Is a Christian Mind a Closed Mind?

Not so long ago I was sitting in a bar with my friend, and somehow the whole religion thing worked its way into the conversation, (it wasn’t me this time, and no, we weren’t drunk!) Anyway, my friend turned to me and said, “Are you religious?” “Yeah I’m a Christian,” I replied. He simply chuckled, rather sympathetically, and said, “That’s very nice, but… well, just open your mind!” He was very light-hearted about it and he’s a lovely guy. It did get me thinking though.

Is a Christian mind a closed mind? I’m not so sure it is. As my faith has developed, I’ve found that I’ve slowly been able to understand things about the world that never made sense to me before.

The story of Creation is one that tends to crop up frequently in the debate between religious and non-religious people. Perhaps my friend thought that I was ‘closed-minded’ in believing the story of Genesis, for instance, when there is apparently so much scientific evidence to support theories such as Evolution. But is it not possible that both theories could be true, and that they could go hand-in-hand instead of head-to-head?

I think so. In the first chapter of Genesis, the process by which life came to be on the Earth is described as happening in this order: the emergence of plants and vegetation, (verses 11 – 13), the emergence of life in the sea, (verses 20 – 21), the emergence of winged life, (verses 20 – 21), then animal life on the land, (verses 24 – 25), and then finally the arrival of man, (verses 26 – 27). Compare this to the article on the origins of life from http://www.space.com/searchforlife/life_origins_001205.html and you’ll see the same pattern: the first microbes from the primordial soup “learned how to extract oxygen from water, and living things populated the newly expanded continental shelf regions,” (so possibly plants), after which came, “fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals and humanity.” (Accessed 17/07/09).

In my opinion, both theories tell the same story but from a different perspective. Whilst the Bible breaks the process down into periods of time referred to as “days,” the theory of Evolution refers to periods of billions of years. In my opinion, Genesis had to be written in a context that the people of time would understand, and I interpret the use of the term “day” to be metaphorical rather than literal.

There are many other instances in which science and Christianity can work together, (why does there have to be a difference between The Big Bang and God saying “Let there be light” in Genesis 1:3, for example.) My friend presumably couldn’t accept that anything about my religion could be true, whereas I can see the accuracy in both scientific theory and the teachings of my faith.

In which case – could it be that I am more open-minded than he is?