My wife is a strict "Seven Day Creation" believer. I tend to think that God took much longer; no sun and moon until the third "day", that kind of thing. But my main complaint with Creationist Classic is that our prime goal should be telling others about Christ's personal love for them, and his sacrifice that makes them clean before God so that they can have fellowship with He who made them. When well-meaning and faithful Christians lose this focus and drift off into the Creationist Cul-de-sac, it can put barriers up. Case in point, my best buddy from high school. He is an FBI agent, very intelligent, and very scientific. (Thank God he hasn't been lulled asleep by the Unitarians!) If she went to him, and banged him with "God made the universe in eight days and you are going to hell unless you believe it!", he would laugh in her face, and decided based on that sampling, Christians must be confused simpletons who don't understand a billion years of erosion, the background radiation of Big Bang, and simple math. Christ's free gift of Salvation, the real message, would be dismissed along with the weak (he would feel) argument of a seven-day Creation. But if I approach him with Salvation, which is centrally a spiritual argument that has no litmus paper proof, he may be argued around to understanding how God loves us all.
I could be wrong, and SevenDayism may be true. But if I am wrong, it doesn't threaten my salvation, God will straiten me out after I am dead, and then it won't matter. It will matter if I fail to reach my friend because his scientific mind locks me out based on what he considers foolishness. I guess the arguement for me would better be the admonishment "not to eat meat offered before idols" if it would offend my brother. It comes down to what the most important point of the Bible is, and I have to side with Salvation.
My $0.02.
That is a good post, and I agree with you. If I sounded like I want people to take their focus off of the overall big message "Christ Died on the Cross for our sins" I am terribly sorry, because that is certainly not my intent.
I also believe in the old-earth. I think the 7 days is not the same 7 day week that we now have. But the order of events are as they are listed in Genesis.
My argument is not just with science class, but with the dirction public schools are heading in general. It is not that they are just taking God out of the schools, they are teaching that God does not exist and it is stupid to believe in God--in many schools.
But you are right, we can not and should not take our eye of the ball. The message of Christ is the overall message, but if people are taught at a young age not to believe in God--they aren't going to believe in Jesus either.
"Everyone", eh? Ooookay...
Sorry if you're already familiar with the concepts of the theory of relativity, but you and your wife could both be correct. Relativity tells us that time is not an absolute quantity, but rather that the amount of time that passes between two events will depend on the observer's reference frame. Just as a simple example, if you board a fast spaceship and fly to Alpha Centuri and return while I stay on earth, I might say that the trip took you 4.5 years, while you might say you were only gone for one week. Which of us is right? We both are; that's what it means when we say time is a relative quantity. Time is affected by your state of motion and the gravitational field in your location. (General relativity allows us to make this generalization.) In the early universe, immediately after the big bang, the universe was much smaller, but there was the same amount of mass-energy present. Therefore, the gravitational field was extremely high. This high gravitational field causes time measurements to be different from measurements of the same time period today. (After apologizing for the long-winded explanation) It is possible that a period of six literal twenty four hour days measured during the time immediately after the big bang (creation of the universe) could be measured to be tens of billions of years as we see it today. Furthermore, there are other parallels. For example, God said "let there be light" as one of the first creation acts. In the first moments after the big bang, according to scientific theories, there was no matter, only radiation, ie. light. I have heard of further parallels, but I am not enough of a Biblical expert to delve into them further. Personally, I beleive that our ability to reason was given by God. Science is a product of human reason, so it too is given by God. Since this is the case, there can be no conflict between science and the Scriptures.