Discovering Fatherhood
Reflections on everyday daddy stuff
The Gorilla and the Boy
Social media has been blowing up about what happened this past week in the Cincinnati Zoo. If you haven’t heard, a 3-year old boy fell into the silverback gorilla enclosure and was greeted by a 450lbs male named Harambe, The gorilla dragged the little boy several times across the water filled part of the enclosure. After several intense minutes the zoos special team for these types of situation shot and killed Harambe. Here is a link to the video footage that shows what happened.
Before I watched the video I heard of the incident and my natural reaction was to think that killing the gorilla to save the child was a no brainer. News and social media continued to cover this incident. I kept asking myself, why are people still talking about this? Finally after the constant media coverage I began to read what some folks were saying and I am sad to say that my hope for humanity keeps taking detrimental blows.
Human life is sacred
The line above was once a “no brainer”. No one would question the sanctity of human life, but unfortunately that isn’t the case anymore. I find that as a people we are forgetting that we are sacred. Maybe it is easy to forget this sacredness because we are so good at desecrating it with our numerous questionable behaviors and choices (aka sin). However, no matter how much we mess up and fall into sin there is an inherit goodness to you and I that cannot be destroyed. We can smear it up pretty good, but you and I will always be sacred. Always. That sacredness is given to us by being made in the image and likeness of God. Whether you are religious or not we can all rationally see that humans are different, set apart even. That difference is what helps us to recognize that a 3-year-old boy is worth saving over an endangered silverback gorilla.
It’s a slow fade
I was talking to a friend about this whole thing and he said, “Are you really surprised that people are valuing the gorilla’s life over the boy?” Unfortunately, the answer was ‘no’. There is a line in a song by the band Casting Crowns that says, “It’s a slow fade, when you give yourself away.” The song suggests that we don’t simply one day out of nowhere choose to do something bad, immoral, etc. We make smaller choices that are not necessarily immoral, but nonetheless carry moral weight that will affect future choices. Hence when the time comes and there is a situation that requires a moral response, that “slow fade” has deteriorated our ability to choose the good.
I think the lyrics above apply to our societies “slow fade” in recognizing what is good, sacred and beautiful. This “slow fade” didn’t just occur over night, it has been slowly eroding our understanding of sacredness. Whether it is drugs, alcohol, porn, abortion, affairs, questioning “sexual identity” etc. all of it has and continues to eat away at the soul of or culture. As a people we have forgotten our dignity, and when you forget that human beings have dignity, well…we can start to question whether one boys life is worth losing an endangered species over.
My thoughts as a father
As a father it pains me to see that people have gone as far as to say that letting the boy die would have been “acceptable” to preserve the endangered animal. This is crazy. Maybe these people are not parents. That could be it. Whether it was the boy’s fault, his parent’s fault—that doesn’t matter. The boy’s life is, was, and will always be more valuable than the gorilla—even if this was the last silverback on the planet. Thankfully the zoo recognized that killing the gorilla was the right thing to do. The news has quoted zoo officials saying over and over again that they made the right call, and would do it again. That is a bold statement coming from the people who have dedicated their lives to the care and preservation of these animals. Maybe these zoo officials get it. Maybe their time with these majestic gorillas has helped them to distinguish that although they are incredibly beautiful, a 3-year-old boy is inherently more wonderful, more majestic and more valuable because he is human.
Thank God some people still recognize this.
Discovering Fatherhood 