The Full Creation

(Image credit: https://blog.obitel-minsk.com/2019/02/the-list-of-musical-instruments-mentioned-in-the-bible.html) I've been having a bit of a conversation about how chiasms are not that easy to grasp, which got me thinking along the following lines Jonathan Pageau makes the point that we generally do not read icons and other religious art correctly, because we regard such things as different sizes of person as unrealistic, the hand positions as unnatural, the various beasts as fictional/fantastic and so on. We moderns are thus at a disadvantage I contend that we have a similar problem with texts, including the text of most importance to Christians, the Bible. We generally read a text like it's a string of dominos, one thing leading to another. When coupled with literalism, this leads to a rather bland reading experience. Such an approach can lead us to see books like Proverbs as a collection of aphorisms thrown together hapazardly, with no guiding principle. We c

This is a highly condensed version of how my map of reality developed; much is left out, and clarity is sacrificed for a packed sentence. My journey began in a tradition that has a deep respect for scripture, especially interpreted 'materialistically' or 'literally'. While there's problems with this, it has the strength of honouring the word of God: I was never persuaded by liberalism, which thinks it knows better than the Bible. My thought has always been that if God has spoken to us through Scripture, perhaps he knows what it means and we don't always, and to hold something in contempt is to place yourself in a position where you cannot understand it. But before I get in really deep, I should explain the basic problem I had, which was essentially a feeling of cognitive dissonance with my experience of the world, knowledge of history, literature, art and science etc, and what the mainline reformed-evangelical protestant church (I will use the word '