treat one’s fellow human beings appropriately and lovingly. So when I go out and take actions to make the world a better place, to make life better for other people, I am, in fact, carrying out worship. Pointing my worship toward God results in, and is even equivalent to, pointing my actions toward people. If I correctly read Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus even further suggests that someone who never knew the “stuff” and never spoke the words would be acceptable in his kingdom, whereas those who knew the stuff, and spoke the right words, but did not do the deeds will not be acceptable.

    I still think corporate worship, getting a group of people with common mind and heart together in a service of worship, is an important thing. And it’s not just about God. It’s not just about Jesus. Or rather, it is, but not in the way we have thought. Christians often talk about having a relationship and not a religion. If it’s a relationship, communication needs to go both ways. Both sides have needs, both need to hear, both need to speak. And so it’s all about Jesus, but I’m part of his body here on earth, and so it is, in fact about me. It’s not just that I need to get refreshed and fed so I can serve, as important as that is, but the worship is for everyone who is there.

    We need to take seriously being Christ’s body. We need to take seriously being the temple of the Holy Spirit. The worship service is for us, and we need to start to ask that it accomplishes something for us and in us. As believers, as part of the purpose of the worship in the first place we shouldn’t need to force ourselves to attend. We shouldn’t need to force ourselves to get into an attitude of worship. We should be able to lose ourselves in the worship.

    It’s all about Jesus, and that’s why it’s all about me too!

    Is this accomplished by a particular format, or a particular set of elements? I don’t think so. I would suggest that we should have worship services that occur around tables where we eat pizza and chat openly. No, I don’t mean that as a supplement to the regular worship service, so we can eat pizza on Saturday night, but we all need to get to a more traditional form of worship on Sunday morning. What I mean is that worship service might occur at the pizza parlor on Tuesday night, and might not involve singing, Bible reading, or preaching. It might just involve sharing of people’s stories (we use the theological term “testimonies” but that just tends to scare people) about what happened during the week.

    Worship might occur in a very traditional setting. I really like a good high church style service. I feel that I need one every so often. It might occur totally in music. Teaching and learning can occur entirely in the context of music. It might occur in a session of simple Bible reading. We really are afraid of reading the Bible and allowing people to hear it for themselves without the aid of professionals in the church.

    I expect this little essay will annoy more people than just about anything I have written. Messing with worship tends to mess with people’s lives. Many pastors get annoyed at the thought that people may no longer focus on the Sunday morning service. But I don’t think the Sunday morning service is serving many people’s needs. We complain that people are no longer attending church, and we moan and groan about their spiritual and moral commitment. They just don’t value church any more! But what if they are simply leaving the church because they, either as a part of the body of Jesus, or trying to become part of the body, found that the worship was all about somebody else, somebody else who was not in heaven?

    This is where I thought of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Please understand that I don’t think that Revelation 6 is referring to worship. I’m simply using the four horses as an illustration.

    I see the first horse, the white one that goes out to conquer as our approach to worship after a new experience. We try new things, we find new life. Since we’re human, we also make mistakes and sometimes annoy people. One of the great problems with the “spiritual warfare” metaphor in Christianity, is that we mistake making war on the barriers and obstacles in our own spiritual life and experience for making war on others. Conquering results in angry reaction. I’m not blaming this on one group or another. What I’m asking is that we recognize that conflict results from moving onto new ground in any field of endeavor, and even more than average when it is in church activities that are so rooted in tradition.

    The red horse follows which is the conflict. The danger here is that the conflict will replace the desire to worship. At this point we begin to defend “our” worship activities from “those other people.” At this point, the worship is about us, and not about us as part of the body, but about us in our selfish aloneness. It’s “my way or the highway” worship.

    The red horse is followed by the black one. Famine strikes as we will never be satisfied when we make worship about our lonely self. At this point the conflict is what the church is about. Note that this conflict need not be obvious or on the surface. People can be simply avoiding the issue because they are tired of fighting. There is peace when armies are resting between battles, but it is not real peace.

    The pale horse is death, in my use of the metaphor, spiritual death because people are not fed, and cannot see any reason to attend or be part of a spiritual community. The grave follows after.

    It is this worship riding on a pale horse that I sense in some services. There is no effort to make worship relevant or to see that it is fulfilling the needs of all the members. The intention is that worship be “right” more than that it be useful and practical.

    My contention is that Christian worship is now riding out on a pale horse. There are certainly exceptions. There are plenty of opportunities. But in most churches we are afraid to move to completely new modes and methods of worship. The grave is following behind. We guard the monuments to worship in our buildings, our furniture, our forms, and our schedules, keeping them looking good. But good people are leaving because they are not spiritually fulfilled by worship. They see nothing that comes out of worship and pours forth in their daily lives that makes them better, or helps them help others.

    And so they move to others means. Again, don’t get me wrong. Churches do wonderful things. Church goers do wonderful things. But we have lost many people because the worship services no longer seem to mean anything. We need to get these two elements together.

  • Just Your Interpretation

    There’s a quote that often ends discussion of Biblical interpretation. One party to the discussion will announce: “That’s just your interpretation.” Debate is supposed to stop. Everyone is supposed to realize that their view really has no advantage over anyone else’s, and just let the discussion die. One person with whom I correspond occasionally online will express his pleasure that I’m “getting it” whenever I talk about the subjective elements of Bible study, but then he becomes annoyed when I claim that particular interpretations can be excluded, or that one explanation is more probable than another.

    I’m going to deal with this idea very briefly. There are elements here that can be discussed at length, and that can be very complex. But let me suggest that if you’re reading this essay, you probably think that in some way my words have meaning. There is something I intend to communicate, and you can extract at least some of that information from what I write. You may disagree with me completely, but doubtless you think I said something however inane, stupid, or even reprehensible you might think it is.

    In Bible study, when someone suggests that a certain proposition is “just my interpretation” I will often ask them whether the verse is talking about pink elephants. My point? Simply that there is some interpretation that can be excluded. We can be quite certain that our text is not referencing pink elephants. Of course some might suggest that some passages in Revelation may just refer to pink elephants. But that is a completely different story. (For my own comments on understanding Revelation see my study guide, Revelation: A Participatory Study Guide.)

    The difficulty in dealing with the “just your interpretation” charge is that there is considerable truth in it. Often conservative Christians react very strongly to this comment (and often they should do so), but it is easy when reacting strongly to miss the truth. Any interpretation that I propose is my interpretation. Nobody else is to blame for it. Many people have given input, from my earliest teachers in religious education to people I conversed with yesterday, but they are not to blame for what I have accepted and what I have rejected. It is my interpretation. It is a mistake not to acknowledge that. The person who objects to my interpretation also has a right, in my view, to object to that interpretation, but not because it is my interpreation. He should object because there is some problem with it, that he has found some reason to hold a different opinion. That would acknowledge that there is some meaning (or meanings) intended by the author of the passage, and other meanings are unlikely or excluded. (Note that I don’t want to get into a detailed discussion of certain post-modern approaches here in any detail. Suffice it to say that I do believe that authors intend their text to mean something, and that I believe that the communication of that message to those who receive it has a significant value.)

    For many, the problem with understanding texts is that they think of understanding and communication as essentially binary: Either you understand or you don’t; you communicate or you don’t. The one who says “That’s just your interpretation” is focusing on the failures; the one who affirms an absolute and correct interpretation is focusing on the successes.

    But in real life, we don’t deal with this kind of absolute rightness or wrongness. I attempt to communicate regularly with my wife, and we are substantially successful. Sometimes, however, we are less than successful. When we encounter failure in communication, we don’t give up and decide not to bother to communicate any more. Instead, we live with partial success. The result is neither perfect, nor is it a failure.

    Readers of this essay will understand it, some better than others. If someone misunderstands a portion of it, I won’t give up and decide that publishing essays of this nature is useless; I expect that some people will misunderstand. Based on e-mails I get, especially in response to material I post on Bible translation, I suspect that some people’s misunderstanding is even intentional. Sometimes when I read my own material a few weeks later, I wonder how it was that I successfully communicated anything at all! The results are considerably less than perfect, but nonetheless they serve a purpose.

    In Bible study, the problem is made worse by the complexity of some interpretation problems. Despite the impression one gets from public debate, there is much about the Bible that a broad range of scholars can agree on. In general, the historical meaning, the meaning intended by the original author for his original audience, produces the best consensus. This does not by any means suggests that everyone agrees on everything at this level; I’m simply saying that the agreement is much broader than is often thought. When interpretation gets closer to application, what a piece of scripture means in our daily lives, the differences are much greater. Application is impacted by one’s theology which involves one’s tradition or the tradition of one’s church. Some students of scripture do not believe that there is any real applicability beyond that of any ordinary piece of literature, while others believe that scriptural commands can be almost directly applied to one’s daily life.

    The elements that go into this sort of application are much more subjective than those that go into the historical understanding. Nonetheless they are not totally obscure, and they can be examined. In fact, many heated arguments about scripture occur simply because one person doesn’t bother to check the basic assumptions of the other. When I get into a discussion, or heaven forbid, an argument, I frequently ask just how one goes about applying scripture. What do they think the process involves? Sometimes folks claim that they really aren’t interpreting; they’re just doing what the Bible says. But that is the opposite of “just your interpretation;” it suggests that someone has perfect understanding of scripture. Usually you will find in discussion that there is, in fact, a considerable amount of unacknowledged interpretation going on.

    In discussions of scriptural interpreation, there is great value in examining the process. It’s not nitpicking, wasting time, or trying to put the other person down. In fact, it can often bring understanding from otherwise heated debates.

    Remember:

    • It is your interpretation
    • Each writer and speaker means something
    • Communication doesn’t have to be perfect to be adequate
    • Examining your process of interpretation and application can result in improved understanding, even if not in agreement

    For more on my own view of interpretation see: Understanding the Participatory Study Method.

  • Your Church’s Heart

    I heard an outstanding sermon yesterday at Gonzalez United Methodist Church. I really enjoy the opportunity to report positive things from churches that I visit. This one is only about five minutes from my home.

    The key quote that I wrote down in my bulletin was this: The heart of any church is seen in its response to hurting humanity. The pastor used Mark 2:1-12, the story of the paralytic let down through the roof, to illustrate how we need to be diligent in helping others, and not to let the nay-sayers stop us. He was able to point to specific projects that had been started, and the effort that was required, including teamwork.

    If more of our churches would judge themselves in this way, rather than by doctrinal purity, what an amazing impact we could have on our communities, our nation, and the world!

    The hard part comes when we have to respond to some example of hurting humanity that we don’t like. Jesus had a few words to say about that too.

  • Not Taking the Bible Literally

    A group of people are gathered study the Bible. Various opinions are exchanged. “I wouldn’t take that literally,” someone says finally. Often, that is the moment that people move on. Not taking it literally is very often the excuse not to bother to figure out what a Bible passage has to say at all.

    Now before you decide that I’m a Biblical literalist, let me assure you that there are plenty of things in the Bible that should not be taken literally. But determining what in the Bible should be taken literally and what should not is a bit more complex than simply finding those passages that don’t make any sense, or that contradict modern science or historical knowledge, and then deciding that it’s not literal, so it’s OK. But what does “not literal” mean?

    But first, let’s consider what “literal” means. It’s not quite as simple as some think it is. “Literal” is not a synonym for “true” or accurate, though it is often treated that way. In fact, it is very difficult to define “literal” very precisely at all. We can think of a continuum starting with the most literal speech. “I am typing on the computer keyboard” is a literal statement, and also obviously true (though it won’t be by the time you read this!). On the other hand if I say “the butterflies of delirious joy are flitting through my consciousness” nobody is likely to take me literally. There is a state of mind that is described by this statement, but my consciousness is not a space, and there are no butterflies flying there. Between that we have more and less literal ways of expressing things.

    In addition to determining how literal or figurative the language is, we need to determine precisely what kind of literal or figurative language is being used. For example, Genesis 1 describes creation in seven days. It is important to know whether it is intended as a poetic description, liturgical language, or narrative history. It will mean very different things in each of these cases. Sometimes it is important to determine if a figurative passage is a parable, an allegory, a report of a vision, and whether it is poetic or not.

    Even literal passages can have different styles, and different focuses. Consider the difference between Samuel-Kings and the gospels. Both are considered historical narrative by their authors in some sense, but the presentation is somewhat different. Chronology is a key issue in Samuel and Kings, whereas theological theme, and the logical presentation of the mission of Jesus is emphasized in the structure of the gospels. If you look at the events of the life of Jesus in the four gospels you will find many chronological discrepancies, but if you change your perspective and look at it from a thematic point of view, the arrangement will make more sense. Both Samuel-Kings and the gospels are historical narrative, but the types of answers you can expect from each are different.

    The key point out of all that is simply that just because a passage is not literal doesn’t mean that it does not have meaning. Meaning can be expressed in many different ways. The problem for the interpreter is to be very careful to determine just what method of presentation the author is using. You will get the wrong message if you assume the wrong method of presentation.

    So how do you tell just how literal or figurative a passage is? Here are some pointers:

    • The key method is one we use in daily life. If the symbol won’t work or doesn’t make sense literally, it is likely to be figurative in some way.
      People hesitate to use this method with reference to the Bible, but it is usually quite applicable. Since we know through scientific study that the world did not come into existence in six literal days, we can guess that Genesis 1 is not, in fact, literally true. (But see my discussion of a change of cultural context below.)
    • Ask who the audience is, and what questions they might have wanted answered.
      It is very unlikely that the author is going to be answering questions that did not interest his audience. Much lousy Biblical interpretation results from failing to consider this issue.
    • Look first for the meaning of symbols in the cultural context of the readers.
      Since we can generally assume that the writer was trying to communicate with his readers, we can also assume that he would use symbols that they can understand. Only when known symbols have been exhausted should we look for ones that range widely away from the immediate cultural context.

      • ]

    • Expect more symbolic language in poetry.
    • Expect more symbolic language in prophetic oracles.
    • Expect almost exclusively symbolic language in reports of visions and dreams.
    • Don’t be afraid to use common sense and your knowledge of the physical world.
      Many Bible students are afraid that if they compare Biblical statements to their knowledge of the physical world, they will be denying the Bible. But your knowledge of the physical world is also a part of the context of God’s communication with you.
    • Ask others to justify their own conclusions on whether something is literal or figurative.
      Don’t allow the assumption that a passage should be taken literally unless it can be demonstrated that it is figurative. Each passage should be considered starting from a neutral position.

    I want to make one last comment about the changing context, because it applies directly to Genesis 1-11 (prehistory). It is quite possible that this passage was understood literally by those who first wrote, heard, and read it. There was no reason for them to believe that things had happened otherwise. The question for the interpreter is whether the passage is intending to provide us with the literal history. An alternate possibility, even probability, is that the elements of the story of creation were already present in the culture, and that the author of Genesis pulled these elements together into the story. For some discussion of the purpose, see my essay Genesis Creation Stories.

    Bottom line: Don’t be forced into accepting any claim that a passage should be taken literally or figuratively.
    Ask for supporting evidence.