A subject that I’ve asked about here before has come up today on Jesus Creed. They’ve shared a letter from someone who accepts that the Genesis creation accounts can rightly be called mythology. The question that is now being asked is what the appropriate way is to share these stories with a child, and to talk honestly about them, so that the child grows into adulthood not with a literalism that sets them up for an unnecessary crisis of faith, but allows them to transition to a mature appreciation of the stories as such.
Perhaps one of the most important things that comes to mind is telling children the literally true story of our origins – what we know about the evolution of the cosmos and of life on this planet. I’m still wrestling with the question of how to cultivate appreciation for stories that are not literally factual in the same way as the information the natural sciences provide, without setting a child up for an unnecessary crisis of faith. Then again, I sometimes wonder whether some sort of “crisis of faith” is not inevitable in growing up, with the real problem being those who try to avoid such a crisis by clinging to a childish view of myths as “factual” even as adults.
Anyway, I’m sure any thoughts you have on this subject would be welcome over at Jesus Creed as well as here!
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