Animals

My own deep conviction is that life is an evidence of God.  Mankind tends to look for evidence of God, and failing that, the beginning of life.  The presumption is that if the origin of life is found in some mechanical action in the cosmos or nature, we will have either found proof of God, or we have proof in the process unveiled that there is no personal God.  Perhaps number one on the list of factors looked for by space scientists is life.  They yearn to find some evidence of life outside the earth’s atmosphere.  If life can’t be found, they look for an environment that might have once supported life, or could if there were life to be installed there. We are further taken by the varieties of life: land and sea; vertebrate and invertebrate; short and extended in time; beneficial and threatening; and, so the story may be extended.  Recently I saw an insect a bit larger than a period at the end of a sentence, crossing a piece of white paper.  How in the world could so tiny an organism have gotten into my study, have determined to move at an amazing speed for his or her size, and paused as though for some consideration when I touched the paper.  The mystery is mind boggling, which experience did not prevent me from sending the innocent period to the place of insect ancestors. I wonder if I knew the origin of this specie, would I gain some understanding of life mystery?

For nearly 200 years the world has debated, seriously, acrimoniously and sometimes humorously, the concepts of evolution – following the publication of Darwin’s: On the Origin of the Species, in 1859.  Tension mounted through ensuing decades in that the concepts of life creation and development were taken to initiate and emerge from nature rather than from God.  Neither the naturalists nor the theists seem to hold forth with adequate consideration of what had gone before, and with open minds to discover a workable theory, generally acceptable, about the origin of life.  Had the matter been treated with more objectivity in the variant presuppositions we would surely be much further along in the disciplines of studies related to the existence of life and mankind.  There currently appears to be a large number of scientists who are Christian who also feel that the evolutionary process was initiated by God and follows a pattern related to the Darwinian perception of process.  At some point for these scholars, God introduced in an animal-like being that which related to his own nature so to create a thinking animal with characteristics of personality that will not be lost.  That which God offers from his own nature cannot be lost wherever it may be extended.  He alone can change it, perhaps even take it back, or create a new environment for it.

Scripture affirms that God works through animal life for his purposes and mankind’s.  Balaam’s experience with a talking animal, Jesus riding an unbroken colt, Jonah reminded of the innocent animals of Nineveh (along with the innocent children), and other situations, such as the serpent in the story of Adam and Eve – all offer an interesting study of God and mankind in the use and meaning of animals.  The animals are important in the closing chapters of Job, in understanding something of the creative power of God and meaning to be learned from animals, like food, labor, pets (friends). We can wonder if God permits some animals to hallucinate in ways that make them act in human ways, as did Balaam’s mount, or the one on which Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.  Several years ago the story was widely broadcast of a mother ape in a zoo, moving rather deliberately toward a child who had fallen into the extensive pen of the apes.  There was little time to get a rifleman in the event so to protect the child who was unconscious from the fall.  The great ape picked up the child gently, held the child to her body and proceeded to the door where the keeper would appear each day for maintenance of the animals.  The mother ape placed the child by the door, and backed away, watching as she retreated.  The baby was soon recovered, and restored to desperate parents.  Did the ape hallucinate, acting for a baby child as though the child were her own?  We know that some animals will take other baby animals of other species as their own to nurse them when no other mother appears.  We also know that animals, docile for years, will suddenly break the peace and go on rampages killing their keepers.  There are in the world of animals many allegories (parables) of life for good or ill.  In them we find some learning about our own lives.  Animals belong to our mystery.