Seth (my 6 year old) loves to be read a book before bed each night. Last night he went to the bookshelf and chose the Bible. We are not a religious family, as a matter fact, I don’t think Seth has ever been in a church, so I found his selection curious. This particular Bible was a gift from my Great Grandmother when I was probably 10 years old and it has several colorful pictures throughout the book, which is probably what drew him to it.
I read the first chapter of Genesis. You know - the fist six days in which God created the earth, the heaven and all that inhabit them. Perhaps it is the way in which the bible repeats the same thought over and over again much like a child’s book, but Seth understood the content surprising well. He stopped me every couple of paragraphs to talk about what was happening or the meaning of a word. I had to admit to not knowing what firmament was except that the Bible defined it as “heaven”.
Seth noted on the sixth day, that God created “beasts” which in his mind had to be the dinosaurs. But this is also the same day that God created “man”. He knew this was not possible since dinosaurs and humans did not live at the same time. But he didn’t just dismiss the Bible as wrong. Instead, he thought about how it might work and perhaps God created monkeys on that day since humans evolved from monkeys.
His thought process reminded me of a scene from Inherit the Wind, a play based on the Scopes Monkey Trial, where the Clarence Darrow character argued that conceivably creation and evolution were not separate doctrines. I have not read the play since 10th grade, but I clearly remember the concept put forth that since the earth was created before the sun, it was possible that a “day” could have been millions of years.
I love that kids can take seemingly complex concepts and make them so simple.
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