A Righteous Man Cares For Animals
I was so angry. I wanted to do something because a rising sense of justice permeated my soul. I had to do something about this injustice.
I grew up in a small fishing village in Southern California called San Pedro. There are cliffs, rocks, beaches, and one of the largest ports in the world, the Port of Los Angeles. As a kid, I was always at the beach for one thing or another. When I could afford it, I had a surfboard or a boogie board. When I couldn’t afford those things, I bodysurfed, riding the waves. It was a lot of fun. When I was 13, I began volunteering at the Cabrillo Marine Museum, which was at Cabrillo Beach.
My main job that summer was to take grade-school children’s groups on curated tours of the museum, which is now called “The Cabrillo Marine Aquarium.” I learned about each marine animal in the various tanks like the California Viper Fish, which looks like it is straight out of a sea monster fantasy, various crabs, lobsters, shrimp (the cockroaches of the sea, which is why I just can’t get myself to eat shrimp to this day - yuk.), and one particularly active octopus.
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That eight-legged creature was interesting. One day, the marine biologists that monitor the tanks noticed that one of the Alaskan King Crabs was nothing but a shell, and wondered what had happened. They couldn’t figure it out. Then, a few days later, they found that one of the other crabs in that tank looked the same way—nothing but a shell! After the third time, a week later, they were wondering what was happening, and so they decided to spend a “Night at the Museum.”
To their amazement, the octopus, who was in a completely different part of the museum from the crabs, had unscrewed the cap on its tank filter, squeezed itself into the pipes, navigated the hundreds of feet of networked pipes, going all sorts of directions, found the right path to the crab tank, grabbed itself a midnight snack, then crawled back into the piping, and back into its tank! When I heard about it, it gave me a new respect for Octopoda Animalia.
There were so many remarkable animals at the museum. I became an immediate animal lover.
One of the highlights of the tour with the grade-school children was during Grunion season. Grunion are extraordinary fish because of how they breed. The females swim onto the shore, bury their tails into the sand, and lay their eggs, while they stick halfway out of the hole they made. Then, the male wraps himself around the female on the sand and fertilizes the eggs. Then, when they are done, the male wriggles his way back to the ocean, and the female twists and turns until free and then flees back into the water, leaving her fertilized eggs behind, buried in the sand. This whole experience is called a “Grunion Run,” and it happens late in the evening or early in the morning. Grunion are a protected fish; therefore, if you catch one, you have to throw it back. However, there is only one time you are allowed to catch them—with your hands AFTER they have fertilized their eggs. When I was a docent at the museum, Grunion Runs were a big event, and many people stayed up all night to “fish” for some. It was a highlight of my 13-year-old life at the time, and Grunion are good to eat!
When the tide would come up to where the Grunion laid their eggs, it would swish them around and that would tell them it was time to hatch, and millions of baby Grunion would go swimming out into the ocean, many to be eaten by all sorts of creatures before they reached adulthood. But for the lucky few that did, they would come back to that very shore where they were born, and do it all over again.
During Grunion season, a marine biologist or assistant would go out to the sand, dig up some of the eggs and bring them back to the museum. We would put these in empty baby food jars and hand each student a jar. Then we’d tell them the story of the Grunion and tell them to mimic the waves rolling over the sand by swirling and swishing water into the baby food jar filled with sand. Before long, little baby Grunion would be swimming around in the jar! The kids would get such a thrill from it. We would then collect all the jars and they would be released into the wild.
I have several stories from those days working around these amazing animals. I was especially privileged to see so much “behind the scenes” work and talk to the Marine Biologists. They told me that sharks really weren’t such bad animals and that whales were amazing!
Although I felt special, I was one of many teenage docents that year. We were able to work at the museum, but it was also a learning experience for us. We went on special trips to the tide pools, where we saw marine life everywhere, to the Island only 23 miles away from us called Catalina, and Whale Watches. They were exciting, and many times we saw more than just whales. We saw dolphins and even Hammerhead Sharks! But the main event was the California Gray Whale, a gentle giant, covered in barnacles and blubber. We would spot them by their “footprint” when they would come to the surface and flap their tale just under the water and leave a print without a splash. Then, before long, we would see a spout as the majestic creature exhaled and took a breath before diving below and slowly moving forward toward their tropical destination in Baja California from the icy regions of Alaska.
I was in awe and immediately fell in love with these magnificent mammals. Then, I heard that there were people who wanted to kill them.
Not for sustenance, but for business -- for money. It made me so angry. I wanted to do something because a rising sense of justice permeated my soul. I had to do something about this injustice. So I started looking into organizations that saved whales like my beloved Gray whales. I was pointed in the direction of an organization called “Greenpeace” by one of the Marine Biologists. I read as much about them as I could and then wanted to join them and stand in the gap between the corporate whale hunters and the whales themselves. It was my duty to do something. However, at 13, I was too young to go on trips into the middle of the ocean. I had to wait until I was at least 18 to go. I planned on it. Then I saw other injustices, like the commercial fishermen that used nets that would trap dolphins, or they would shoot the dolphins for stealing their fish. Once, in the harbor, I saw three dolphins tied by their tails to an anchor below, floating just below the water. Whoever did this purposefully drowned these beautiful animals for some unknown wicked reason. It incensed me. Who could be so cruel? I had to do something, but what?
A few years later I walked into a Calvary Chapel in Torrance, listened to a band called Undercover, loved it, and when they asked if I wanted to become a Christian, I did. This changed my whole worldview. I was no longer a radical animal rights person. But part of me still cared about the whales and dolphins and even the sharks and wanted to join Greenpeace, but I didn’t. They saw these marvelous creations as beings. In some cases, they saw them as more important than humans. I had to wrestle with the idea of saving whales and saving humanity. Did God love animals? Did he love them as much as I did?
A few scriptures I saw made me think that he did. Here are just two:
“And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left—and much livestock?” (Jonah 4:11, NKJV) (Emphasis mine)
Notice that God speaks about human tragedy first. Jonah wanted the people of Nineveh dead. They were wicked people who did much harm to Jonah’s people. However, after God told Jonah to preach a “fire and brimstone” message, the people all turned from their sin and began to follow God! This should have been an occasion for rejoicing, but instead, Jonah was upset. I won’t go into all the detail here, but God said that he had mercy on the innocent people, the children (who cannot discern between their right hand and their left), and… wait for it… the animals! The livestock. Does God care about animals? I would think so. This could be a reference to their riches, but I want to think that God cared about the sheep, the cows, the bulls, and all the other animals in Nineveh.
Then there is this one:
“A righteous man regards the life of his animal, But the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.” (Proverbs 12:10, NKJV)
A righteous man. A man that is right with God cares about animals. The idea is that this man is so good that he EVEN cares about the animals. Wow! So, I can care about animals? Do you mean I can do things to help and support and defend them? Can I join Greenpeace now? Whoa, hold on there, buddy. Yes, we love animals. We care about them, from the crazy things cats do, like having little lions in our homes, and the loyalty of our dogs, they have become part of our family. There is something majestic about a whale swimming surely and confidently through the waters of the deep. God has made everything and it is beautiful. Look at what he says in Genesis.
“Then God said, “Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens.” So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” (Genesis 1:20–23, NKJV) (Emphasis mine)
God’s creation was and is still good. Have we messed things up? Of course we have. Have we been cruel and done some wicked things to animals? Yes. We live in a world marred by the horrid decisions of mankind. Our first parents, Adam and Eve, made the decision to ignore God’s best for what they thought would be better, and ended up introducing entropy into the universe for the first time ever. Now things fall apart easier. Now animals eat other animals. Now mankind destroys his environment. What can be done? Does God even care? Isn’t this world going to be destroyed anyway? Many Christians would say that it doesn’t matter. But I think it matters as much as you paint your house, tend your garden, and feed your dog. You would never not feed your animals and say, “The Lord is coming back, so it doesn’t matter,” would you?
We have a fundamental responsibility to take care of our planet as much as we can.
But at the same time, nature does not trump humanity. The souls of men and women must come first. We must be about our Father’s business, but at the same time, feed our dog. Take care of our world. I don’t believe in Climate Change. That is politics and a way for radical environmentalists to make a lot of money. I do believe that humans can make better choices. One of them was dolphin-friendly fishing nets, where dolphins can swim in for a bite, then swim out, but the fish cannot exit. We can act responsibly. We should.
I won’t join Greenpeace, but I will play with my cat when I see him next, and feed our dog.
χ.ε.ε.
Just so. I think they serve us in all kinds of ways, and one is to let us know when our hearts need to soften.
Great article, Steve Paul!