Simple faith isn't simple for me. I almost envy the people in my sister's church who accept the Bible without reservation. It is a child's faith, a faith that didn't go to college and have to go though the long period of doubt and questioning that I did. There was a time when I believed unquestionably, a blissful time of pre-critical naiveté. I think that now I am in a wonderful place of post-critical naivete. That is, I see the truth in it.. It is a document of amazing importance. It is the foundational literature of our culture. The old testament in particular was written by herders wandering in the desert. It is amazing. It is not unlike Shakespeare's histories, part myth, part history. I know that much of it is true, but not all is fact and that is a good thing. It doesn't have to be fact, it is parable, it is metaphor and as such it is beautiful. It was written in the language of poetry, of myth. Christ's importance to me is not that he is the son of God, it is that he taught us that we all were the sons and daughters of the same God. He tried to unite petty, waring tribes. It is ironic that it still isn't done and the battle is mainly in the place where Christ lived and did his work. I think we err horribly when we try to make the bible FACT, using the language of logos for a document written in the language of mytos. It would be like trying to say that a poem like TS Elliot"s Love Song of J Alfred Purfrock was fact. You sort of miss the point if you do.