Youth are not Buying what We are Selling

The youth do not believe our stories.One-third of teens do not accept the statement, "The Bible is totally accurate in all of its teachings." 56 percent say their religious faith is "very important" to them and slightly more than 50 percent of all teens report believing that Jesus committed sins while he was on Earth. Approximately two-thirds of teens say that Satan is "symbolic, not real."

 

Is it possible Augustine was right when he wrote in his book “The Literal Meaning of Genesis” that the first two chapters of Genesis were written to suit the understanding of the people at that time? “Perhaps Sacred Scripture in its customary style is speaking with the limitations of human language in addressing men of limited understanding… The narrative of the inspired writer brings the matter down to the capacity of children.”

 

In order to communicate in a way that all people could understand, Augustine suggests that the creation story was told in a simpler, allegorical fashion and was not meant to be understood scientifically.

 

If a builder is describing how his company built a hospital, he will probably describe the process chronologically: “We dug a hole, laid foundations, and then put up the superstructure floor by floor: basement, parking; ground floor, administration; first floor, wards; second, operating theaters; third, more wards.” But ask a surgeon, to describe the construction of the hospital and he might say, “We put the operating theater on the second floor and located wards, above and below it on the first and third floors.” The surgeon describes the hospital logically from his perspective, not chronologically. We are so used to this kind of thing that we take account of it automatically. We would not insist on understanding the surgeon as implying that the operating theatre suddenly appeared in mid-air and wards were then constructed above and below it. And yet we would know that the surgeon was describing a very real and literal hospital.  

When Darwin wrote Origin of Species it was widely accepted---even among conservative Christians---that the world was much older than previously thought.

 

When someone questions Christians’ perfect understanding of the Bible they act quite similarly as our Congress. No matter. The youth are not buying what we are selling.