People Who Trust and Respect the Bible, But Selectively

A few days ago my son was reading the book of Joel, and in verse 4 of the first chapter came across these words:

What the locust swarm has left the great locusts have eaten; what the great locusts have left the young locusts have eaten; what the young locusts have left other locusts have eaten. (NIV)

That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpiller eaten. (KJV)

The scientist in him wasn’t about to leave the word “cankerworm” just sitting there, so he looked it up, finding this listing in Wikipedia:

Alsophila pometaria, the fall cankerworm, is a moth of the family Geometridae. The species was first described by the KJV Bible. It is found in North America from Nova Scotia west to Alberta, south to Colorado and California.

He found it interesting that the first citation of such a species was in the Bible, and that the Wikipedia contributors recognized that it was the Bible where it first appears. His email to us had the subject heading, “The KJV is a nature journal.”

This of course stands in stark contrast to the many who think the Bible is out to lunch where it tries to tackle matters of science; people who would not grant it authority in any subject area. The scientific community has a hard time taking the first few chapters of Genesis seriously, and many volumes have been written trying to resolve the issues of the Bible versus science.

This reminded me of a tract — small folded piece of paper containing a 500-600 word evangelistic message — from years ago with a title like, “What if Noah’s Ark Were True?” The premise of the tract was that there are people in our world who remain ever vigilant about discrediting the story of the global flood because they feel that in doing so, they are discrediting the entire Bible. That done, if they don’t have to trust it in historical or scientific matters, they don’t have to do what it says. They don’t need make any lifestyle changes. Think about it: If the narrative of Noah and the Ark never happened, then I don’t have to respond to the rest of the Bible’s prescriptive advice for my life.

First of all, full marks to them for getting that principle. James 1:22 tells us, But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves. (NLT) On each and every page, the scriptures that we have been given invite a response. What are we going to do with what we are reading on the page? Essentially every chapter invites us to ask, “So what?” Every story has an application. In The Jesus Storybook Bible, Sally Lloyd-Jones takes this even further and says, “Every story whispers His name;” in other words, each of the major Old Testament narratives not only has much to speak to our current condition, but each is foreshadowing the coming of a Savior, and why it was humanity needed a Savior.

Back to applying the words of scripture, in related passages listed at BibleHub.com, we hear Jesus saying, “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” (Matthew 7:24 NIV) and earlier, Jeremiah wrote “The LORD said to me, ‘Proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem: ‘Obey the words of this covenant and carry them out.’“

Most readers here respect the scriptures, and you may want to check the boxes for today’s devotional and consider this done, but even within the church there may be those who practice “the form of godliness” but “deny its power.” This is a reference to 2 Timothy 3:5 “They will maintain the outward appearance of religion but will have repudiated its power. So avoid people like these.” (NET)

…So the Wikipedia contributors conceded that the Bible contains the first reference to cankerworms. I suppose that it simply a statement of fact. On the plus side, it shows that the Bible is still visible in our post-Christian world. On the minus side, that’s really about all that it says.

But the skeptics — atheists and agnostics — shouldn’t be too quick to condemn the Bible’s attempts at science to be antiquated. Where the scriptures say “From the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same the LORD’S name is to be praised;” (Psalm 113:3 KJV) it would be easy to say, ‘Well we know that it’s the earth that revolves around the sun, it doesn’t really rise at all.’

However, the weather app on my phone clearly indicates times for “sunrise” and “sunset.” If we can continue to tolerate that in the 2020s, we should equally be willing to permit the Bible some latitude when it comes to matters of science.

And we shouldn’t be surprised when the Bible, even if read only as “a nature journal” gets it right more often that some expect.

Is it possible there are many who could use a change in their lifestyle right now?