
Close-up of two baby elephant with their trunks entwined in a display of friendship and affection. (Loxodonta africana) By maria t hoffman/stock.adobe.com
From the “you can’t make this up” department: Colorado’s highest court recently ruled that elephants are not people. You probably didn’t need that clarification; nor did I. But the Nonhuman Rights Project apparently did.
They brought suit in the state, claiming that five elephants at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs have shown signs of brain damage because the zoo is essentially a prison for such intelligent and social creatures. The group wants the elephants released to two accredited elephant sanctuaries in the US. However, the court determined that since they’re not human, the animals do not have the legal right to pursue their release.
Of course, this news does not suggest that elephants are not superior to humans in many ways. I would not want to get into a tug-of-war with one or try to live on an African plain alongside lions as they do.
Now consider the alligator in South Carolina that froze in an icy pond during the South’s recent deep freeze. You or I would have died. But officials explained, “When temperatures drop significantly, alligators can enter a state called brumation—similar to hibernation. . . . During a hard freeze, they often stick their snouts above the water to breathe, while the rest of their bodies become immobilized in the icy depths.”
As they say, don’t try this at home.
And there’s the sperm whales who made the news when a diver caught their unusual sleeping pattern on video. The massive creatures float vertically while taking twelve-to-fifteen-minute naps near the ocean’s surface.
Is Peter Singer right?
The Princeton ethicist Peter Singer argues for what he calls “equal consideration of interests.” In his view, the interests of non-human animals should be considered equally with human interests. He claims that favoring human interests over animal interests is a “speciesist” stance akin to racism and sexism and, in his view, equally morally indefensible.
If all we had to go on was Mother Nature, we might be convinced.
You and I are obviously more intelligent than elephants and whales. At least, I cannot imagine them writing this article on my laptop, dexterity aside. But they are obviously superior to us in size and better adapted to their habitats than we are to ours. They don’t fear crime, drunk drivers, and terrorism as we do. They don’t die in car crashes or by falling down stairs at home.
By what measure are we to claim that we are superior and even unique among the world’s creatures?
Prof. Singer, being an atheist, would obviously say there is no such measure. As Christians, we would turn immediately to the biblical pronouncement that God created us “in his own image” (Genesis 1:27). He would reply that humans wrote those words and that we quoted them because they defend our position, not because they can be construed as objectively true.
In his view, we can have no intrinsic value, since no such values exist apart from the ability to suffer and to experience pleasure. Rather, we are valuable to the degree that we are valuable to others. His utilitarian ethic measures us by what we do for society.
Here’s the problem, and the reason for this article: I fear that many of us, in our deepest hearts, fear that Singer is right.
We need more to be more
Peter Singer’s claim that we are merely animals whose value lies in our performance resonates with us because of the culture we inhabit.
Our consumption-based economy must convince you that you need what it is selling, or our system flounders. The most effective way to do so is to persuade you that you will be healthier, more attractive, more wealthy, more popular, and so on if you buy their product. The unstated assumption is that you are not sufficient as you are at present. You need to possess more to be more.
In addition, our capitalistic system rewards achievement. What benefits the business is the rising tide that raises all boats. Employees then benefit in turn. The harder and better we work, the more we achieve and possess. Again, the unstated assumption is that we are not sufficient as we are at present. We need to do more to be more.
It’s hard to see how these systems could operate differently. Imagine a producer that did not try to sell its products or a business that did not reward good performance and penalize bad.
There’s a third factor: self-reliant self-sufficiency feeds the “will to power” drive to be our own god that resides in all fallen people (Genesis 3:5). We like the thought that we can advance ourselves if we simply get up earlier, stay up later, work harder, and try longer. At least until we fail. But it’s folly to ignore this inherent drive for personal success.
The key is not to live on a desert island separate from all of this. It is to find a way to value ourselves that is different from the ways everyone else does.
“The unfathomable mystery of God”
Henri J. M. Nouwen was a Dutch Catholic priest who wrote thirty-nine books and taught at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard. If anyone could claim status based on success, he would be in their number.
And yet he became convinced that the key to true life is understanding ourselves as the “Beloved” of God. In Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World, he explains:
The unfathomable mystery of God is that God is a Lover who wants to be loved. The one who created us is waiting for our response to the love that gave us our being. God now only says: “You are my Beloved.” God also asks: “Do you love me?” and offers us countless chances to say “Yes.” This is the spiritual life: the chance to say “Yes” to our inner truth. The spiritual life, thus understood, radically changes everything.
Nouwen admits, “It certainly is not easy to hear that voice in a world filled with voices that shout: You are no good, you are ugly; you are worthless; you are despicable, you are nobody—unless you can demonstrate the opposite.” However, he advises:
Every time you listen with great attentiveness to the voice that calls you the Beloved, you will discover within yourself a desire to hear that voice longer and more deeply. It is like discovering a well in the desert. Once you have touched wet ground, you want to dig deeper.
The best way to listen to this voice, in Nouwen’s view, is to live with gratitude, saying “thank you” to God for having chosen you. He writes: “Gratitude is the most fruitful way of deepening your consciousness that you are not an ‘accident,’ but a divine choice.”
“Taste and see that the Lᴏʀᴅ is good!”
Is Nouwen right? Is God a “Lover” who loves us unconditionally and calls us to love ourselves and others in the same way out of gratitude for such grace?
Singer would call this wish fulfillment, I suspect, a kind of Marxist “opiate” that dulls us to the “real world” and subjects us to a false religious narrative that benefits those who tell it. Nouwen sold millions of books; surely his advice, which speaks deeply to what we wish to be true but cannot prove to be so, should not be taken as objectively reasonable.
So, here’s what is reasonable: “Taste and see that the Lᴏʀᴅ is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” (Psalm 34:8). Here’s why.
All relationships, including one with God, require a commitment that transcends the evidence and becomes self-validating. You cannot prove you should take a job until you take it. You cannot prove you should get married until you get married, or have kids until you have kids, or even read this article until you read it. You examine the evidence, to be sure, but then you must take a step beyond the evidence that becomes self-validating for you.
To learn if God loves you, act as if he did. “Taste and see”: Pray, read his word, worship him alone and with others. Take “refuge in him”: seek and follow his will. Live with gratitude as if you are the Beloved of God, and you will discover that you are.
Nouwen testifies: “For me, God is the one who calls me the Beloved, and . . . I try to become more fully who I already am.”
Will you join him today?