The animal kingdom is “red in tooth and claw”. Are we any better?
One evening this week a hen caught her foot in the perch and was found the next morning hanging down suspended by the foot. The other fowls had pecked her head and neck until it was raw and bloody.
As always we get very few goslings from the many eggs the geese lay in several nests at this time of year. Four were placed safely in a fenced yard with their mothers and ganders which stayed faithfully on guard.
Somehow they forced their way through the fence and ended in the pig enclosure close by. We discovered this when the last gosling was being eaten by a boar.
In April a gang of four men invaded the Salvation Army home for abandoned babies in Doornfontein, Johannesburg. The staff were held at gunpoint while the building was ransacked and everything of value belonging to the home and the staff was stolen.
The outrage lasted for 45 minutes of dreadful tension and fear. Surely a sanctuary for helpless babies should be safe even from criminals.
My first two examples of animal cruelty were perpetrated by animals which can have no concept of cruelty, unless, like our dogs they are trained not to harm farm animals. There is no excuse for wanton human cruelty, but our news bulletins are full of horror stories of individual and gang-related violence.
What may start as simple thefts or burglaries often turn into sadistic torturing or killings of the victims.
What is wrong with us humans? Where do the evil urges come from? Is there any way to turn our society around?
First the bad news: “You have no excuse, you who pass judgement on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgement do the same things. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Rom 2:1 and 3:23). Then the good news: “God will credit righteousness – for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.” (Rom 4:24,25).
Then: “Put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitudes of your minds; and [to] put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Eph 4:22-24).
