The Bible is true. The Bible is true. The scriptures that we have are true. But to understand what that means, as far as it's true, that that involves reading the Bible in a responsible way. And that means doing our best to understand things like what genre of literature is this? Certain genres of literature are meant to be read literally. Certain genres of literature are meant to be written figuratively. Things like poetry. The Bible has poetry in it. The Bible also has history in it. And I think the Bible does a really good job of signaling when it's being literal and when it's being figurative, but I also think we live in a world that because of the distance to when the Bible is written, different culture, different language, all those kinds of things. And a lot of the ways that we've been raised to read the Bible, we've lost our ability sometimes to actually go back and read it in the read it in the way that it was meant to be read originally. Hey everybody, this is what we're gonna call Questions from the Garden. It's Madison speaking right now. It's up Madison. Yeah, I got Justin here with me. Yeah. Justin, you started a series called Lessons from the Garden, and that brought up some questions in my mind. Uh we had a brief phone. Well, I say brief. It was like a long brief for us. Yeah. Because, you know, sometimes we talk and it's like I say, hey man, can I talk to you for a minute in my office? And then like an hour later. Yep. And so we had a semi-brief conversation about this series and about the questions that sort of get brought up as we start to think about the beginnings of the universe, which that's like which scripture is claiming to be, you know, part of. And yeah. So I called you and I'm like, hey, I'm going to do this series on the story of the garden and all the takeaways from it. Because they're just honestly, it's it's cool that the first story in the Bible, really, the first several pages, to this day have insanely practical takeaways for all of us in our lives. And you brought up the fact that, hey, when I when I bring the story of the garden up to my students or in conversation, it very often brings up a lot of questions they have that maybe they've even been afraid to ask in a church setting. Yep. And it's things like, hey, so wait, can I just ask those questions? Ask those questions. What are they? Okay, these are the questions you're afraid to ask. Uh is this because you were that person? I think I am I'm a little bit that person. Um, and I definitely Because you were one of my students back in the day. I wasn't afraid of you to ask them. And that's what I'm saying is his hands has always been a place where you can ask the questions. So I'm just gonna ask them. Um, question number one Is the the the earth actually six thousand years old only? Because I grew up um in school and they teach a version of the school was uh you went to a Christian school. I went to a private school, and that wasn't a Christian school until my later years where I went to a Christian school. Okay. And so even at my private school, they were they were teaching the billions of years earth model. So do you want me to list off all the questions or do you just want to start with that question? I would say so. I I think because some people listening to this might be like, I don't even know the 6,000. You're so you're really saying, like, is the is the Bible's telling of of the start of everything, is it literal? Is it figurative? Are we supposed to read the story of Genesis 1, 2, 3, the kind of creation of the earth, Adam and Eve in the garden? Yeah, so that's that would lead to the second question. Are Adam and Eve real people? Are they real people? Are they just sort of like characters in in like a mythology that do they represent humanity? Because Adam literally translates to man and then Eve is life. Yeah, so it's like human life, basically. If you're reading a story that said, and then man did this, and life responded, and life did this and chose this, you'd be like, Okay, I I see where this is. That's what those words mean in that in that Hebrew language. So and so one, I think it's it's uh And the six thousand year thing, not to cut you off, okay, is that there is a maybe people aren't aware of this, um, there's a certain brand of of like super conservative biblical Christianity that would say that the earth is only 6,000 years old because people have taken the Bible never says that it's 6,000 years old. The Bible never actually definitively says here's how old the earth is. Um, but what they do is you take the genealogies listed in the Bible, you trace them all the way back to Adam and Eve, you do the math, you know, and and you get to around 6,000 to 10,000 years, and it's in that range. And so therefore that must be what it is. Yeah, um, but then that flies in the face of what anyone who's gone to public school, which is like what I grew up in, right? In every class is like when the dinosaurs were around, 18 billion years. It wasn't that long, but it was like I don't remember the numbers, but it's always like more numbers than make sense to your brain. And then as a Christian, you just you feel that tension and you either uh bury it or you come to your own conclusions. And so I guess my or like a lot of Christians, you you never ask the question. Yeah, is it okay that I then you go to college and a professor says something and you're like, has everything I've ever been told a lie? And your entire worldview crumbles, and then two years later you believe nothing. You lead the church. Is it okay that I ask that question? Yeah, of course. I think it's a really healthy question to ask. And uh to anybody that has those questions, what are some of the I guess guidelines? Because like filters. Yeah, we're not gonna walk away with a definitive answer because it's not a definitive it as as we see it, it's not a definitive thing. Um, so what are the filters that even allow you to come to the conclusion that it isn't you're like the Bible never says that? It's like, well, can't I do the math? Yeah. And so how do you know? Well, you said something a few minutes ago as we were kind of preparing for this. Is that is it literal or is it figurative may not be the best question. The right question might be, is it true? And it can be true if it's literal, it can also be true if it's if it's figurative. Now, for some people that would be like, what a cop out non-answer that is. Like, you know, I think it's true regardless. And some people would say, Well, I think it's more true if it's if it's literally happened. So a few things I think that are really important, and obviously speak to these. Number one, um, let's talk about the idea of of like understanding the like genres of literature. This is a basic thing. Because the the Bible itself is a is like an anthology that's like includes a variety of range of genres, law, poetry, right, history, a narrative, yes, um, prophecy. Yeah, things like that things that we're not used to necessarily picking up off-the-target bookshelf for our beach read. No, but but a great example, we all get anthologies, right? Or or genres, because you know, in our world today, you pull up any streaming service that has you know video, and you're gonna go, hmm, do I want to watch sci-fi action, right? Documentary, right? Do I want to romance, whatever? And or music videos, like you're you're you're clarifying what you're about to watch as you watch it button. And you know it, you know when you click that button what world you're stepping into. And so you sort of like like you you take it, you know, for example, I like I like action movies. I like a good movie every once in a while, where like it's such an implausible story, right? Where a well-trained man whose whose arms might as well be lethal weapons has like left his previous life of violence. He just wants to have a peaceful life. He just wants to live on his dang farm and raise his family who have no idea his past. His son actually thinks he's a worthless dad because he's never stood up for anything, not knowing his dad's just hiding all this rage inside of him. And then one day, some bad man of someone he murdered 20 years ago. Or or just someone shows up at the wrong place at the wrong time and crosses him and all hell breaks loose. Yeah. And this one man takes on like 20 and just with his fists alone. Like when I watch that, it's it's ridiculous. Right. But it's not shocking you. No, no, no. Because I knew I knew the premise, right? So, okay, go back to this. I know it's a little silly. Sorry, mate. Genre. Genre. Okay. The Bible has a variety of of narrative genres in it that for us can be a little bit hard to understand because it honestly it's a different language, different era, different time. A perfect example would be psalms, right? The word psalms means songs. We know that we we know that the psalms were written as songs, which is poetry. Okay. And we're very familiar with poetry in our world. We have songs galore, right? Songs, whatever. But you because in English Well, you wouldn't call it poetry like we would call it um the radio station. Radio station, right. Um, but even when we read psalms today, we we know the even the way it's laid out, it's like one line on top of another instead of it's got the indent, it's a hard indent. Yeah, all that like like song lyrics would, but we still don't even read it like songs because songs to us usually rhyme and in English they don't, right? But they do have like rhythmic stuff Yeah, they have like choruses where you're where you're seeing the repeated sentence over and over again, right? And so I think what you're you're drawing us to is that the book of Genesis, Questions from the Garden, right, is um both telling a story, but it's almost through that song format, it's through that poetic. Okay, so let's start here. Genesis one, and on the first day, God created this and it was good. And then on the second day, he created this and he said it was good. And on the third day, guess what? It was good. It was good, yeah. And day four, five, six, that's all good. Yeah. Um Genesis one is absolutely this, and this isn't even some shocking new thing, and in and we'll get into this in a second. Um, if anyone ever listens to this or still listening, if they started it. Uh Genesis 1 is absolutely written in a poetic way. You would never you would never get a science book, open it up, and it begins with something written the way Genesis 1 is written. Usually some really artsy way to describe the cosmic background radiation. No, it's like let's take stars exploding. It's like like uh I don't what would you compare a star exploding to, like like a watermelon under too much pressure? Right. You would never read it that way. And so because it is, like you said earlier, it's there's repetitive language, right? Like a core. So that's cueing you into the fact that it's a different genre? Yes, but m most people in modern day like Western Christian culture might even be uncomfortable even thinking in those terms because and this is something that's important for people to understand. There are parts of the Bible that we read more literally today than they were even read a thousand years ago. Because this is something that that has happened over the course. We have to kind of understand the history of our faith, right? So in the 1800s, 1900s, during what we would call the modern era, we live in like post-postmodern, but the modern era was all about science and facts. And the idea was that science, science was like becoming a rival to faith, and the two were seen as very opposing, opposite, you know, ends, uh, even though they're not, and we'll get into that maybe a little later. They're not, but they were seen that way. So what ends up happening is many people in the scientific community is like Darwinian evolution was rising in popularity, more attacks are happening on scripture, you know, saying, oh, science has disproven this. And so what you had happen was a reaction to that. And now all of a sudden you have a Christian community who's trying to defend itself against these attacks, and in in many ways, in doing so, actually began to elevate certain things to a literal level that maybe were never intended to be that way, and created a view of the Bible as distinct from scientific revelation as we observe the universe. Like it was a mouth salad. What does that mean? No, no, no. It's like it's like the Bible is separate, it stands outside of anything that a scientist could tell you, or a doctor of modern science could tell you uh or a cosmologist could tell you about the origins of the universe. And I think what we see in scripture and what we know from God is like everything that we observe, He created. And so as we get to know more about the things that He created, we'll get to know more and more about Him. Yeah. And I think that that hyperliteral uh reading of the Bible, it pits the Bible and the story of Scripture and the story of what God is doing against our like awesome revelation that we're we're seeing what God has created. Right. And so And I think it's unnecessary, right? And and and here's what I'll say on that. So like I'm I'm super conservative biblically. Like any the college I went to was not, and I I was not, I'll just be honest, you know me, I'm I'm not unwilling to have conflict. Uh the professors at my college did not like me. I got in lots of and conservative by biblically, you mean like you're a word-for-word guy. Like you would you would not so I I think the Bible does a really good job of signaling when it's being uh metaphoric. I think with a especially with a little bit of of knowledge and and learning about your faith and the history of the Old Testament and the documents and the literary genres of the Hebrew people, I think that the Bible does a really good job letting you know what is uh a history, what is maybe like a narrative kind of poetry kind of thing. There are some that we go, was this like Job, for example, is a class example. Um many people would say Job is a real person. That many people would say Job is more of a like a figure, of a figure, and it was written that way. And honestly, you you're it's kind of fine. The same takeaway about the character of God shines through if he's real or if he's not real. Right, but you could go down a slippery slope, but what if you apply that to Jesus? What if Jesus is just like Yeah, and so how do you so when you're saying you're you're pointing out the repetition in um Genesis 1, you're pointing out the fact that the Bible cues us to that, what about like Jesus performing a miracle doesn't cue us to thinking that that's a metaphor about just overcoming. Well, again, part of it's knowing the the genre, right? Like it's not like okay, if Job was understood by many people in like Jesus' day and even further back as being a story, right? It's not like okay, it'd be it'd be like one thing to open up a science book or let's say history book in this context. Like it'd be one thing to open up a history book and someone slid a fable in there trying to pass it off as history. Right. Um that's that's what sometimes people feel like. If someone were ever to learn, like, what if Job isn't a literal person? What if it is a story? And by the way, I'm I don't know the answer to that. I'm fine with either of those. Um well for a lot of people it'd be like, well then I've been duped because it's like I opened up a history book thinking it was real history and someone slid a fake story in there. I didn't know. Well, yeah, you may have not known that, but like people were aware of it. It was aware of yeah, it wasn't it wasn't done that way. You know, the gospels are completely different. The gospels literally begin with like Luke's is the classic example. Hey, I'm writing this to tell you guys exactly what you will happen. This is what happened, and in the very early days of our faith of Christianity, these were these were the accounts that were being told to people as people are turned. It wasn't it wasn't like, hey, here's a story, and this will inspire you in these different ways, right? So we have to understand is that even if parts of the Bible, the Bible, I think, when I say it's signals, it doesn't it's not trying to trick you. Right. If there is Genesis 1 is written poetically, like because it's a poem, that doesn't, by the way, mean if someone says I believe in six-day creation, I'm fine with that. Right. Like I I might believe in that. Does that make sense? Like it's not like I don't know how many of you do believe in it, you can say that. No, but my point is that I don't think six-day creation versus is like a line where you can't be a Christian if you'll just to give the counter for the sake of us talking about how old the earth is. Uh there's a scripture, it's leaving my brain what it's the reference is, but it's to God a day is like a thousand years, a thousand years is like a day. People reference that. And so people are when uh the figurative day one is really like an age, and I've always imagined it like a time lapse, like right, God on day one is working on all the mountains or is working on the light and working on the animals. That was a full day, yeah, but it's like going really fast, and from his perspective, it's like a day, but to our human perspective, looking backwards in history, it seems impossibly long. Like to me, that seems like a plausible as plausible as the six days. Six days. So either way, it's a miracle. And I and if we can go back for just a second, the idea of like what is conservative biblical, what that would simply mean is that um when I read the Bible, doing my best to know what what genre I'm stepping into, which mo and I would say the vast majority of the Bible is historical, like it the stories of the Old Testament, you know, most of it is that genre, but there is other things in there. But put that aside, my assumption, and it's not blind because it's been proven time and time again where scripture has just rung true in my life and it's proven true when weighed against other things. Um even science, it's amazing how many scientific discoveries have backed up scripture. It's amazing how many scientific theories that opposed scripture and had a totally different narrative of scripture ended up being proven wrong. Right. And in a way, like that we can talk about later, the Big Bang Theory is a great example. How a lot of people today believe the Big Bang Theory is a real problem if you're a Christian. It's actually funny to learn that there was a huge resistance to the Big Bang Theory in the 1940s when it was coming up by people who are like, if we go along with the Big Bang Theory, it's almost like we're saying the Bible's true. And so you had a lot of scientific people who dug their heels in, being like, we can't accept the Big Bang Theory. Right. It's too much like the Bible. Which again is the more we look at creation, the more we see God. Right. So I've seen so much of that happen personally in my life, but also in history, that when I read scripture, if something seems odd to me, like I don't quite understand that. My first assumption is not, well, this must not be true. Uh my first assumption is like, I must have more to learn. You know what I mean? So that's kind of what I would call a conservative, I don't read the Bible. You said it this way before. I'm not trying to put my perspective into the Bible to make it say what I want it to say. I try to let the Bible, you know, teach me because I do believe that scripture is inspired. Um, so you know, back to this whole this whole question, I I think like a filter I have that this is helpful is number I think the Bible is not a science book. Let's start there. Okay. Science, as we understand it, didn't exist back then. No one grew up thinking in scientific terms. So the Bible is not a comprehensive catalog of the physical makeup of the number one question that science tries to to answer is like the question of how, right? Like how does this work? How does this happen? How does that that's what you try to, you know, like history is like who, what, and when. You know what I mean? And the the the primary question that that scripture is always getting at is why. Now, in answering that question, you're gonna have a lot of the other stuff. So when I say that the Bible's not a science book, uh what I would say is when the Bible speaks of scientific things, which it does, um it's it's accurate. I mean, it's amazing how many things that the Bible talks about in scientific terms were like like a classic one, would be Isaiah says that God sits above the circle of the earth and uh for you know it was a over a thousand years, almost sorry, it was actually two thousand years after that that science confirmed the earth is is round. Oh yeah, it's kind of you know, or that God's the the earth is suspended on nothing. That's in the old testament. Every modern culture at that time, you know, so ancient cultures to us, but in the time, they all had these theories of what the earth was resting upon. And I mean it's like something, right? The idea that the earth just floating was preposterous when that was written. And then, oh well, yeah, actually it turns out it is. So when the Bible I believe from what I've observed and and researched, that when the Bible speaks in scientific terms, it's accurate, but the Bible is not ever attempting to be quote unquote scientific. Yeah, I think. So what you mentioned about the what versus the how versus the why, that's a perfect way to think about it and really really helpful because I think it that has a lot to do with the questions you're bringing to scripture. Like if you're bringing um, like even there's just different ways people use scripture that are just inappropriate. Like if you bring it going saying, like, this needs to explain my blood type or something random about that, that won't explain it, or this needs to give me the direct do's and don'ts of how to handle every single aspect of every single thing. It's not gonna inform it in that way. But if you're asking those questions of why am I here? Why are we here? Right, what is my purpose? Yeah, I've never read a science book and shut it and said, I really need to go forgive that person that I have this issue with. Right. You know what I mean? Because it's not heart change and life change, it's not it's not transformative. It's yeah, the scripture is always kind of bringing us into ourselves and showing us who God is and his relationship with us. Yeah, it it's cool too because it starts to make the the what of it matter a little bit less. Because I was I've been thinking about the the Adam and Eve is the next question I'm gonna ask you. Like, are Adam and Eve literal actual people, ancestors, that we can, you know, do the math back and get it back there? And or are they representations of humanity and our condition? Right. And when you bring it to the what question or the how question, you do get caught up in lots of different things and lots of different things that are really interesting. But if you ask, like, why am I here and what's the purpose of a human life and what's the value of a human life, and what like all of those questions are answered in that Adam and Eve story in the truest, deepest, realist, realist way. Well, there's a reason why that story resonates, right? Because it's one of the oldest stories in human history. I mean, that's what we have to understand. Like, this is a story, and and very few stories like are gonna, you know, there's movies that are gonna win Academy Awards that like people won't even remember, right? Right? They already are, and so there's a reason why this story resonates for so many thousands of years. Um, and and in multiple faiths, right? It's not just Christianity, other faiths that that's their origin story as well. Um, so I I will say this um as far as Adam and Eve go, so I guess go back how old is the earth? The Bible doesn't definitively say that. So, you know, you can infer or or deduce based on whatever, and and there are good faith reads that are uh opposing, you know, in the sense of like the older one. Someone might say, Oh, I think the earth is is six thousand years old, and I know that flies in The face of everything that scientists say today, but how often have scientists been really certain of something? Right, really certain of something, and uh proven wrong. I said I would get to this, I'm gonna do it real fast. Big Bang Theory, great example. So Big Bang Theory came along in the 1940s. Uh prior to the Big Bang Theory, it was a steady state theory was the prevailing scientific view of the origin of the universe, which basically said there never was a beginning. Earth is always ex or the universe has always existed, it's a steady state. So they would look at the Bible, which said in the beginning, God created heavens and the earth, and right in those first few words, they're like, already wrong. There was no beginning. Okay. The Big Bang Theory comes along in the 1930s, 40s. Um Einstein has a famous quote where he actually converted to Big Bang Theory. And uh the Big Bang Theory, you know, basically science was observing and had the ability to calculate through, you know, mathematical stuff that I don't understand, um, that the Earth seems to be, or the universe rather, seems to be expanding um and at a rapid rate for a singular point, right? Like an explosion. And so if you just logically rewind the clock, there's an origin point to that explosion, which is called a beginning. And so the math on that was so striking and so sound that scientists left and right are like, well, dang it.

Yeah.

New theory, big bang theory. In the beginning, a big bang caused all this to happen. Well, when that actually began to be developed and were in popularity, there was there's and you can read these things. I mean, major scientific minds of the time that we don't remember who they are, but people in those days, like, oh, that guy's a Harvard, whatever. They were like, This can't be, because to them it was like going along with religion. Where we said for all these years there never was a beginning, and now we go back. You know, Christians are like, we've been saying this for a long time. You know, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Your new statement, which is in the beginning, a big bang caused, it's like sounds familiar, you know. So the point is, someone might say, I know science will laugh, the scientific community rather, not science itself, but the scientific community will would laugh at my belief that the earth is only 6,000 years old. Should I be ashamed of that? And I would say, like, the Bible doesn't say, doesn't tell us yes or no there. And you would be, yeah, science, it's it's all the time that it's like, hey, for never mind, we learned something new and we we were way off. Yeah, which is it's like one of the only spheres of the like of current culture that consistently says, hey, I hey, we were wrong. So that's cool. Well, and not to be, I'm not saying this in a political way. Don't let's not go down this rabbit hole. But like, no, we're not. But I'm just saying is like the last two and a half years of COVID, because we're we're recording this at the tail end of the year. We've been blessed by people who were willing to say that hey, we we got this wrong at at different junctures. Yes, yes. I haven't heard as many people, it's more that people have said, Hey, you're wrong, right? And they're like, No, forget that. But the point is, there's been a lot of like like in the early days of COVID, I remember being this is a big one for me, the early days. We we were told to clean off our surfaces because the COVID virus could live forever for days, weeks on a surface. So, like tons of people are home scrubbing their stuff down, right? Hand sanitizer and you couldn't find cleaning stuff. Yeah. And then literally, like a month and a half, two months into it, something like that, it's like, hey, there's a new report that uh COVID only lives on surfaces for like seven seconds. Right. And I'm like, how could you be those are two very different numbers weeks and seconds? But then when you go, the universe has always existed to hey, there's a beginning. Yeah, that like that's a big difference. Like perspectives change and opinions update. Yes. And so if you are someone that holds that and you're feeling that insecurity about the young earth thing, right? It's okay because, like, hey, you're you're trying to honor God with what you believe, and you're reading scripture and that's what you see there, that's totally fine. And I would tell that person, like, you you're not wrong to believe that. Correct.

Yeah.

And if someone said, I don't I believe the earth is millions of years old, and like you were talking earlier that Genesis one is is more figurative. And it it's no matter what, it is definitely Genesis one is clearly written in a poetic way. Right. So usually when something's written in a poetic way, it's because it's poetry. And if if you wanted to look at Genesis 1 like a poem, and you would say, What's the title of this poem? Looking at it, what would we call it? We would probably call it something like it is good, right? Which is interesting because at that time in in history, every culture's view of the origin of the world was not good. And the God who created it, no matter if it was Greek mythology or whatever, it was like an angry god, and people were either in the world. Overcoming a battle or yeah, it was like there's crazy, I can't remember which culture it is, but like humans came out of the armpit of this like giant monster. That's actually like an original. That's a fair take on human human tradition. You know what I mean? Uh, but but god the story of our creation in scripture is so unique because it's a loving God who creates people to exist in a loving relationship with Him. Who's totally in control? He's totally in control, and he's not hostile to the world. He actually calls it good. That's so you would call it, oh, it is it is good. And that it's clear that the right it's clear if you just look at it that the writer of Genesis 1 is like, what what do I want to hammer? Yeah, what's the message? What's the point? God created it and it's good. Yeah, why is this right part part of the scripture? But on to Adam and Eve, and we'll probably we need to wrap this up. Um, although I I could do this all day. I love this. But I think we should probably answer as or at least talk about as fully as we can, and we'll just call this whole episode Questions from the Garden, ask a few questions, talk about it. It's okay if you have these questions too. I do think there is a turn. So where where Genesis 1 is clearly written poetically, you turn the page to Genesis 2, and instantly it's like a genre change. Sometimes like movies will do that where there's been there have been certain movies where it'll go from like uh have you ever have you ever experienced this where like in a really creative setting, it'll like switch and all of a sudden it's oh oh great. This is a stupid example. I got the artsy fartsy one loaded for when you're done. Good. All right, you give me the artsy fartsy one, I'll give you the not artsy fartsy. Okay, there's a movie called Magnolia, it's not an appropriate movie, it's pretty dark. But at one point in the movie, all of the characters out of nowhere start singing with the soundtrack, and it's a very serious and dark movie, and you're like and then all of a sudden they start singing a song that like is fully expressing the theme of the movie. Okay, but on screen the characters are actually singing the song, and it's just this really weird, jarring, like okay, different movie, I guess. Uh okay. So my non-artsy fartsy would be Space Jam. Because, you know, first you're like real world Michael Jordan, you know, actual human actors, and then all of a sudden it's a cartoon, and there's a cartoon Michael Jordan, you know what I mean? Like all this kind of so that's that's my yeah, yeah. It's like genres can switch. It's like boom, people do it for a creative purpose. Right. So you you definitely when you read Genesis 1, you turn the page and it's like, oh, this is this is different. This is now so there, so if we don't go back to that filter, because I don't just want to go, well, I'm just gonna pick and choose the ones to be literal that I I like and want to be literal, and the ones that I don't I'm confused about, I'm gonna view those as figurative because that's not right, that's not the right way to do it. So you have to be, if we're gonna use the the genre thing, there is a switch, okay. We do have to understand that the story of Adam and Eve would have been passed down orally for thousands of years before ever being written down, even if you're someone who has that view of a really young earth compared to it's still thousands of years. Um you know, and so usually when you have oral stories, they're short, right? You can't have five-hour long oral stories, no one remembers those many details. So oral stories are all almost always pretty short, and Genesis two and three are are like very much broadstroke, yeah, right, than this, than this. Um so personally, I would read Genesis two and three. Like I would call it if it's a scale of completely literal, like a video camera footage. What's that? Video camera footage to I had this dream last night. I mean, it's much closer to video camera footage from for me personally. Okay. So I'm gonna read that. I I would to give you the credit on that, it's completely presented that way, right? And starts a genealogy right after that of like, and these are the descendants of of Adam, and we've got we've got Cain and Abel, forget one of those, then we get Seth, and then there's these descendants that it's like connected to real history that we have concrete proof for. And people have said, well, okay, great example, and you've definitely heard this one before. So, you know, Cain and Abel, that all happens. Cain kills Abel, spoiler alert, sorry. Yeah. Um, it's an old story though. You had your you had your chance. And uh, and then Cain gets banished, and it says he leaves the the area and he goes and he marries someone from somewhere else, right? He goes, be like, well, where'd those people come from? And he found a city. He founds a city, yeah. Where'd those people come from, right? And it's like, well, this is where you gotta be careful with the Bible. Uh just like I said that the Bible like the Bible never says the earth is this this old. So my son actually was taking a class at his school, and his he's he came back and it's like he goes to a Christian school now. It's new for him. He's public school up until this year. And he said, Yeah, my teacher said that the Bible says the earth is this old. And I was like, Hold on. The Bible doesn't say that. There's no definitive statement in the Bible about that. They're deducing like we talked about earlier, right? So the same is also true on the other side. The Bible never says that God didn't create anyone but Adam and Eve. It it doesn't say that. So it Genesis 1 almost is like this poetic telling of the entire creation of the world, right? Then Genesis 2 is like this zoom into the Garden of Eden. It's like super zoomed in because even in Genesis 2, the way it's told, like you read Genesis 1, he creates man and woman, right? Genesis 2, he creates uh man and he like tells him, Don't eat from the tree of the modern evil. And then after that, he creates Eve. It's like a hyper zoom that happens, and it it's within the Garden of Eden. And so I guess so so there's lots of details left out there that are unanswerable because it's asking the question, why would God create humans and what is their purpose, etc. So there's a difference between something being true and something being complete. So if there is a documentary about like the Beatles, for example, and Paul is telling Paul being one of the Beatles, if you don't know who the Beatles are not Paul being a beating, a lot of young people know a lot of young people today like wear Beatles shirts, and I'm like, do you listen to you know whatever? I see a lot of that June bugs and scarab and oh different beetles different beatles. Okay, the Beatles, the do you not know the Beatles, the rock and roll band from the uh the England place? Yes, yeah, I know the Beatles. I know I'm teasing you, I'm being facetious, you can't see my all right. So if there was a Beatles are a classic, there's lots of Beatles documentaries, right? Big band. And if Paul, who was one of the main Beatles guys, like there were I mean John and Paul are probably the main ones, let's be honest. Well, let's say they didn't have any of Ringo for the interviews. Right. It's like, is Paul's version true? Yes. Is it complete? Well, no, right, because Ringo's not included, and the the person just decided Ringo's perspective wasn't really necessary for this. Yeah, and it's not our job to tell Ringo's story in the absence of it. No, you don't have to, because you're like, I wanted to tell Paul's version of it. That's what I was trying to do. So complete and true are different things. I think that the story of Adam and Eve could be completely true, even though it's not complete in the sense that I mean to go completely true. Yeah, it's a wordplay. There you go, let's use that. Because it never says that God didn't create other people, it never says that God didn't create anything outside of the garden. You very much get the idea that something special is happening in the garden, and then there is there is something outside the garden that's different because when Adam and Eve and all the stuff goes down, they eat the forbidden fruit, they are removed from the garden, which is presented to you as if it's not ideal for them. Yeah, and if everything was the garden at that point, right when and like there's guards that stand at the door of the garden. Yeah, so like okay, now where do we live? And there's clearly like stuff out here, right? You know what I mean? Um, because it's not like we're in a desolate desert where there's no food or animals. Like clearly they're living out there. So point is like there's details the Bible doesn't give there. That doesn't make the Bible not true. You have to be very careful to let human logic not go to the like human logic is flawed. It it gets you certain a certain distance, but there are lots of things that are completely true that defy logic. I mean that even in science, there's things there's like we don't this doesn't quite make sense, and that's I think to start to close this out is the things we believe about scripture, I don't need to always have a scientific justification for them, but I do need to be aware of when I'm reading what and when I'm looking at the purpose of what God is trying to do in those things. So as a Christian, I totally believe in miracles, I totally believe that creation is a miracle. I believe that Jesus as a man was able to perform miracles by the power that was living in him, ultimate miracle, him miraculously rising from the dead in like a very uh literal and concrete way. But I don't need to have um the full detailed explanation of the earliest moments of history. Or or Jesus is a great example. What happened in you know how much speculation there's been on what happened in Jesus' life between the ages of like twelve and thirty? Because the Bible just gives us a big blank. Right. And it would be irresponsible to write Jesus fanfiction and present it as the truth. Right. You could write Jesus fanfiction and present it as a creative way to explore the character of Jesus and those. Um but right. But we don't have details. And it doesn't make it not true because there's a uh there's a part that's that's not complete. It's sort of like well, it just it wasn't important for the story. Or the if the why with Jesus is, oh, the Messiah of the Jews has shown up, and then we get that up until he's 12, right? He's here, and then uh we start his ministry when the bulk of the wheel. Oh, he was just a kid in a tiny town who was like working every day like every kid did in a tiny town. Because you know, you turn 13 in Jewish culture, you're a man now, and you would have worked at his father's shop. It's like just skip that. So point is go back to like Is the is Genesis literal? I I could think a lot of it is. Yes. Um now it's broad stroke, so it doesn't I mean Genesis is so hard because when you read like like when you read the book of Acts, you turn the page, and sometimes in turning that page, you're you're fast-forwarding a couple months. Right? You read the book of Genesis, and you turn the page and you're like, well hundreds of years later. Yes, like, or not always, like there's certain Abraham's story, yeah, Moses' story. There's there's parts where it'll zoom in a lot, and you get to Exodus, for example. I know that's not Genesis, but like But then you ask the question, why are we zooming in? I think that's such an important question. I love that you brought that up because it's like such an important question to ask as weird shifts in the story are happening, why is it happening? And something really important is happening. Yeah, hold that why in your mind as you're reading, and it'll probably more clearly give you the answers that you're looking for. Yeah. So my perspective, which I mean, some people would laugh at this, some people would like probably be offended at this, is that to just put it out there really clearly, which I maybe should have done in the first sentence. Maybe we should actually, hey Josh, who's gonna edit this, Joshua. Hey Josh. Use this little sound bite at the beginning as like a teaser for the soundbite coming up. I think it's totally appropriate to say that the first chapters of the Bible are both literal and figurative because I think the Bible does a really good job signaling when it's doing either of those. Um Genesis one is clearly written in I actually don't want this to be the sound bite now, because it's not enough of a bite. So Josh, forget what we said. Um but but point is like if you said No, say tell me your clear your held conviction about scripture and Genesis one, I'm fine either way. Okay. Genesis one, six days, creation, like you said, the whole like time lapse, just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, fine with that. Um a day is like a thousand years or I don't care a million years, like fine with that too. Yep. Because Genesis one is clearly written in such a poetic way that you couldn't come to a firm conclusion either way. No, it it doesn't mean it's not six days, right? Just because I could write a song about a six-day period of my life, and you know, on the first day, and I'm actually being literal about that part, but I'm being poetic in my it was so I guess it's fine. But it's like I'm I don't know, and uh fine either way. Don't think it's a line for me. When you get to Genesis 2, there is a shift in the in the the genre. Um, and so I would say I would call that like a loose history, might be a good term, where it's like the way we tell history about our families. Right. Like if I start telling a bunch of stories about my great-grandparents, and you start asking me certain details, I'd almost get annoyed. Like, what I don't know. Right. Like you're like, oh, so they weren't really real people, were they? You're like, no, they weren't. I just don't know what day of the week they met. Right. Because that was never important enough to like I know that in southern Missouri, like where in some I don't know the name of the tiny little outpost in southern Missouri that my grandmother was born. So it's it's detailed, it's uh detail dry with a clear vision, yes, or like a clear purpose. It's not trying to tell you every detail of what happened, and it's totally comfortable skipping out on major things that might leave questions, but it's like, yeah, that just isn't important for the story I'm trying to tell. But but the story that it is telling, I think there's there it's absolutely true. I think it's true. Yeah, and you know, but on the flip side of that, if someone's like, I read Genesis two and Adam and Eve more. There are things you mentioned earlier that do signal some metaphor, like their names and all that kind of stuff, but it could also just be that because they're the first two people, their names happen to become the words that we associate with human life. Right. So does that make is that that makes sense. Definitive enough? And I I don't think it is definitive. Well, here's definitive enough. I'm 50-50 on Genesis one being literal or figurative. Okay. It's clearly figurative in some ways, it might be literal in others. I'm like 80-20 on Genesis two and three being like maybe even more like 90-10. Yeah, knowing that the 10 being parts of it. But you're a hundred, you're a hundred percent on board with like God's word is true, 100% and valuable and inspired by literal God, like the actual God who revealed himself to us throughout centuries, right? Going from a broad view of him, well, really, it's a very narrow view of God at the beginning because he's walking with the people, right? Then, because of the distance we create, it's a little bit more like zoomed out, and then God is constantly zooming it back until we get to Jesus, who is the the clear person of God you know, revealed to us. So, yeah, script I'm like scripture is true. Um now to understand its truth and apply its truth, we have to read it responsibly, is the word I like to use. Responsible means that we do our best to understand things like what genre of literature is this, and ooh, Josh, this is the soundbite. So no, we're gonna do it now. I hope none of this gets cut out because No, it shouldn't. This part shouldn't get cut out. I don't want this to get cut out. I'm just telling Josh. No, no, no, the part where we're talking to Josh. No, no, I want to edit it. I don't want Josh to edit this out. Okay, Josh, do not edit this out. But just what I'm about to say, this is what this is gonna be so cool. No, it's not that I think it's cool. It's not that. It's that I think that it took us so long to get to here that I'd like for someone people don't listen to all of the podcasts, so I'd like for someone to know on the front end what there's something in there. This is where we're gonna go. So here's what it is. Are you ready, Josh? Here we go. Here we go. The Bible is true. The Bible is true. The scriptures that we have are true, but to understand what that means, as far as it's true, that that involves reading the Bible in a responsible way. And that means doing our best to understand things like what genre of literature is this? Certain genres of literature are meant to be read literally, certain genres of literature are meant to be written figuratively, things like poetry. The Bible has poetry in it, the Bible also has history in it. And I think the Bible does a really good job of signaling when it's being literal and when it's being figurative, but I also think we live in a world that because of the distance to when the Bible was written, different culture, different language, all those kinds of things, and a lot of the ways that we've been raised to read the Bible, we've lost our ability sometimes to actually go back and and read it in the read it in the way that it was meant to be read originally. Yeah, and I think ultimately, um with all of this, it's okay to ask the questions if you're unclear on it. Exactly. And and and just let those questions be something that draw you closer to God. And in sometimes that's a process where you're like, oh, I don't believe what I used to believe, I believe something new, and just be open to those questions and know that specifically we're a place where you can ask those questions. You can ask those questions, and there's a lot of cool resources out there. Uh, one thing that we reference pretty often is a group called the Bible Project. Not that everything they do is, you know, I haven't listened to all of them. It's not the inerrant word of the Bible project. It's not, and I've actually disagreed with them on a few things. Sure. Um I don't think there's a person I don't disagree with at least a few things about it. No, I agree. But sometimes you know how it can be in Christian culture where like you pick a person, you're like, well, I'm just gonna let their opinions be mine now. Yeah. Because they I like them and or they seem smart. Yeah. So, but my point is I think that they do a really balanced job of presenting things. I I think that the word responsible I used a minute ago as far as I I feel like when I listen to the way they discuss it, I feel like it's always done in a responsible way. So even if they come to a conclusion that I may not come to, the way that they went through that to that conclusion is what I would call the definition of biblical responsibility. I know people who interpret the Bible irresponsibly, meaning, like, I read a thing, it sparked a cool thought in my brain, and I like that cool thought so much that I'm now going to like reinterpret the Bible. Reinterpret the entire Bible through that cool thought. Or to to fill in all of those those gaps. And I don't think we're just we're just not meant to fill in those gaps. Mysteries are okay. Things are it's okay to leave a little mystery, you know? Yep, so this probably sparks more questions, but send them in directly to Madison's phone number. Madison, that phone number is Madison's at his handschurch.com. Madison at his handschurch.com, and uh we probably won't answer those. I just realized you could like what if you got a flood of these? At least know where people are at. Just send them a link to a Bible project video. No, that's cool. All right, yeah, that hopefully this helps, and uh yeah, thanks for listening.