Literal or Un-literal?

Before I start, here are some books, videos and websites that I use:

BOOKS:

Darwin's Black Box, by Michael Behe
Darwin's Doubt, Stephen Meyer
The Fingerprint of God, Hugh Ross

VIDEOS:

Darwin's Dilemma
Unlocking The Mystery Of Life
The Privileged Planet
Flight the genius of birds
Metamorphosis the beauty & design of butterflies
Privileged Species

WEBSITES:

www.evolutionnews.org/

www.reasons.org/

You can have some fun reading and watch the videos. Now for the main subject of this article. Literal or un-literal? Lots of times, the Bible will say something, and we take it in a different way than what it probably meant. A common example of this is in Genesis. "The Earth was created in six days." That's what we've all learned when we were younger (including me.) The adults don't want to make it confusing...but if it isn't confusing, then the wrong message might come through instead of what they wanted to teach. Let's think about the example given above. We think that the Earth was made in six days. Ok. But does the Bible mean six 24 hour days? This problem presents a lot of problems. When did the dinosaurs come in? What about the Cambrian explosion?

After looking at it from an un-literal view:

Here is an example that might help you understand the day issue. First of all, most of the Old Testament was in Hebrew. It was translated into English. The word 'day' in Hebrew means a period of time. When you here the saying, "In the day of the dinosaurs," you don't think, "Oh, the dinosaurs were around for 24 hours, I mean really? Some of these periods of time were millions of years!

Taking things literally in the Bible doesn't happen in just the Old Testament, but also the New Testament. In Matthew, it says, "If somebody gouges out your left eye, offer him the other." O...K... People better not take that literally! What Jesus is doing is trying to make a point. His analogy is a hyperbole...not to be taken literally. Other examples that imply Jesus's point are maybe if somebody steals your cupcake in the cafeteria, offer to by him a drink.

We need to start reading the Bible more carefully, examining it, and asking ourselves questions. If you run into questions that you can't answer, ask a parent, or email www.reasons.org/ if you have difficult questions. I hope you enjoyed this article, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask me through the comments area.

Caleb