I was brought up in a literal interpretation background. I studied mission and Theology. My study of Genesis 1 in Hebrew eventually swayed me to consider theistic evolutionism. Happy to talk more about it but Gen 1 wasn’t written to be taken literally. Too many sea monsters.
Anyway, despite having accepted evolution for a while, having studied Theology and thought I knew all the answers, I’ve had a couple of difficult years, and I’m now feeling broken, worn out, and wondering if I believe at all.
I’ve started wondering where the bible stops being myth and becomes history, I’m struggling to understand how a God who is supposed to be inherently truthful would allow his main body of revelation to us to begin with myth. I realised that my old way of knowing God was real was based on joining the dots that reinforced my existing worldview. I’ve looked into archaeology to try to answer the question of where the bible stops being myth, and the faith-based and secular bodies of archeology tell two completely different stories so I ended up more confused. I’m also wondering if this view makes God into a mad scientist- causing generations of death and suffering to see if somebody will eventually worship him.
I’m not sure if the reason these questions have become important is because I’ve had a difficult couple of years. My husband became chronically unwell while I was pregnant with our second child. I’ve been in survival mode since then, taking care of everyone and providing for the family. We both neglected our own spiritual disciplines and I’m in two minds. My believer way of thinking tells me this is happening because I am not dwelling in the word, my agnostic mind telling me I only ever believed because I joined the dots that reinforced what I wanted to believe.
Greetings, Michaela. I honor your struggles and studies.
I think many of us feel the same.
I honestly don’t know the full answers.
I do believe at base, even the most devout Christians are agnostic (I do consider myself a Christian).
I look forward to others’ thoughts.
I think Dr Lamoureux has helped a lot with the division of myth and more factual origin. @DOL
I also appreciate Greg Boyd’s “Benefit of the Doubt.”
I’m not sure I have found a lot of answers; compassion is uppermost in my finding. My patron saints seem to be Puddleglum and Emeth from Lewis’ books. Neither had a lot of accurate knowledge, but seemed to learn more compassion and humility.
Blessings, respect and prayers.
addendum: I don’t want to sound like I have done well at compassion–it just seems something that I need to learn more of!
Hi Michaela, and welcome to the forum. Thanks for sharing a bit of your own story.
You aren’t alone in feeling disorientation when former understandings are forced to give way. This forum is full of people at all sorts of points along that journey, including some voices that don’t share in that faith or who maybe let go of it at some point. So I can’t promise you that all of that disorientation will just go away once you find these new wineskins. The best way I think to put it here is that one can eventually just find their “sea legs” and no longer be disturbed by the boat that continues to rock or by the fact that not every dot gets connected even after God brings us to new understandings.
But community is important, and this community - with all its various voices, has served as an online refuge for many. Not a substitute for a physical church community, mind you. But valuable nonetheless. Of all the doom-scrolling or conspiracy-pushing hangouts that clamor for your eyeballs on the internet, you do well to end up in places like this.
May you have some good interactions and sense God’s working presence through your participation here.
Hi, Michaela. Thanks for sharing your honest thoughts and feelings. I can’t speak for others, but I know that when my younger son was sick with cancer, I had all the same doubts and fears about God. It took me many years to work my way through the layers of suffering.
I hope you find some comfort in being able to share with others here. I don’t think we’re meant to face these difficult questions alone.
Faith in the World of Humans is not too promising, History of Human Behavior repeats. My Faith for Me and Others is We will be in Heaven eventually, by the Granting of the Almighty. This doesn’t mean it’s only Hell on Earth, We can see Our Father interaction now and then. The World condition is mostly of the free will of Us Humans and it’s not easy to see Our Father’s involvement. I know I’m behaving as a Born Again Child and will be in Heaven like Jesus eventually as Jesus said “Whoever believeth in Me Shall have Everlasting Life”
When the understanding of the reality (worldview) or a major part of it collapses, it takes time to build a new and more stable one. Especially so if you have to live in survival mode. As a believer, or even an ‘agnostic believer’, you can carry your burdens and questions to God and trust He cares.
John tells about Jesus that he was full of grace and truth. We need both.
Continuing as a believer is relying on the grace we get through Jesus. We do not deserve it, we cannot earn it, we can just accept it like a child.
Truth is the other half. It does not mean knowing everything correctly, rather we need the attitude of accepting and striving towards truth. Admitting the truth about ourselves and our situation in front of God. I believe it also includes accepting what we learn as truth, not uncritically but taking what stands testing.
It may be good to have a questioning attitude towards the claims we hear. It is fine and healthy to acknowledge that there is much we do not know - we are some kind of ‘agnostics’ in these matters and that is ok. Knowledge does not save us but it may make our worldview more stable, less vulnerable to conflicting claims.
Thank you for sharing your story Michaela. If you would like to Zoom and talk about this issues just email me and we can set up a time. Blessings. Denis dlamoure@ualberta.ca
Thank you for sharing, Michaela, I know many people here resonate with your struggles and thoughts and feelings.
From personal experience I would say that there are compelling arguments for many perspectives, and it’s easy to get lost on the bunny trails, trying to wrap your mind around the various debates, and presentations of evidence, and analysis of Scripture and its history of interpretation, and all the logical and philsophical presuppositions and conclusions that get a person from here to there in their position. But what has been most centering for me is strengthening my sense of belonging in the family of God by putting myself in places where God is transforming lives and I can see with my own eyes the way that other people’s faith is inspiring the courage and love to continue working for justice and healing in the world the way God calls us to.
I think we have often confused faith with a set of rational propositions that we can sign our name to if we assent to them hard enough and thoroughly enough. But faith in the Bible is not about how sure or how correct you are about truth, that really can just turn into an attempt to work hard enough to deserve grace. In the Bible faith is about trusting God enough that you sign up with your life to follow his way of being human, as Christ modeled for us, and as the good news of God’s coming Kingdom calls us to live. You can’t do this effectively unless you are reconciled to God in Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit to love God and others and live a life worthy of your calling and identity as a child of God.
For people like me who sort of default to their thinking instead of their feeling, it can be a challenge to get out of my head and relate to God and other children of God in a very experiential, heart-oriented way, but I have found that is the most assuring way to get through periods of doubt when everything about my Christian identity feels distant and unreal. There are two Andrew Peterson songs whose lines stick with me when I think about this topic. (He is a Christian artist who has openly struggled with depression). One is called We Will Survive and it has the line “I’m all alone out here and all I used to know is in the wind. And now I don’t recognize a thing. I need a brand new song to sing. So tell me the story I still need to hear…” We need other people’s stories of faith and faithfulness when we can’t make sense of our own. The other is You’ll Find Your Way, which he wrote for his son going off to college. There is a line “Keep to the old roads, and you’ll find your way.” For me this just reminds me to think about the Christian life not as being in the right place (mentally or spiritually or whatever) it’s about being on the right path, and the “old roads,” the spiritual practices and the proximity to other Christians who inspire me to be brave and compassionate, they will get me through the dark times if I just keep showing up and putting one foot in front of the other. And it’s a dark time for a lot of people right now, myself included, so this whole post is a personal pep talk as much as it is an attempt to share advice.
I hope you find your people and know you aren’t alone.
Just wanted to verify for you @Michaela that I have met Denis in person, he is not an internet rando or a weirdo, he is a kind and very legit and qualified author and teacher who has spent his life helping people come to a place of peace in their understanding of science and faith and what he has to offer is really valuable.
There seems to be a stigma about myths and their value, or not. If a myth is looked at as a story with a message it legitimises it on a par with parables or even fables. Jesus used verbal pictures to help people visualise things. We do not see a need for parables tobe taken from real life so perhaps we can let go of early Genesis as needing to be real also.
As a caution. Modern thought and science can be both compelling and emphatic but it is only humans trying to make sense of the world and as such we need to weigh its value as much as religious thought.
I wanted to add–you may like Denis Lamoureux’ website and writings more too.
He does have group Zooms at the Coursera for review, but that is not required. I found the Coursera videos helpful. His degrees including doctorates in interdisciplinary theology, dentistry, and evolutionary biology (tooth evolution).
Hi — thank you for sharing this so honestly. What you describe doesn’t sound like a failure of faith so much as someone carrying a lot, both intellectually and personally.
It seems like your questions are coming from two directions at once: real concerns about Genesis, history, and interpretation, alongside the weight of everything you’ve been going through. Those can be hard to separate.
Many people go through a similar shift—from a literal reading of Genesis to something more nuanced—and then feel unsettled about where “history” begins. That’s a real question, and it’s complicated by the fact that archaeology, theology, and philosophy don’t always align neatly.
One thought that might help: realizing that past beliefs involved “connecting the dots” doesn’t necessarily make them false—it may just mean they hadn’t been tested under different circumstances. Difficult seasons often surface questions that were already there but didn’t feel urgent before.
On the science side, there are also ongoing discussions about whether evolutionary processes alone fully explain biological form, or whether deeper structural constraints shape what’s possible in nature. That doesn’t resolve the theological side directly, but it can reopen space for thinking about order and meaning.
More importantly, nothing in what you wrote sounds unusual or disqualifying—it sounds like someone thinking seriously while also being exhausted, and those two together can make everything feel more unstable than it actually is.
Part of the problem is what we think the bible is.
There are those who treat it as some kind of infallible diction into the minds of people.
I do not think that is how inspiration happens. With the Old Testament we are dealing with lots of different material from different points in history and may have relied on former stories that were used to inspire the authors to present the texts we actually have to give theological messages, in the same way a modern author can tell stories of past history to bring about a different meaning now.
With New Testament we are on surer grounds because the authors wrote within a reasonable time span of the events and there were those who could give witness to the Jesus they had met.
These are really great thoughts, Michaela. And you seem to at least recognize that many of your questions also arise from family issues–and fatigue, which is what family issues often cause. Those things also count in all this. I was an atheist till my late teens and became a Christian at 20…learned the YEC view and held to it until, well, until I no longer really could. If people like it when science and archaeology affirm the biblical text, then it seems intellectually dishonest to fold up your tent and dump science in the garbage bin when it says something different. I’ve read Walton and a few others on the opposite end of things as well. I go with the view –expressed by Longman and a few others — that the first eleven chapters in Genesis involve a much longer period of time than people once thought. That does not mean the whole Bible gets chucked out the window…..And the “generations” that are listed in Genesis may name actual “real” people but there is more to that story. In other cultures, for example, genealogies served purposes that you and I do not expect them to serve (from our own cultural POV)….I recall, for ex., that the late not-so-great Saddam Husein claimed to be the son of Nebuchadnezzar II. This was either the world’s longest pregnancy (sympathies to his mother) or just a genealogical claim that was not meant to be literal to begin with. And I also don’t argue terribly much with YEC people…Give peace a chance! We’re all wrong on a lot! .I used to drive school buses and heard many amazing theories about the meaning of life from 5 year olds…..incl (one year) a long ongoing argument as to whether or not a certain elementary school existed. Of course it did. But the Nonbeliever on my bus got off the bus a few blocks before we past that elementary school. The Believer on the bus had a bus stop a few blocks PAST the famous elementary school. What the first passenger had not seen with her own eyes or touched with her own fingers –she did not believe. The other passenger had seen with his own eyes – and was obnoxious about it, btw! Adults can be like that too…..and five years is nothing to us….but us being 40 or 80 is nothing against the age of the Universe or the age of the earth. What we have not seen…..but we do have opinions! I just finished a lecture series on Arameans in the Old Testament and am working through a class on biblical archaeology. If the Bible were entirely fiction – and totally unprovable – then there would be nothing to see with studying the Arameans and seeing how the “politics of that era” influenced people groups in that region (including ancient Judea) as described in the biblical text – which is talking in this case about things that we know really happened.
There is, for another example, a retired Purdue University professor who has made it a project – in retirement years – to validate (if possible) the existence of various biblical characters…..so far, he has published 83 names that he has determined were real people— incl a few pharoahs, plus local monarchs of smaller kingdoms, various priests, etc…..Not possible if the Bible were mainly myth.
And sorry for the family situation! You are probably a bit exhausted, at least mentally. The world that we envision in the days of black-and-white-thinking (if I do this, then God automatically does that) turns out to be more complex. I’m sure that Lewis had a demon somewhere in the Screwtape Letters muttering about the reliability of using a person’s life situation (or the state of their digestion) to cast doubts…and “survival mode living ” can do it. Hope you can get some rest and find supportive Christians at church!
Hi Michaela. I’m very sorry to hear what you’re going through. You’ve received some good advice already. I have only a little bit to add.
@Christy mentioned a Christian artist who sang about his experience with depression. That was a good insight. Two factors make me lean that way. “Situational depression” is a short-term response to a stressful event that overwhelms your coping abilities, and the “stressful event” may last for several years. Postpartum depression is also common, and it may last months to several years. Throw both on top of each other, and it seems likely to me as an outside observer that you are suffering from depression.
My best advice, as someone who has dealt with depression, is to seek out whatever counseling resources are available in your area, and realize that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, even if you see nothing but darkness at the moment.
My second-best advice is that it’s okay to deconstruct and reconstruct your ideas of religion. One caveat: It’s best not to make serious decisions when you’re under so much stress. Wait until the crisis passes and your thoughts are clearer.
Music also has a way of reaching our emotional selves that reason misses. Christy mentioned Andrew Peterson. I’ll throw in Gang of Youths. They met as 10-yr-olds at Hillsong in Sydney and were playing in the worship band as teenagers. Hillsong is famous for its music and sex scandals, like a bunch of evangelical churches.
A lot of songs on their second album in 2017 reflect on the lead singer-songwriter’s attempted suicide at age 25 and subsequent recovery. Their third album in 2022 mostly concerns the death of songwriter Dave Le’aupepe’s father. He hid the fact he was 10 yrs older than he claimed and also came from Samoa, where Le’aupepe discovered he had two half-brothers his father abandoned. The dude pours his heart out on the page. Maybe some of it will resonate with you or someone else out there.
One example: “The Deepest of Sighs, the Frankest Shadows”
*Alone in my house, frozen in time
But don’t get me wrong now, honey, I am trying
There’s a warmth in the eyes and a clearness of thought
When the deepest of sighs and the frankest of shadows are gone
We’re pushing a stone up a mountainous waste
And the lines at the store look like lines on a beautiful face
See, I’m not so assured
Nor unusually strong or outstandingly brave
I’m more just fumbling around in the dark for the bulk of my day
When there’s weight that’s in youth and the sum of it’s small
I will stand in the darkness and laugh with my heel on its throat
And not everything means something, honey
So say the unsayable, say the most human of things
And if everything is temporary
I will bear the unbearable, terrible triteness of being*
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SkovandOfMitaze
(Intellectually Atheist Emotionally Christian )
17
One thing I feel that many struggle with is realizing that our modern lenses on how truth is presented is not all consistent and is not always the same as how other times and cultures did it.
Take fairytales. They present truths through stories that are obviously not literal. We see examples of when someone tries to encourage someone by reminding them of the insurance or Hercules or even how Daredevil overcame blindness.
Another way is a bit more imaginative. But just think if in 2,000 years from now everyone writing historical things includes birds. Everyone. They mention a restaurant they went to and the birds they heard and saw. Someone mentions a new house they are building and how while building it they were watching birds. They mention sitting on a couch and the birds they seen. They are a journalist writing about a war and mention all the birds. You buy a cookbook and while giving you a recipe about vegan tuna they mention the hammering away a woodpecker is doing outside.
When these people read our cookbooks, and read our journalism on the war in Iran, they are all baffled and think ……. How can we take this serious they never mention any of the birds.
So in the same way, many of us struggle with being able to take the Bible serious because we can’t tell what’s myth and what’s literal. But for them it did not matter. They were making theological points. They were sharing stories that shared truths for them. So we care about myths and literal stories but they did not and it’s just as silly as us caring about that just as much as it would be silly for those future people to disbelieve us just because we don’t always mention birds.
How about because myth is a powerful way to convey truth.
The scriptures weren’t written to fit a modern scientific worldview, they were written to communicate in ways that made sense the the people/audience for each part. Some of that is what we (often inaccurately) call myth, some is in literary forms we no longer use, but all of it is in forms that carried truth to the people they were written to.
Today we have this notion that in order for something to be true it has to be scientifically accurate, but historically speaking that is just a recent worldview. Just as if we were reading something written by someone in fifteenth century Austria we would want to know their culture and customs, so when we are reading something written in ancient Israel we should want to know their culture and customs, and that includes the kinds of literature they used.
God chose individuals to write to His people in ancient times, and naturally they wrote for those people, not for us. We are in effect reading their mail, and should given them the respect due both them and the Holy Spirit by making the effort to understand them and their context.
It helps to keep in mind that nearly all of what gets called “myth” in the Bible is better termed “mythohistory”, stories with real events at the core but told in a way to say something not about history but about God. They’re kind of like “behind the scenes” accounts not meant to just give out facts but to take facts and give an explanation of Who the real story is about. And when those are done in ways that were meaningful to the original audiences they’re like “in jokes” that you have to know the circumstances in order to understand, except these aren’t jokes at all.
Been there, done that. Lately I’ve realized that going through “survival mode living” is an invitation to grasp what Jesus went through from the moment He set down His contractor’s tools and started preaching: every moment, every action, every gesture seeming critical while it’s all nevertheless in the Father’s hands.
In difficult times, Job, Ecclesiates, and Habbakuk may resonate more than the stereotypical verses of comfort. Someone gets my frustration, discouragement, weariness, and despair
As the discussion has already brought out, what is myth? In popular usage, it is just a made up story. But it is used in a technical sense to refer to accounts having significance in a culture, not implying untruthfulness.
The Manifold Beauty of Genesis 1 brings out seven major literary themes present in the chapter. It is telling us much more, and much more important things, than a merely historico-scientific text would. If we take the Bible seriously, we need to be asking what is each paasage intended to say. As John Walton phrases it, the Bible is written for us but not to us. Imposing a modern reading on the Bible does a disservice, whether it is claimed to show that the Bible is wrong or that the Bible is right and reality is wrong.
