What's the Real Question

During my freshman year at college I went to a debate at the University of Regina on Evolution vs. Creation. The actual debate part of the debate was fairly friendly, but not too great. Both sides were a bit weak. At the end the floor was opened for questions. There were not many questions. Most people got up and tearfully told the evolutionist that no matter what he said he was not going to tear down the faith of those who believe, and basically calling him an evil person. That fundamentally disturbed me, and I think about it often with great sadness.
Last year, when I was in Germany I read a book that was 'debating' the old earth movement against the new earth movement (people who believe the earth is millions of years old, even if God created it vs people who think the earth is only a few thousand years old). I say 'debate' because it was written from a pro young earth point of view. The book was very scornful towards the old earthers, even attacking them for being unable to explain a certain point and for saying that they did not yet have an answer. Later in the book, when discussing the young earth position, the author mentioned an issue that the young earth position could not explain, but people were certainly exploring the issue and a reasonable explanation would be found soon. I had to read that twice and then check back in the book to see if I had read it correctly, and I had. Basically, "when they do it, it's wrong. But when I do it, it's okay." By making those two points, he completely invalidated any other argument he had because I couldn't trust him. It was a silly book.
I bring up these issues because of the sermon we heard at church today. We are doing a series called "Ask Anything". People submitted questions and now they are answering them. Last week the question was "Aren't all religions basically the same?" Next week the question is "Does God send people to hell even if they have never even heard of Jesus?" This weeks was "How can you support creation when there is so much science for evolution out there?" The questions are pretty standard.
I really liked what was said today, probably because it is very much what I've thought for a long time. If I could boil it down to one sentence, it would be: God created the world somehow, and now we need to show people His love. He said he had an issue with how christians tended to handle the whole evolution/creation question. The text of Genesis chapter one is a narrative text, not meant to be taken literally necessarily. Even though 'there was evening and there was morning" every day, there was nothing to make the evening or morning (no sun/moon/stars) until halfway through. As he explained it, the narrative was collected to combat the idea that the sun was a god, and the moon was a god, and the wind was a god, and the sky was a god, etc, ideas they had been taught and immersed in when they were slaves in Egypt for hundreds of years.
He also said that when you go to someone and essentially attack their beliefs, they get defensive and try to prove themselves right and other people wrong. It's a natural tendency and everyone falls prey to it. I know I do. But that seems to be the way that christians approach the debate. They get angry and confrontational. They don't try to see the point of view of someone else, but they throw the bible in their faces and point to Genesis one as being literal. There is no attempt to listen, no attempt to understand that many people are brought up believing otherwise and that thinking about someone creating the world instead of it 'just happening' is difficult to do. In the same way, for people brought up in the church, it is amazingly hard to believe that the earth could be millions of years old because that is not what we are taught.
The problem is, how the world was created is not the issue that the Bible talks about. The narrative is concerned with ensuring the reader knows who created the world and that humanity was the peak. God is God: He could do it however He wants. He is outside of time and matter, so we can't constrain Him to creating in seven days. But because christians seem so hellbent on proving the world is young and was created in seven days, they seem to forget to listen, to forget to show people that God loves them and that is why He created the world. That cannot happen when the only question that seems to be raised is how He did it.
Sometimes I think that getting to the truth of the wrong question is as bad as ignoring the truth of the right question.