Can you read the early part of Genesis as a fable and still be a good Christian? Yes, but you're seemingly drawing to an inside straight in trying to do so, since you're likely to start taking the other parts of the Bible on an a-la-carte basis as well, throwing out any passages that don't fit your vision of God.
If we look at Genesis, we have the story of creation, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel. We then fast forward to Noah and the ark and Ham1 laughing at his naked and drunk dad. We then fast forward to Abraham.
Once we get to Abraham, we're in known history, where we can place him in the Middle East. The rest of Genesis is on more solid footing, at least a "period piece" of that era.
Adam and Noah are harder to vouch for, since they seemingly don't seem to have a firm spot in history. They also run counter to modern science, unlike Abraham, Isaac, Jabob and Joshua.
Thus, Adam and Noah are easy targets to toss under the bus, as they run counter to a naturalistic mindset.
I'm not familiar with Michael Gungor’s music, but he's bagged a Dove aware for his work. He's in the news for sending those two to the pavement for a good curb-stomp-
I have no more ability to believe, for example, that the first people on earth were a couple named Adam and Eve that lived 6,000 years ago. I have no ability to believe that there was a flood that covered all the highest mountains of the world only 4,000 years ago and that all of the animal species that exist today are here because they were carried on an ark and then somehow walked or flew all around the world from a mountain in the middle east after the water dried up. I have no more ability to believe these things than I do to believe in Santa Clause or to not believe in gravity.
Interestingly, that post from his website comes from February, but World just got around to noting it last week and I first saw something on it from this piece that ol' blog pal Kevin Holtsberry posted on Facebook.
Gungor's seeminglt hanging out with a emergent crowd, headlined by Rod Bell, and having a more emergent-style theology that doesn't want orthodoxy getting in the way of orthopraxy. Bell was read the Riot Act in evangelical circles for his univeralist-flavored take on salvation in Love Wins, so Gungor's overly-generous orthodoxy would tend to get more red flags that otherwise.
The first thing that hit me in this piece is that he isn't fighting that lack of ability to believe. I'm reminded of the guy asking Jesus for healing-"I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!"
In and of itself, that statement isn't sending Gungor to Hell. Believing in Jesus as your Lord and Savior does the trick for salvation, not having the right take on Genesis.
However, Adam and Noah do come into play in the New Testament narrative. Paul invokes Adam in Romans 5 and 1 Timothy 2, so giving Adam the bum's rush would lean you towards having Paul get chucked to the asphalt as well. It takes the steam out of the idea of Original Sin if the guy who kicked it off is just a fairy tale.
Jesus Himself mentioned Noah in Matthew 24. The writer of Hebrews has Noah and Abel in the Faith Hall of Fame in chapter 11. It's hard to take that HoF seriously if the charter members are just mythical.
Gungor has this interesting statement on his take
If you try to find some value in them as stories, there will be some people that say that you aren’t a Christian anymore because you don’t believe the Bible is true or “authoritative”. Even if you try to argue that you think there is a truth to the stories, just not in an historical sense; that doesn’t matter. ... You become part of ‘them’. The deniers of God’s Word.
This analogy comes to mind-Genesis-bashing is a gateway drug to an a-la-carte approach to Christian theology. It might not be that bad in and of itself, but it can tend to take out the tentposts that hold things down.
Seeing the stories Adam and Noah as truthy but not literally true won't bring down that tent of faith in and of itself, but if one kicks out too many tentposts, it will fall.
1Here's a bit of irony; the biggest defender of the story of Noah these days is Ham, Ken Ham of Creation Museum fame. They're working on a Noah's Ark theme park a few miles down the road from the museum. It's the left that would say "Cursed be Ham" these days, if they knew enough of Genesis to trot that pun out.
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