📖 Why Genesis is not a Myth

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I. You may be aware that there are other ancient creation stories from Mesopotamia in addition to the creation story in Genesis 1–2.

Like Genesis, the Mesopotamian myths also describe a chaotic watery wasteland and the arrival of humans. While Genesis shares those two similarities, there are four aspects of its creation account that are radically different:

In this way, Genesis works like a New Testament letter. It speaks into cultural assumptions and corrects them. Instead of capricious gods who demand servitude, Genesis shows us the true God who is powerful, generous, and relational.

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II. When you read the Gospels, remember they’re not just a random collection of stories about Jesus thrown together. Yes, you can read each story or parable on its own and learn something. But the order matters. Seeing how the stories connect helps us better understand what each one is teaching.

Take Luke 10 for example. In Luke 10:25, a lawyer asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus asks him how he would sum up the Law of God, and the man answers: love God and love people. Jesus tells him he has answered correctly.

Right after this, Luke gives us the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:30–37 (a story about loving others) and then the story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10:38–42 (a story about loving God).

You can read those stories individually, but in context they drive home Jesus’ point: to follow him is to love God and love people.

A few things to keep in mind to help you understand the Bible:

I. Benjamin L. Gladd showing us that the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus:

So here's my current tally of OT quotations and allusions book by book:

II. Glen Scrivener on hell:

“I don’t know if you believe in Hell, but Jesus did.

But What If We're Wrong by Chuck Klosterman

A book focused on thinking about the present as if it were the past. In other words, modern people always think of the past differently than people in the past thought about the time they lived in.

In one way, I really enjoyed the book. It was contrarian in nature, but not for the sake of being contrarian. As my dad often told me, conventional wisdom is always wrong. This book demonstrates how what we think future people will think about our present day will not be what we assume they will think about it.

The book was very thought-provoking and enlightening in terms of how "history" gets shaped and viewed. The author himself is very secular and progressive, so even that was interesting, as even some of his predictions on how future people would view us, I could already see the flaws in, as I don't at all think as he does on certain positions.

Granted, he even says in the book that his "predictions" are almost certain to be wrong as well, but we do know this: future people will not think about many things the way we think about them.

In all, I enjoyed the book, even with my disagreements. If this book review sounds a little confusing, well, the book itself is not a normal book and will make much more sense if you read it!

7.5/10

P.S. Does it really count if people don’t know you have it?