Fine Print

I read Post Secret every Sunday morning.

This morning this postcard got my attention.

It's pretty personal because we just faced this same situation, but as the recipients of the work this person does. And it's personal because God does not say, "Thou shalt not kill." His Word says, "You shall not murder."

I've done a little work on this and I can say that the Hebrew word used in this passage is best translated as "murder" rather than "kill". I won't go into getting too technical here, but I will say that this is one of my favorite reasons for suggesting that it is well past the time we retired the King James Version of the Bible.

To put it simply, every copy of the Scriptures not in the original languages is a translation and that in itself poses some difficulties because of the limits of human language. We always think of our native language as being up to any communication task we may put it to, but we all need a little bit more humility in this, I think. After all, it is an accommodation of the highest order that God Almighty should acquiesce to allowing something as pitifully limited as human language to attempt to encompass His Truth - especially a language as pitifully limited and downright weird as English. As Dave Kellett of Sheldon puts it on a t-shirt I am definitely going to buy, "The English Language - carefully cobbled together by three blind dudes with a German dictionary."

But I digress - one of the few things I do well.

Elsewhere on God's word it says there is "a time to kill". If "killing" is utterly forbidden by God then it would be beyond strange how Jesus dealt with at least one soldier who came to Him for help. He never berated him for his vocation. He did not deny him. In the end He asked His Father to forgive the soldiers who crucified Him.

Sometimes killing is necessary. Sometimes it is a mercy. But we must be very cautious because it is so very, very easy to do. When it comes to pets and the time has come for them to be "put down" in love rather than suffer - it is "a time to kill". When it comes to the thousands upon thousands of animals destroyed by humane societies and animal control agencies all over North America - let alone the rest of the world - because they are abandoned, neglected, the offspring of animals left by their "owners" to breed indiscriminately or otherwise uncared for - it is a sin that offends the nostrils of God. But the executioner doesn't bear the guilt of it. We all do because we allow our selfish lifestyle to create such a problem.

I get a bit intense over this both because of the recent pain of taking responsibility for our own pets and because when I was around 10 years old I spent a week in hospital for a post-tonsillectomy infection and there was a 6-year-old boy in the bed next to me whose face was a horrific road map of stitches because he had been mauled by a pack or roving dogs in our northern Alberta town.

What we do and allow is bad enough without adding to the angst of those who must clean up after us by handling the "fine print" of God's Word and Truth poorly.

I'm a bit frustrated because I can't figure out how to send a message to Frank Warren at Post Secret to let this poor person - who does this thankless and unfortunately necessary work for us - know that their soul is most definitely NOT in jeopardy. So I'll console myself with my little rant on my little blog and pray that someone who is actually thinking will speak the words of encouragement this person needs to hear.

"Thank you for showing mercy and grace every day in your work and for being willing to do what must be done because so many of us are unwilling to live lovingly and responsibly. Your reward will be far greater than any of us can imagine."

Shalom