Man's Inhumanity Toward Animals

            Earlier this year, TIME carried a story about a cockfight in California. Organizers were surreptitiously holding an event (cockfighting is illegal in California), when one of the birds flew away from the ring toward a spectator named Jose Luis Ochoa.

            In this match’s variation, one organizer had tied knives to the bird’s legs. As a result, Ochoa was stabbed in the calf; he bled to death.

            John Goodwin, member of California’s Humane Society, was asked to comment on the death. He responded, “I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often, considering the knives they put on those birds.”

            Reflecting on this tragedy, I cannot help but think of the Bible’s constant admonition of sowing and reaping. (Not to mention the Hindus, who instinctively observe this universal reality and label it karma.) However, there is a passage in Proverbs that captures well the spirit of cockfighting and other activities cruel to animals, “Good people are kind to their animals, but a mean person is cruel.” (Prov. 12:10.) CEV

Non-Human Animals

In 1998, a St. Bernard stood accused of savaging a resident of Lincoln, Mass. The owner found an animal-rights attorney to take the case by the name of Steven Wise.

Part of Mr. Wise’s defense was this statement, the dog was “… [A] good dog having a bad day.” He went on to defend his client arguing that the day had come for legal courts to offer full legal rights for “non-human animals.”

Do you think Mr. Wise would be happy with where our society is today?

Sue the Fisherman--He Hurt the Fish!

Antoine Goetschel finally carried things too far. In the past, he had enjoyed tremendous success as an animal rights attorney, suing citizens on behalf of the animals, including a recent case, in which he sued a local angler for torture because it took the fisherman ten minutes to reel in a Pike.

On March 7, voters in Switzerland voted against Goetschel’s initiative to extend legal representation for animals beyond dogs, fish, birds, and chickens. Even Goetschel admitted that his lawsuit, on behalf of the pike, may have created a voter backlash.

All of this reminded me of the question the psalmist asked:

3 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
4 what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?
5 You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor (Ps 8:3-5.)

While we Christians are certainly called to be stewards of this great earth, I do not see the elevation of animals to the level of humans in Scripture like I see in culture.

God’s Word, such as we see in Psalm eight, seems to emphasize over and over again how God’s crowning creation is the human being. Maybe we, in culture, should invest as much in protecting the human as we do the animal.