Cans of Worms

So here is a post I meant to write a while later, but as always in college my life is constantly on hold, anyway here it goes. At the same FCA meeting where I watched the film on Stephen Hawkins, we got into a discussion as to whether we should take the Bible literally or metaphorically. Now, to even ask this question opens a can of worms, and I don’t like worms so for the short duration of a blog post I will try to clean the mess up. In short I don’t know, if I say yes take it literally then I face criticism by the scientific community, and the opposite I am deemed a heretic. Nether are good for my blog, and in my opinion not 100% correct either. I believe the Bible is the divine word of God that man wrote it has not bearing on its accuracy, it is God’s word and that is enough. That said, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t metaphorical significance as well. For example, the story of creation fits in with ancient Hebrew poetry, 1000 is the perfect number of years in life, so it makes sense man’s lives would gradually decrease after Adam (lived to 900), and also many stories are rich in symbolism prevalent in Hebrew culture (just look at the use of numbers). Does this mean that they never happened? Well, I can’t say for certain, I’m not just about to say that they didn’t, but I’m also not going to say that they don’t have any metaphorical significance in addition to any historical importance they have. I wrote a post about the creation story, and here I will reiterate my main point, it doesn’t necessarily matter what exactly happened, but what it means in terms of God’s relationship to man. God loves us, that is the main message of the Bible, if we take away that one truth is that not enough?