Daily Archives: June 2, 2016

God, Gorillas and Babies

Let’s just be clear from the beginning, a human baby is worth more and is more important than any single gorilla or all the gorillas in the world. However, if you have listened to the news or paid attention to social media lately, you might not get that impression. Everyone is concerned about the gorilla that was killed by zookeepers when it had taken possession of a young child who had fallen into an exhibit at the Cincinnati zoo. However, I have heard very few people express similar concern over the young child’s safety.

People have been in a frenzy over the death of this animal. They have put up a memorial for the gorilla. I have seen photos of young children putting flowers at the memorial to mark the death of this animal. There have been death threats against the parents of this young child. A petition has been created at one website asking for “Justice for Harambe,” which was what this gorilla was named. The petition calls for the “Cincinnati Zoo, Hamilton County Child Protection Services, and [the] Cincinnati Police Department” to “hold the parents responsible” because of their “lack of supervision and negligence that caused Harambe to lose his life.” Amazingly, at the time of this writing, 457,310 people have signed the petition.

We all like animals. Many have animals as pets and we often become attached to them. We like to feed the cute squirrels and birds and few can resist the cuteness of a puppy. The dog, as they say, is man’s best friend. Everyone in their right mind opposes the senseless killing of animals. But in the end, they are just animals. The reason so many people have a misplaced concern about the value of animals is that their view of the world is skewed by the influence of evolution which says that we are all related animals, and the so-called “higher primates” are most closely related to us. The most fanatical even prefer the animal over the human.

The Biblical world view, however, places man far above the animals. God created man in His own image and likeness and gave him “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (Gen. 1:26-28). After the flood, every–mark that word, “every”–non-human, living thing was to be meat for mankind (Gen. 9:1-3). Every beast may be and has been tamed by mankind (James. 3:7). By inspiration of the Almighty, David wrote:

What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas (Psalm 8:4-8).

Man is over and above all of God’s physical creation. Even over gorillas. To be sure, we must be good stewards of the things with which God has entrusted us (I Cor. 4:2). There can be no question that the life of this child was to be preferred over the life of the gorilla. As zoo director Thane Maynard observed, this is an animal that he had seen crush a coconut with one hand. This animal had the child and dragged him around the exhibit, banging his head against concrete walls. Those who ascribe to this gorilla human values are simply misguided and misinformed.

Some have said the gorilla looked like it was trying to protect the child. This is falsely ascribing human intent to an animal. The gorilla may have been trying to protect the child, in the same way a dog protects it’s play thing. There was no sense of the worth of the child to the gorilla. It was merely something to possess. If the gorilla understood the value of the child, it would have climbed the wall and given the child back to it’s mother. But it didn’t because it couldn’t because it was only an animal.

The question of whether the parents were negligent is a different question, altogether. However, law enforcement has decided against bringing any charges against the parents. Eyewitnesses to the events say the parents did nothing wrong. Every parent, I am sure has experienced an incident when their child did something they could not control that could have potentially been dangerous. We were not there and so we cannot know for certain, but even if the parents were negligent, the child was still more important. The parents alleged negligence would not have mitigated against the child’s priority over the animal.

This incident and people’s reaction to it reveals how far America has removed from a theocentric world view. It is sad, indeed, when people are more concerned about an animal’s life than they are about a innocent human’s life. The reason the world is in such dire condition is because they reject the authority, God’s revealed will, that places man in a place of prominence over the beasts of he field.

Eric L. Padgett