The Creation Story as a Historical Parable

The Creation Story as a Historical Parable
Genesis 2: 4a

Once when our sons were young we were driving through northern France, across a plain with a range of mountains in the background. In the back seat our younger son (who was about twelve) started giving a lecture on how these mountains came into being through the shifting of tectonic plates (or something of that kind) billions of years ago. Our older son was about fifteen at the time and was rebelling against the parental stance on religion by transferring his allegiance to a church that was more conservative than ours (which we felt was much better than abandoning church altogether). He retorted that of course this was rubbish and that it was God who created the world and that God did this just a few thousand years ago. In the front seat, my wife and I grinned discretely at each other and left them to it...