I love nature. When I was at home for a month a few years ago after my knee surgery, and again a year later with my second knee, I often found myself watching Animal Planet during the day instead of endless daytime game shows, talk shows, and soap operas. If I give myself half a chance, I tend to gravitate towards shows about animals. It’s an interest, and perhaps it could have been a possible pursuit if given half a push – and if it wasn’t for my horrible allergies!
I admire guys like Jarod Miller, Jeff Corwin, and Steve Irwin. These are young, energetic, and yes, entertaining guys who have devoted their lives to the preservation of nature and animals in their natural habitats. They have a respect for nature that is infectious.
One Sunday, years after Steve Irwin died and Jeff Corwin seemed to disappear, I happened across this nature show on channel 5 called Animal Exploration with Jarod Miller, a show geared towards kids in which another young and impassioned guy visits all kinds of zoos, parks, and nature conservatories to learn all about the animal kingdom. The excitement these guys feel for animals kind of rubs off, and like them, I was always the type that would much rather shoot them with a camera instead of a gun. I understand that there is sometimes a need for hunters, for whatever reason, but it’s just not me. Instead, I identified with the Tom Hanks character of former medical student and standup comedian Steven Gold in the movie Punchline (1988), who has the following meltdown during one of his routines on the night his father and brother, a couple of hunters, happen to be in the audience: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgkVb8XUu28
That speech from that movie has always stuck with me, because I have felt that too. I don’t like to see things suffer either. I was the kid who, on fishing trips, had a moral dilemma because I didn’t want to cause an earthworm to suffer and wriggle while I stuck it on the hook. I don’t have quite the same dilemma anymore – I will kill ants and spiders, of course – but this world will do that to you. While other kids were inflicting cruelty on insects, I was always the one to feel their suffering if they lingered in pain.
I don’t believe in death. I don’t like it. I try to avoid it wherever I can. I think a lot of modern hunters actually enjoy it! It’s not because they have to. It’s because they want to.
In the back of my mind, I kind of wonder if people like the famous conservationists have a similar problem with suburban hunters. Listen to me, I’m starting to sound like a bleeding heart liberal, who values the life of an animal over that of a human being!
But you can’t fault me for not want anything to suffer. Call me an enigma. I am an entrenched conservative Christian who just happens to love nature to a point of not wanting to see anything suffer. My politics are thoroughly right wing right down the line, for the most part, but in this one area in particular, me and the conservative right tend to part ways. The death of animals at the hands of modern day hunters breaks my heart. I’m not ashamed to say that I have a tender heart, or that I used to have a much more tender heart than I do even now, now that I’ve been desensitized to it all somewhat. Please don’t tell me that that’s a bad thing. I have a passion for life – all life – and it’s something I feel I share with these conservationists and ecologists much more than with weekend hunters. I won’t apologize for that. In fact, in some ways, I wish I was even more like that. I have a great respect for guys like Corwin and Irwin and Miller. Dare I even say it? The world would be a much better place if people everywhere had the love and passion for nature that these guys have, and there’s nothing wrong with it – as long as we don’t go overboard and place animals above man in importance. We need to treat nature with the respect God must have for it as its creator. Man is God’s special creation, but nature is His creation too, and as such, I think it deserves more reverence than we, particularly over on the conservative right, usually give it.
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