by Gayle Swenson
Since my elementary school days when I was addicted to Nancy Drew and Sherlock Holmes, to my job first as a copyeditor and then as a writer for the federal government, and the songs I’ve written for almost 50 years, I’ve been a lover of words.
Even now, I never leave home without a book, and if I’m home with time on my hands, my nose is usually in the pages; just ask Kris! I started a monthly book club almost 10 years ago to discuss books with fellow bookworms. I love the smell and feel of hardcover books, and enjoy the many chats I have with my librarian.
But the book I can’t live without is the Bible. The truths in that book—written by men of God who allowed the Holy Spirit to pen God’s infallible words through them—tell us all we need to know about living the God kind of life. And that word instructs us to be cautious about what we allow to enter our hearts via words because our very lives depend on it. Words we hear or read, whether from the pulpit or the world, must be tested against God’s word so we can cling to life-giving truth and discard what isn’t.
Which is why when I recently heard the character in a popular movie claim that man never had dominion over the animals, it caught my attention. Hey, dude, your character may think he’s a man of wisdom, but this is only a movie based on a book by a well-known author, and that information is incorrect! Here’s proof:
“Then God said, “Let Us make mankind in Our image … and let them have complete authority over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the beasts, over all the earth and over everything that creeps upon the earth.” (Genesis 1:26 AMP)
This isn’t an expose’ of the Genesis scripture, I’m just pointing out the importance of recognizing an untruth, and these days, it’s not difficult to find a lot of those untruths spoken by folks we might look up to. Our own words may also be suspect at times! This was just a movie, but I needed to reject that thought. Why?
“We can demolish every deceptive fantasy that opposes God and break through every arrogant attitude that is raised up in defiance of the true knowledge of God. We capture, like prisoners of war, every thought and insist that it bow in obedience to the Anointed One.” (II Corinthians 10:5 TPT)
I wrote a song entitled The Book that admonishes all of us:
You’ve got to go to the book
You’ve got to study the book
You’ve got to believe the book
You’ve got to live the book
If you want to overcome
If you want to be set free
If you want to have eternal hope
You’ve got to go to the book
Interestingly, in the end of the movie, a statement is made expressing the hope that one day every living thing on the planet will live together in peace, and it occurred to me that before sin entered Adam and Eve’s perfect garden, that is exactly what God had in mind. The Bible account indicates that God paraded every living creature past Adam and he gave them their name. (It also opened his eyes to his need for a wife!) If whoever wrote those final thoughts in the movie had read the Bible, maybe it could have had a different ending altogether.
Speaking of experiencing peace—God’s kind in this case—at our next concert, we will perform a song recently written by Jess about a struggle that taught her a valuable lesson about God’s marvelous peace. We hope you can join us:
