If the Bible were just a book of ancient myths I would agree that the world would be a better place if we Christians would just keep our faith to ourselves. Only one problem – the Bible is from history to science, from psychology to literature, from joy to true meaning, the most unique, influential and intellectually compelling book ever written.
Before I became a Christian I used to think that only foolish people or people looking for a crutch read the Bible. After all, I reasoned, it was full of myths and errors, clearly unscientific and obviously not historically accurate. Funny thing I was an expert on why you shouldn’t read the Bible but in reality I had never read the Bible before. Now as a Christian for 35 years I have literally read my Bible over and over and over again and have come to the realization it is historically accurate, scientifically right on the money, and the finest book ever written to have a positive self-image and great mental health. Let me share a few thoughts on why I’m such a strong supporter of this one incredible book. Let’s look at the following three areas: psychology, science, and history.
Hasn’t psychology replaced religion? Can a 2,000 year-old book still be relevant today? The American psychiatrist, J. T. Fisher shared why psychiatry can only serve to supplement the distilled wisdom of the Bible when he said:
“If you were to take the sum total of all authoritative articles ever written by the most qualified of psychologists and psychiatrists on the subject of mental hygiene, if you were to combine them and refine them and cleave out the excess verbiage, if you were to take the whole of the meat and none of the parsley, and if you were to have these unadulterated bits of pure scientific knowledge concisely expressed by the most capable of living poets, you would have an awkward and an incomplete summary of the Sermon on the Mount. And it would suffer immeasurably through comparison. For nearly two thousand years the Christian world has been holding in its hands the complete answer to its restless and fruitless yearning. Here rests the blueprint for successful human life, with optimum mental health and contentment.”[1]
In fact, when it comes to psychology the Bible has more to say about human nature and what life is all about than Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Confucius and Freud combined. I also believe that if one practices the wisdom contained in the Bible’s Book of Proverbs we would see a revolution in healthy behavior.
What about the Bible and its role in science? I believe that it is intellectually dishonest to not inform people that many of the greatest scientists during the past 500 years such as Newton, Boyle, Kepler, Faraday, Kelvin, Maxwell and Dalton strongly believed in the existence of God. In fact, the Bible has been the indispensable mentor of many of our greatest scientific men of all time. Just consider the following:
Isaac Newton, perhaps the greatest scientist of all time, once said: “We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy. I find more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history whatsoever.” It is well known that Robert Boyle, the founding father of physical Chemistry, spent a large amount of his personal wealth on Bible translation work. Samuel Morse, who invented the telegraph in 1844, used a quotation from the Holy Scriptures for his first message: “What has God wrought!” (Numbers 23:23 KJV). Lord Kelvin was elected at age twenty-two as Glasgow University’s youngest professor ever. Few know, however, that it was his habit to open every one of his lectures with prayer to God. And the great German astronomer and founder of the discipline of physical astronomy, Johann Kepler, when asked what he was doing when searching the vast reaches of our universe said he was “Thinking God’s thoughts after him.” Clearly we can see that the Bible and science have long been companions in the quest for meaning.
And when it comes to the Bible being a book of historical myths I believe that the archaeologist has shown this to be patently false. In his 10 million plus copies sold to date, Werner Keller, wrote a fascinating book called, The Bible as History. In the closing words of his introduction Keller wrote: “In view of the overwhelming mass of authentic and well-attested evidence now available, as I thought of the skeptical criticism which from the eighteenth century onwards would fain have demolished the Bible altogether, there kept hammering on my brain this one sentence: ‘The Bible is right after all.’”[2]
Archaeologists have in the last 150 years discovered hundreds of artifacts, tablets, statues and cities that have verified numerous biblical accounts to be historically accurate. The following two examples help to give us a flavor of just how the Bible has been proven to be historically accurate:
The Bible mentioned over 40 times that an ancient civilization called the Hittites existed. However, up until the 1800’s there was absolutely no mention in secular history that a civilization called the Hittites ever existed. Thus, for over 3,000 years the Hittites were considered in the secular world to be a myth. But in the 1800’s an archaeological dig took place that unearthed several temples, sculptures and over 10,000 clay tablets that shared much information about an ancient civilization called the Hittites!
Another interesting example of an ancient civilization that the Bible mentioned was a real city concerns the city of Nineveh. Once again the only knowledge we had until the mid- nineteenth century that this great Assyrian city existed could be found in the pages of the Bible. But the famous archaeologist Henry Layard decided to embark on a major excavation to find this mysterious great city because he felt that if the Bible mentioned it, it must exist. And lo-and-behold in the 1840’s he unearthed over 25,000 clay tablets that brought to light this great and mysterious city – Nineveh. And what excites me is how the Bible played an instrumental part in its discovery. For if the Bible didn’t mention that a city called Nineveh existed we probably would never have sought to find her, because we would have no idea that such a city existed. History and the Bible, far from being foes, have been great allies in establishing the veracity of each other.
Would our world really be better off without the Bible? Only time and eternity will be able to give us the full answer. As for me no book has been able to offer mankind more comfort, reasons for living, and answers to life’s more difficult questions than this one incredible book. I think Abraham Lincoln summed it up best when he said: “I decided a long time ago that it was less difficult to believe that the Bible was what it claimed to be than to disbelieve it.”
[1] J. T. Fisher and L. S. Hawley, A Few Buttons Missing. (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1951).
[2] Werner Keller, The Bible as History. (New York: Bantam Books, Inc., 1980). Introduction, p. xxv.