To be perfectly honest, I didn’t like reading Cosby’s thoughts and interpretation of the creation account. I suppose I should have known this was coming, but it’s just so unsettling to me to think that maybe the creation account as it is written in the Bible is merely a metaphor for what actually happened. The idea that the ancient people decided that Satan would be depicted as a snake because they personally thought snakes and the devil went together, or that, in an attempt to explain the difficulty of farming and pain in childbearing, they just threw in that whole curse part after Satan causes Adam and Eve to sin doesn’t sit right with me. I just didn’t like that idea. That maybe we literally have no idea what the beginning of time was like and that our version of creation may as well be a Greek myth. It just makes studying this account – or any of the Bible, honestly – seem so pointless. Through our careful analysis, are we really learning anything about God or are we just coming to better understand the authors who wrote it and the context they wrote from?
Somehow I feel like the Bible is like if I sent a nine-year-old to lecture for me with instructions to take scrupulous notes. Maybe they would, but more likely than not they won’t understand what is being said and, even if they take the best notes they can, these writings will be stilted by the fact that they have no idea what’s going on. If I then use these notes to study for an exam, it could pose huge problems. How can I trust that this nine-year-old wrote down the most important things? How do I know that they didn’t try to make sense of what was being said in their head and then write down their immature interpretations instead of actual fact? The scribbles in the margins – was that just them being bored or do these things apply somehow too? What about their awkward wording of things? Was that intentional or is it just because they’re literally nine?
There is so much unknown and so much blind trust and I really don’t like it.
Caroline's Encounters 