Humans and Animals

Last Saturday I was listening to NPR as I was getting ready for the BLC Brew Day. One of the stories that I listened to was about the endangered Red Wolf population and how it is on the rebound thanks to a captive breeding program in North Carolina and elsewhere. In 1980 the Red Wolf was declared extinct in the wild.

14 wolves were brought into captivity for the purpose of breeding conservation. There have been some ups and downs since then with zero pups being born between the years of 2019 and 2022. However, there are about 300 wolves currently in captivity and there has been a baby boom over the last two years with nearly 100 new pups. That’s a 33% increase in their population which is huge. They have also noticed the wild populations beginning to have litters as well.

One of the biggest issues facing the success of the Red Wolves and their reintroduction into the wild are, as you probably know, humans. The article talked about a representative from the Fish and Wildlife Service who is in charge of overseeing the species, explaining that people need to understand a few things about the Red Wolf. First, they are mistaken as coyotes which are legal to hunt. Second, they can be killed like any animals when entering traffic. The hurdle he said is educating those who live near wolf populations so that they tolerate them as their neighbors. He says you don’t have to like them, but we do have to figure out a way to live together.

And that idea of living together is what is at almost the literal center of the psalm we have for today. Verses 20-23 talk about how as the darkness comes all the forest animals come out to prowl, or in other words they are doing the work that they have been created to do. Then when sun comes up the families of animals return to their home and cuddle up for the day. Then we, as humans, come out of our homes and we do the work that we need to do until evening. Then we return to our homes and the cycle starts all over again. This is such beautiful imagery for how our world works and how the cycles of humans and animals can be so in sync with the natural order that it can’t be seen as anything other than the beautiful act of our Creator.

While the psalm paints this ideal picture of creation and how it can be and maybe once was, we have to shift into reality and understand how our experience of the world and the creatures in it aren’t as idyllic as this psalm makes it out to seem. As I pointed out at the opening there are conservation efforts to return wolves, and not jus the Red Wolf, back into the wild because the first Europeans that settled here almost hunted them to extinction. I bet that many of you know of other species that are endangered, or perhaps have a favorite animal that falls somewhere along the endangered species line. For me, that animal is the Manatee. And much like the article about the Red Wolf there have been ups and downs with the protections and recovery efforts of the manatee population, and like the Red Wolf the main and only predator are humans.

Another side of the conversation that we haven’t covered that always comes up any time I talk about all of God’s creatures that were made on this earth is the conversation about why in the world did God create ‘X’ creature. This conversation comes up in the Weinberger household and the three creatures that are always discussed are: scorpions, mosquitos, and venomous snakes. Why God did you make these creatures? Despite our viewpoint on each of these and whatever animal may have come immediately to your mind, they do serve a purpose in the overall ecosystem. Even mosquitos. Despite what we want to believe mosquitos are a food source for many small predators, and I even discovered while prepping for this sermon that there are even some species of mosquitos that are pollinators. Personally I would prefer the honeybee as my pollinator, but obviously I wasn’t consulted when God came up with the mosquito.

So here we are living in this odd tension in the world. On the one hand we fight to preserve the life of animals like wolves who are an important part of the ecosystem and who are struggling because of hunting and loss of habitat and then we have the prolific mosquitos, crickets, scorpions and the like, that seem more nuisance than benefit in our view of the world and how we interact with it.

I believe the best way to help us understand this tension we live in, is to take a look at what this psalm is most closely related to and that is the creation story in Genesis. We see on the 6th day that after God had created male and female God invited them to be fruitful and multiply and to master the earth and to take charge of the animals. Since we were created in the image of God we are then to similarly act in the ways that God acts, which means that we should be as kind and loving as God was when God created all the creatures of the world.

Now I know, again that this ideal of creation that is presented in Genesis 1 and Psalm 104 unfortunately end fairly quickly and we even see how we are put at odds with the snake specifically in Genesis 3, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t strive in our world to find ways to live in peace and harmony with as much of the creatures of the earth as we can. And when we see organizations and people working to restore wolf populations and all the other endangered species we see how we are trying to live out that calling to be the co-creators that God created us to be.

So as we look at this psalm and we see the ways that the psalmist praises God for creation and all the diverse animals in it, we too should give thanks to God for the incredible gift of diverse biosphere and how incredible the structure of the animal kingdom is. From the tiny ant to the blue whale, God has blessed us with creatures that live alongside us. And just as I mentioned how plants praise God through their flowers, we also see the ways that animals bless God through their voices. I invite us as the psalmist does, to join in with the animals by allowing our whole beings, voice, hands, hearts, and souls, to bless and praise the Lord each and every day that we have been given. Amen.