In "Blue Like Jazz" Donald Miller writes about why he had a hard time taking Jesus and the church seriously:

"It also confused me that some people would look at part fo the Bible but not the whole thing. They ignored a lot of obvious questions. I felt as if Christianity,as a religious system, was ta product that kept falling apart, and whoever was seeling it would hold the broken parts behind his back trying to divert everybody's attention The children's story stuff was the thing I felt Christians were holding behind their back. The Garden of Eden, fall of man, was a pretty silly story, and Noah and the ark, all of that, that seemed pretty fairty-tale too. It took me a whle to realize that these stories, while often used with children, are not at all chldren's stories...."

I wonder if don't shoot ourselves in the foot by asking people to believe deeply true stories are historical narratives. Don't we deserve to be dismissed if we can't tell the difference between a news story and King Lear? I am all for defending the foolishness of the gospel, but that is different from being merely fooish and fearful. The great irony is that fundamentalism is finally rooted in an inability to trust God, demanding the illustion of certitude in a book--which, of course, is idolatry.