life by candlelight

I have been going to a new young adult bible study lately and I'm really enjoying it. The material is good (from "No Experience Necessary"), but the best part is the camaraderie. Knowing that there are actually other people out there who think like I do. I am so tired of Christianity being appropriated by politics. And of being told I can't be a real Christian unless I am a Republican in the religious right. C'mon.

We tend to get so caught up in little meaningless details that we lose sight of the big picture. One woman in my group put it quite well. "We tend to try and bring God down to our level instead of aspiring to rise to His."

The section of our study that we worked on last night focused on the first two chapters of Genesis. Our study guide suggested that instead of getting into arguments as to whether creationism or evolution is correct that we focus on the meaning and message of the passage. Ultimately, does it matter whether God created the world in seven 24-hour-days or several millenia? Not really. What really matters is the wonder of God's creation in general. That is what we should be focus on. It is miraculous no matter how it was done.

Another good point made last night was that we Christians can't expect to effectively express our faith when we can't even get along with each other. We want to argue about little points of doctrine and cling to exclusivity when we should be united as a family of God. No wonder we get such a bad rap.

I think some good things are going to come out of this study.