Christian School

I was raised up Christian; sent to a Christian K-12 school where we were taught that everything in the bible was true. The universe, stars, sun, moon, Earth, animals, and finally man were created in only six days. We read the begats and, even though some of those early guys like Adam, Noah, and Methuselah live hundreds of years, we could calculate the generations from Adam (the first man), to Jesus (the lamb of God). So it was figured that the cosmos came into being about six thousand years ago. When someone asked about the Earth's strata showing millions of years of change or fossil records showing animals that lived hundreds of millions of years in the past, we were told that God had made it all to look that old, but that it really wasn't. I was taught that history was really "His story" and that Jesus Christ really offered Thomas (the doubter) the opportunity to put his finger through the holes in Jesus's hands. Thomas politely refused, then fell to the floor and worshiped his Lord. The name Thomas will always be associated with someone who questions hearsay and requires the evidence of his eyes and reasoning. After reading an astronomy book about Halley's comet, I asked my dad if the star of Bethlehem could have been a comet as some have suggested. He was sitting with his brother, Gordon, and immediately replied, "No. I believe it was the 'glory of God'". Hmm, I thought.