“The godly care for their animals, but the wicked are always cruel.” Proverbs 12:10 NLT
You may ask why such a strange principle shows up in wisdom training. What does animal care have to do with wicked and cruel humanity?
Whether you’re a dog, cat, duck or dolphin lover you know that there is something inherently good about being kind and yes, caring to animals.
Confession time. When I was a teen I had two unfortunate moments where I killed or injured an animal. Both had to do with a BB gun. The death was a dove innocently sitting on a telephone wire above. It came flying down right at me and died at my feet. I wept. The other was sorta accidental. I also shot at a cat walking down the sidewalk in front of my friends apartment. As it turned out, the cat belonged to MY OWN next door neighbor and I was “coincidentally” asked to cat sit while she recuperated from a vet removing the BB from her back leg. I had to CARE for the cat I had shot. That was it for me and animal cruelty!
I was also an avid reader of C.S. Lewis and he was an activist who constantly opposed vivisection (experimentation on animals). Lewis actually wrote about animal cruelty in many of his books. I came across the concept in one of his books, That Hideous Strength where Weston, the antagonist, picked up innocent little frogs and tore their limbs off, causally tossing them off into the grass along the path. Lewis even believed in animal immortality, and was adamant that animals would be in heaven – and likely talk!
There is scientific proof that children, mostly young boys that systematically harm, torture and kill animals are showing early signs of a psychopathic behavior. And, it’s been widely known that adults, again, mostly males, have used animal abuse and torture to threaten and control children – oftentimes their own children. Why? Why? Why? Lewis believed that it was one of the ways that our deeply evil brokenness gets a chance to lash out at our loving creator.
It appears that throughout our human history that cruelty and abuse eventually spiral downward to harm the most innocent, the most defenseless. Animals, unfortunately, fit that example.
The wisdom writers make a clear connection between care for animals, representing innocent and defenseless to godliness. And it rightly follows that the wicked, are ALWAYS cruel.
No one in their right mind speaks of cruelty as a human right. No one says they believe that evil and wicked people should be free to carry out their every desire. Ah, but follow the thread. Who says evil people shouldn’t act out on their desires? Isn’t cruelty, their self-made, humanistic, evolutionary propelled truth a right? That’s sounds unfair. That sounds so judgey to tell the wicked how wrong they are. Among the benefits of believing in God is the knowledge that He and He alone dictates true justice, true morality. And I for one am glad God tells us to be nice to animals. Believers should be better at it because wisdom says it’s a godly characteristic.
Prayer:
Dad,
I absolutely love the clarity of focus on your righteousness, your justice. Let’s just say I love your eternal and perfect perspective on everything in creation, including us as humans. So for me to “get wisdom,” is to understand you. It’s to understand your character, your ways, your interactions with me, with all of us. And, even in our “freedom” to choose to believe in you, but even further, to trust you with our lives and our future is beautiful and amazing. It does all come back to trust doesn’t it? I guess it’s similar to faith, but trust feels so much more intimate. I don’t just have a “belief” in you, I completely and totally live my life TRUSTING you. I don’t have to know all things. I don’t have to control all things. I just have to trust and obey… there really is no other way to be happy in Jesus!