A woman and childwere in the garden and the woman noticed me looking at the scene.
She came over, asking, 'lovely, isn't it?" I asked what it was. She told me that it was 'Maisy's offering to peace'. I asked about the statue. She said that it was an Indian god [it looked like a headless Buddha to me] that would bring peace.
I replied, nicely, that it wasn't a god, it was a piece of shaped stone. She smiled, and said, we like to say it’s a god because it’s a nice story, and peace is something I want to teach Maisy.
A story and a piece of stone can bring peace, really?
If we regard Genesis 1 as just another story, we are at the level of the latter day heathen who think that a made up story about a piece of stone can have some real connection with actual lived lives. But it can't. It's a fantasy.
Despite all the fuss about 'genre', asserted 'compatibility with science', which I first heard from a friend in year 4 of primary school, and symbolism displacing realism, if this is all Genesis 1 is, just a story, then we make God no more than a piece of stone: an invention in our minds and not related to us in the real world where we grow apples and limes.
We back ourselves into a corner where a story about God's action in some 'story world', becomes the basis for our worship of God here in the real world. But, there can be no real connection, if it is merely a story.
