I had been thinking and praying still about all the uproar (pun intended) of the shooting of Cecil the Lion. I have seen tributes to “his” life, death threats against the dentist who hunted the lion, and testimonies from the villagers who had been terrorized by lions in the past and thankful one more lion is off the streets.

I wanted to address this from another angle, and I believe God showed a little light on this situation. First, I am not for senseless killings of any creature or human being. I first believe the Bible, and God created man in his own image, and man is superior to all creatures. God told man to have dominion over the earth and God himself destroyed every creature, man included, during the flood except for Noah, his family, and whatever animals were on the ark (besides insects and aquatic life).

The bible says in Proverbs 12:10 that A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. I believe this shows if we love God, we will be good stewards of what he gives us, of our finances, property, and creatures. We might recycle, we might try and save a beached whale, we might bandage up a broken leg of a chipmunk hit by a car. However, that is not the focus of why we are here. We realize that this earth is a temporary state, that all the recycling in the world will not save it from God destroying it by fire. Yet, we love God so we will let him do with the earth what he pleases. When he pleases.

This means we need to focus on the priority. Only human beings are going to be able to enter heaven, and only those that are born again. The priority is not saving Mother Earth or the creatures therein, but on seeing folks introduced to Father God.

The thought I had though, was this. Why does it seem easier to care about the animals than human beings? Why do people in general seem willing to give their all to save the whales yet often turn a blind eye to the sufferings of others?

I thought of a few reasons.

1) The squeaky wheel gets the grease  People post kittens and puppies and cute animals easily. When “Cecil” was killed, it flooded Facebook and social media. Animal issues, evolution, and global warmings are mantras in your face, and most cave in to the pressure of accepting the media’s interpretations.

2) Animals don’t “hurt” us or intentionally let us down. Human nature is flawed because unless God gets a hold of our hearts, we tend to love selfishly, really to get something from somebody. God’s love is unconditional and we can tap into it only if we are saved. When God has my heart, I can get rebuked by everyone for taking a stand for God and it might break my heart but I don’t hate people for getting mad at me. I get God’s compassion and desire for people’s eyes to be opened. But without God it is hard to love people. They let us down. They might take advantage of us. They can abandon us, leave us, slander us, lie to us, manipulate us. A dog doesn’t do that. So without seeing that God made us, and we are messed up without yielding to Him, we won’t have patience or love for our fellow man. At least that love that isn’t selfish  and a love that is willing to be hurt in exchange to tell someone the truth.

3) Animals without effort are doing what God created them to be. A sheep doesn’t want to dive in the mud, a fish out of water is very out of it’s element, and a lizard wants to bask in the sun. Animals do what God made them to do, and there is perfect harmony in nature and life makes sense. Only when Human beings surrender their will to God, after first being saved (born again and becoming alive to the God of the bible) can they begin to be who God designed them to be. Until then, our selfish human sinful natures dominate and that creates very ugly atrocities and daily ugliness.

So when mankind looks around, they see the animals giving God the glory simply for being themselves. And people see themselves, and the others around them and don’t like what they see.

So the one interpretation is we must get rid of every human. The Bible though says we need to be saved and delight ourselves in the Lord and let him live through us.

Then whoever is doing that is giving God the glory simply for being who God made them.