Tale of a Fateful Flood

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful trip
That started from this mid eastern port
Aboard this tiny ark.

The mate was a mighty sailing man,
The skipper righteous and sure.
Eight passengers set sail that day
For a one year tour, a one year tour.

The weather started getting rough,
The tiny ark was tossed,
If not for the courage of the fearless crew
The ark would be lost, the ark would be lost.

The ark set ground on the side of this uncharted mountain range
With Noah
His wifey too,
seven pairs of every kind of clean animal
one pair of every kind of unclean animal
and also seven pairs of every kind of bird
Here on Noah's earth

(Based on "The Ballad of Gilligan's Island" by George Wyle and Sherwood Shwartz.)

Ok, so my version of the song kind of breaks down when I try to list all the passengers on the ark. Well, no kidding. There were probably tens of thousands of them.

Noah's ark was one of my first real problems with reliability of the Bible. (Read about it in Genesis 6-8). It just seems very implausible to me: A 450x75x45' foot boat being able to hold 8 people plus thousands and thousands and thousands of animals as well as food for all of them for almost a year - which is how long they were on the ark in total (much of that time was waiting for the water to recede and some dry ground to reappear). It's a decent sized boat, but not in consideration of all that was supposedly on board.

I know it can be debated what the word "kind" means in regard to the two of each kind of animal. It could mean something at a higher level than specific species, assuming then that micro-evolution takes over after the flood to (re)create all the species of animals we have today. It's still going to be a heck of a lot of animals plus food for all of them. Then also if you assume the evolution thing takes over after the flood, then you run into a time issue. The flood was only about 4000 years ago according to the genealogies in the Bible. That isn't a lot of time for natural mutations to add a lot of new species to the earth, especially from such a small base population. In addition, 4000 years isn't a lot of time for animals and people to re-disperse themselves across the rest of the world. There were no planes trains or automobiles, but they ended up everywhere - all over Asia, Africa, the Americas... And how did they all get to Australia?

Back to the boat, hopefully the carnivores weren't eating any of the other animals. But let's say Noah and the crew were able to compartmentalize them and keep that from happening. Or God sort of tranquilized them for the duration of the trip. But then what happens after they are let go again outside the ark? Wouldn't they be hungry and start eating other animals, which were in decidedly short supply, thus killing off those species or kinds almost immediately. They had to eat, right?

I'm not claiming to have done any rigorous research on this, but a cursory analysis of the logistical problems involved seems to me to be so insurmountable as to make further research pointless. (However, I'm open to debate on that.)

I will also add that I have no problems with miracles. That is to say, God doing something supernatural that defies logic. If he can make the earth and the whole universe, I would assume he can break the natural laws and do whatever he wants. But the only two parts of the flood story the Bible indicates as supernatural is the flood itself, and all the animals gathering nicely to get on the boat.

What happens is that if you can say that one part of the Bible seems to be inaccurate or untrue, then you have to ask what other parts might be. Then the slippery slope begins and you then have to figure out which parts might be true and which aren't. How can anyone really determine that? Who gets to judge that when there are differences of opinion?

I recently had a conversation about this with a friend whom I greatly respect and consider much smarter than me. Basically, his stance on Noah's ark is that he doesn't understand it, it doesn't make sense, but he believes it anyway because he doesn't want to go down that road of then calling everything in the Bible into question. I can't bring myself to do that. Its like lying to myself. What do you think?

Open Hand

My father-in-law sent me this today and I thought it seemed quite wise:

Whatever beliefs you hold, hold in an open hand and not a tight fist. Just practice, and see where it takes you.

What Part of the Gospel Is Optional?

A couple friends of mine just posted this on Facebook and it hits on issues I've thought a lot about and have cause much soul searching in me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtCdbZr9GGE

“It's easy for American Christians to forget how Jesus said his followers would actually live, what their new lifestyle would actually look like. They would, he said, leave behind security, money, convenience, even family for him. They would abandon everything for the gospel. They would take up their crosses daily...”

I think this video is quite right. I came to a realization about this a few years ago and I had to come to grips with a few things. I wasn't really living the selfless, sacrificial life that the Bible calls for. Other than being a missionary (which I don’t want to do) I wasn’t even sure what that would look like for me. I also didn’t really think that I wanted to lead a sacrificial life (there is a cost to it that I began to measure and didn’t want to pay - Luke 14:28). That was just me being honest with myself.

I think much of American Christianity is of the half-hearted, compromised, fence-sitting variety. Americans are so comfortable and well-off in general that we don’t want commit to this “extreme” Christianity. But the “extremeness” is what it really takes to follow Christ if one is really following what's in the Bible.

For me, the issue of being willing to pay the price goes along with measuring the value of what I'm buying into for that price. Because at the same time I was losing confidence that what the Bible says is true, or that God really is how it describes him. If you find something in the Bible that you just can't accept as true or logical, then it calls the validity of the whole thing into question. (I'll dig deeper into that issue in another post.) And then as logic follows: how can I sell my whole life for the ideas in a book I'm not finding to be reliable?

Spiritual Reset Button

I had been a Christian all my life but started to question things and have doubts a few years back. It's been hard to talk about without feeling wrong and guilty and messed up and maybe lead astray by sin or demons or something. Questioning Christian beliefs and assumptions has seemed to me a taboo thing to do given the way I grew up and many of the people I've spent a lot of time with over the years. So talking about the things I'm going to talk about on this blog feels perhaps like "Coming Out" to me. I may make myself a pariah, but it's time to face it all and just be honest about who I am and what's going on in me.

So here it is: I don't consider myself a Christian any more. I can't fake it or deny it any longer. I can't check my brain at the church door and go in and act like I agree with or believe the Bible. I have some issues with it all and don't find it as perfectly logical as I used to. Or as I was lead to believe it was...

I'm going to hash out some of those those thoughts and feelings in this blog. It's a way for me to get some things off my chest and to wrap my own head around it all. I'm not trying to say I'm right or that I've got it all figured out now. I'm just hitting the spiritual reset button so that I can find some kind of faith or belief system that makes sense to me and suits who I am. I'd love your considerate thoughts and feedback as I walk through this. I am now just a "truth seeker."