To Christians who aren't creationists

[Neo-Scholastic]

The creation account was meant to be taken literally ONLY.

Are you suggesting that the Song of Songs and Revelations should also be taken literally? I take it you are half blind having plucked out one of your sinful eyes already.

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That doesn't explain the necessity of interpretation unless you assume the creator is ambivalent.

Imagine the reverse. Why wouldn't we attempt to interpret scripture unless we were ambivalent about knowing our creator. (Assuming of course that we allow the possibility of divine revelation)

Imagine trying to discern Batman in 4000 years...

The Caped Crusader would still be considered a bad ass!

...using methods that...require the rejection of things that contradict your views and accepting those that do.

That is the ever present danger of interpretation, yet not a reason to abandon the effort, because it seems God wants us to struggle. Dr. George Dole said it better than I:

"We have a mistrust of imagery because, by comparison with the languages of science or even formal theology, it seems undisciplined. It [scripture] makes suggestions, it invites the mind to imagine and seems to exert little control over the imagination it has set loose. Yet I would insist, the Bible is an imaginative book. There are very few abstract terms in biblical Hebrew; and while the Greeks had developed a philosophical vocabulary by the time of Christ, the Gospels make little use of it. Jesus told stories, used imagery. For him, the concrete was the vessel for the intangible...he paid his disciples the profound compliment of provoking their minds rather than satisfying them."

I am an artist. Long after completing a painting, I often find clear and obvious symbolism in my pictures. These symbols relate to the events happening my life when I made the painting, meanings I was unaware of and which I did not intentionally place there. The painting's significance was in the painting from the start, I just did not recognize it until later.

It's not that I reject the surface or literal meaning of the text, I just don't care. It's not important to me 'how' the world was created, I'm more interested in 'why?'. 'Why? is the most human question to ask and yet impossible to approach scientifically.