BIBLICAL BRIEFS 102
When I received this question, I thought of what Michael Shermer said: “Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrive at for non-smart reasons.” Here are several implied matters which ask to be dealt with. 1. The only references to peacocks in the Bible are in 1Kings 10:22 and 2Chron. 9:21 (that’s the same verse), which tells of Solomon who imported (with ships from Tarshis) “gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks”, possibly from India, perhaps North Africa, things that were unobtainable in his area. Because of ambiguity in the Hebrew word for ‘peacocks’, it is sometimes translated as ‘baboons’, but other times also as ‘hand-cut stones’. There is nothing sinister to it. 2. The rain in the Cape (and elsewhere) is not due to peacocks calling or not calling. This superstition is based on a misinterpretation of natural laws. The dictionary definitions of the concept superstition is dangerously close to “futile faith” (1 Cor. 15:17) – “extreme and unnecessary scruples in the observance of religious rites not commanded, or of points of minor importance … the doing of things not required by God, or abstaining from things not forbidden; or the belief of what is absurd, or belief without evidence … Belief in the direct agency of superior powers in certain extraordinary or singular events, or in omens and prognostics.” Believers often occupy themselves with such senseless issues. 3. This particular superstition is based on the peacock male who performs a mating dance. Because mating for peacocks takes place during the rainy season, it is also accompanied by an increase in peacock ecstasy, which by chance sounds like desperate calls for rain. The horror of the wheezing disqualifies it as something prophetic. Only a joke It is, therefore, a myth that peacocks call the rain. 4. Believers must guard against the uncritical interference of conspiracy theories. It keeps believers busy with a different agenda than that of God. 5. We sometimes make comparisons which are not logical in the natural and/or spiritual realm – it is often the source of deception. 6. We will increasingly be required to testify in an accountable manner to a doubtful, but sober scientific, secular world, ” to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you” (1Pet. 3:15). Let’s rather pray to God, who, with his voice, wondrously thunders (Job 37:5), to make his rain fall upon us all, the just and the unjust (Matt. 5:45).
Dr Tom Gouws
