ARE YOU A GOOD WITCH, OR A BAD WITCH?

“I’m not a witch at all!”

                                                                         ~ Dorothy, The Wizard of Oz

With Halloween just around the corner, witches are making their annual appearances in decorations, costumes, advertisements, and more.  In traditional lore, before our modern sensibilities had tamed witches and made them sources of Halloween fun, they were quite frightening because of their unknown powers; it seemed they might bring harm in ways communities were unable to predict or defend.  But we humans have powers of our own, and, like witches, we wield our power in frightening ways.  

Since my last post, I’ve been thinking a lot about power.  The choices we make regarding how to use our power, as I’ve written before, say much about who we are.  In my last post I observed, “When we insist on our ‘greater value’ over the animals and the presumed benefits that attach to such an exalted position, we misunderstand the nature of power and we oppose God’s will for how we are to live and move in the world.”  Some recent events have had me reflecting on the right use of power, and its relationship to our creation in God’s image, again. 

One such event was the launch of the Every Living Thing initiative, which I was very fortunate to attend.  It is an effort by the evangelical community, in cooperation with the Humane Society of the United States Faith Outreach Department, to develop and disseminate an evangelical statement on human obligations to animals.  It is an extremely encouraging statement, underscoring our human responsibilities to care for our fellow sentient creatures with mercy and compassion.  I urge you to take a look at it here, as well as at the explanatory essays that accompany it, available through a link on the bottom of the same page.  (Confession:  I haven’t yet had the opportunity to read the essays myself.)  During the launch, two points made by various speakers struck me in particular, and they are also reflected in the statement itself.  One is an insistence on humans as unique in creation and of greater value than other animals; the other is the underscoring of animals as given to us as food.  I look forward to working my way through the essays to see how they expand on these two ideas, which are, of course, based on scripture, but which need to be handled with great care if they are to be consistent with a larger message of scripture, which is that power is given for the benefit of the powerless, not the powerful. 

An example of compassionate use of power

Our creation in the image of God, the All-Powerful One, is the source of both our “uniqueness” and our power.[1]  One speaker at the launch said during informal remarks that he affirms the uniqueness of humans not just in degree, but in kind.  I didn’t have a chance to follow up with him, but I wanted to ask what he believes that difference “in kind” is, and what its implications might be for our role and status in creation.[2]  In other words, I wonder if his understanding that humans are different from the animals “in kind” matters in some way in his view of how we are to value animals; does it give us rights, or impose on us obligations?  These are questions worth pondering because the insistence on humans as different from and superior to animals has been used as justification for a great deal of suffering.  I shall, indeed, be interested to see how the essays in support of the evangelical statement address this issue. 

Another context in which our power over animals recently presented itself to me was in regard to a recent article about a study of African elephants and their ability to communicate with one another.  The article posits the idea of “language” among the elephants, stating among other things, that the elephants appear to have a specific “word” for potential danger from human beings.  Other studies have addressed potential language among birds, and even different dialects among the same species of bird from different geographic areas.  Crows also have a specific indicator for danger from humans – and they will teach each other and their young which specific humans are to be feared.  I wonder what it says about us as humans that when we learn about what animals are “saying,” it is that humans are to be feared. 

If you saw my Facebook post about the elephant study, you know that it immediately brought to my mind the passage from the post-flood story in Genesis, in which God tells Noah that “the fear and dread” of humans will be on all the other creatures of the earth from this time forward – the time when animals are “given into the hands” of humans, and humans are allowed for the first time to eat animals.  (Genesis 9:2).  We have, in this scene, gone from caretakers to hunters and destroyers.  We have failed in the first task given to us at creation, to reflect the image of God - the character of self-sacrificing love - to the rest of creation.  This has always struck me as one of the saddest passages in the Bible, representing a true breach in the fabric of creation and an irretrievable (for now) loss of fellowship among all creatures.  So long as the animals fear us, and so long as we view them as food, we do indeed live in a broken world.  I note that it is immediately after permitting this brokenness that God reaffirms His own commitment to continued fellowship with the animals, covenanting with them (as well as with humans), never again to destroy the earth with a flood.  Genesis 9:9-10.  God is faithful where humans fall short.

So, speaking only for myself, notwithstanding the many fine statements in the Every Living Thing initiative, I was sorry that it so clearly affirms the use of animals for food.  To me, this seems to affirm our broken state.  I would have been happier if it had acknowledged our permission to use animals for food, but urged Christians to live now as though the Kingdom of God were “at hand,” and, reflecting God’s character through the loving sacrifice of a “right” (which turns out not to be much of a sacrifice at all), choose a diet closer to that given us at creation, a diet based on plants.  Perhaps the essays get there.   

I have written before (here and here) about the obligations that come with power, and I have expressed my view that our creation in God’s image is not a matter of how we were made, but is instead a vocation, a call to reflect God’s character in the world.  What makes humans unique is that we are given the ability (the power) to perform that task.  We have unparalleled power in the world –power that can build up or destroy; power that can heal or kill; power that can give or take; power that can be used for the benefit of others, or for our own benefit.  Scripture has a great deal to say about how we are to wield power in the world.  It seems to me that no theology of creation care or animal welfare is complete without taking those lessons into account.  As Bruce Birch has said, it is as representatives of God that we are given power in the world.[3] 

In The Wizard of Oz, the Munchkins initially feared Dorothy because she appeared to have awesome power when she landed in Munchkinland, killing the Wicked Witch of the East with her house.  The Munchkins wanted to know whether she would use her power to help them or to terrorize them.  “Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?” asked Glenda, the Good Witch of the North.   Dorothy of course, had no idea of her power:  “Why, I’m not a witch at all!”  Many of us don’t realize the power we wield, either.  We don’t recognize that we are exercising power every time we choose what to eat or what to wear or what entertainment to support or what products to buy.  These are not neutral decisions.  They may not cause a house to fall on anyone, but they are life and death decisions.  When we make these choices, we need to ask ourselves whom we are representing when we exercise our power.  Are we bringing the Kingdom of God, or are we living in brokenness? 

We must ask ourselves, are we a good witch, or a bad witch? 

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[1] As I discussed in this earlier post, however, I don’t know that it is a source of greater human value than other animals.  I believe our value comes from the fact that we, like other animals, are loved by God. 

[2] See these two earlier posts (here and here) for a discussion of traditional views of what it means to be created in the image of God and how and why a different modern consensus is arising. 

[3] Birch, Bruce C. Let Justice Roll Down: The Old Testament, Ethics, and Christian Life. Louisville: West Minster/John Knox Press, 1991, pp. 88-89.