"'Yes,' said Father Brown, 'I always like a dog, so long as he isn't spelt backwards.'" - "The Oracle of the Dog" by G. K. Chesterton
Chesterton's Jesuit super-sleuth got it, I believe, exactly right: we do well to make much of dogs but we do better not to make too much of them. This is on my mind as I near the end of my second month as a volunteer dog-walker at the Gulf Coast Humane Society here in Corpus Christi (http://www.petfinder.com/shelters/TX476.html). They are wonderful folks here, but a bit . . . I don't know, "earnest," perhaps in the same sense that the defenders of Masada were "earnest." I don't mean this as a knock. Zealots make me nervous, but without zealots nothing ever gets done. The monomaniac's fixation on his chosen cause creates a sufficient slip-stream to drag smaller souls along in his wake. Twice-a-week dilettantes like me would have no opportunity to put in our time if someone else didn't discern eschatological (and apocalyptic!) elements in the care of stray canines.
No, it is only for myself that I offer this meditation, this word of caution not to over-estimate how much it matters to God that I log my time.
And I do think it matters. After all, there is some (minimal) Scriptural precedent for this sort of thing. "A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel," Proverbs 12.10 runs. God even tells his curmudgeonly prophet Jonah that if the notion of one hundred and twenty thousand dead Ninevites doesn't tug at his heartstrings, he might at least consider the animals. (Jon 4.11). Of course, this is the same God who mandates hamstringing enemy horses (Jos 11.6) but that's a hermeneutical problem for another time and blog.
But maybe Jonah is a good case in point. The Lord is arguing here from the lesser to the greater, something Jesus will later do using the same referents (Lk 13.15-16, 14.1-5). Beasts have value as God's creation, but not on a level with human beings created in God's image. At my training for this pooch patrol, I heard the instructor say more than once that by signing up for the gig I was "saving lives." Indeed, the speaker insisted, "That's what we do here every day: We save lives." True, in a sense. Canines left penned up, even with adequate food and water, develop something called "kennelosis," a real (though unscientific) term used by vets to describe the disorientation and aggression that result from isolation. It can, in extreme cases, be incurable and require that the dog be killed.
Still, "save lives"? I read about the flooding in Pakistan and I wonder if I dare employ such a phrase. And if I was hip-deep in mud in the Punjab I imagine I'd read about Haiti and ask a similar question. That being so, can I ever feel good about anything? Will I run in the red for the rest of my life . . . and forever?
William Willimon tells the story of a church meeting at the end of a three-day push to assist various causes. One speaker took the microphone to decry the fact that one additional tragedy (left-over land mines, I think it was) had received no attention. "An already deflated meeting," Willimon recalls, "rolled over and died."
Look at us. We were so busy eradicating killer diseases, curing malaria, raising $3 million to solve AIDS, funding the pensions of suffering African pastors and sending water purification systems to Haiti that we missed the one good work that could have certified us as a church that really, really cares.
"Certified" - that's an important word, and one that may help me understand my own angst. Charitable actions (and I use that word in the King-James-translation-of-1-Corinthians-13-sense) hold only frustration or self-righteousness when undertaken as an attempt to avoid the need for grace. I think this could be why I often have a negative reaction to people who are doing such very good things. They give me the feeling that (this may not be their real motivation; how could I know?) in fighting against abortion or feeding the homeless or demonstrating against nuclear power plants or fill-in-the-blank, they have discovered THE one activity that squares them with God's books and obviates the need for grace. It reminds me of a great poem by John Betjeman:
Not my vegetarian dinner
Nor my lime juice minus gin
Quite can drown a faint conviction
That we may be born in sin.
Eat less and give the excess to the poor? Not good enough! What about sweatshop eggs laid by battery hens and hormone-stuffed cows in slaughterhouses and the veal that definitely does not come from contented cows and pate de foie gras manufactured from force-fed geese? Go vegetarian? Still not good enough! What about butter from steroid-amped udders and honey from slaving bees? Vegan? Still not good enough! How many food-miles does your tomato have on the odometer? The carbon footprint on that cucumber would shame a Sasquatch. Turn locavore? Ah, but migrant laborers still pick the local produce, and then there's the whole business of nitrogen in the fertilizer washing into the estuary and killing the salmon.
The point is that we all live in a constant state of mutual dependency. Those who scorn the Christian doctrine of redemption because it makes no sense that one person's death could satisfy another's penalty simply haven't put any thought into that Big Mac they munched a couple of days ago. Animal, vegetable and mineral all told, my existence for twenty-four hours deals enough death to make perfect sense of Calvary.
So where do I wind up? I can keep walking dogs, mostly because I like to do it and I'm semi-hooked on the oxytocin rush. I can offer my activities to the God who (as C. S. Lewis' Screwtape keeps complaining) is prepared to take the clumsiest attempt at goodness and morph it into an acceptable sacrifice. I can see the average stray dog as God's creature and, therefore, God present to me in even a Matthew 25-ish sense. What I can't do is opt out of Calvary or regard the Lord's Supper as an even trade where I pay my own tab.
And I think I prefer it that way.
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