Bible Studies

Today I put the finishing touches on my customer P.G.’s website Evolution – God’s Creation Engine. It struck me as a fortuitous time to receive the work, since I have just started reading the Bible.

The version of the bible we have is called The Message; it was a gift to H from the police chaplain, and has been sitting untouched on our bookshelf for over a year! It was only after I finished reading the epic Lord of the Rings by J R Tolkien that I decided I would tackle The Bible. I know fragments of stories from my church-going days as a kid, but have never read it from cover to cover.

Over the last few weeks the Bible has become compulsory night time reading for me, I don’t go to sleep without reading at least a couple of passages. I’ve finished the gospels and am now up to Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. I like Paul, I think he is very down to earth and parts of his message have really touched me.

God must love coincidence because we recently discovered our neighbours G & J are into bible studies. Enjoyed a very nice evening with them, the first time since we’ve moved here – if you don’t count J’s birthday party shortly after we arrived over a year ago!

G & J seem to be irked by the Catholic tenet of the Holy Trinity – ie God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. J has even written a paper to disprove the belief. This is all rather over my head at the moment.

I can agree with most of the conclusions of my customer P.G. on Evolution – God’s Creation Engine (although not his views on Islam). In my limited studies of the Bible I can’t say I ever subscribed to the literal story of creation. To me, much of what is in the Bible is allegory, figurative – like the parables of Jesus.

I always thought this was just common sense, but whilst doing research for the Evolution site I was astounded to find the number of groups with websites denouncing evolutionists, because it says in Genesis that God created the world in six days!

I don’t think P.G.’s views are that revolutionary, although it is apparent that they have not always received the support of his local clergy – one of whom described P.G. as “anti-cleric”. However he was heartened by the comments last year of a Vatican priest, which is what prompted his new web site.

P.G. writes – “I am now 80 years old and can die happy knowing that humans are at last coming to understand that God employs the evolutionary process to populate our Universe.”

Perhaps it is just as well that P.G. does not have internet access and hasn’t seen those creationist web sites!