Creation Station
Health and Sanctity of Life
God’s Book of Medicine
The statement that the Bible is not a book of science is one that I have heard many times, even from some Christians, and it is as wrong as it could be. While the Bible is not a textbook of science, which is a good thing since textbooks need to be regularly revised, it is a book of science, including medicine. The medical information contained in the Bible predates modern medicine by thousands of years and not surprisingly to Christians it tells us many of the same things.
The book of Leviticus gives us instructions on how to handle dead bodies and how to deal with infectious diseases that if followed would have saved many lives over the past centuries. One life that might have been saved if Biblical precepts were followed was George Washington.
After leaving the Presidency in 1797 he went home to Mt. Vernon where in 1799 he developed a bronchial infection. If left alone Washington might have recovered, but his doctors were following Greek ideas on illness that taught that people became sick because they had bad blood. So Washington’s doctors cut him in order to drain him of his “bad blood” until they finally bled him to death. If his doctors had instead followed Biblical principles, they would have left him alone. The Bible tells us that life is in the blood. The greatest biologist of all, Creationist Louis Pasteur, several years later scientifically proved that it is bad germs, not bad blood, which make people sick.
Another piece of medical information from the Bible is circumcision. While the primary purpose of circumcision was clearly symbolic, research has shown that it has definite health benefits. In the October 29, 2005 edition of Science News is a report of a study that found that circumcised men had half the infection rate from HIV, as did uncircumcised men. Other studies have found similar health benefits from circumcision.
While circumcision was clearly meant as a sign setting Jewish men apart from Gentile men, the fact that God picked this particular sign shows His interest in our physical as well as spiritual health.
