A Question Of… Animals

I have always loved animals. Aside from the family rabbits that I grew up with, the first pet I had as a child that was actually mine, was a Russian hamster who I named Tanya (it was the only Russian name I could think of!) (editorial note: the image is not Tania)! Once she died, I saved up my pocket money to buy a tropical fish tank and a variety of stunning tropical fish. Sadly for me – and I guess more sadly for them – they died 2 weeks after I got them, as I didn’t realise that every time I cleaned the tank, they would have to acclimatise to the new water temperature again before I let them back in.

Although I wasn’t the best at looking after my pets, my best friend at the time was amazing at it and I used to love going round his house to see his pets which were slightly wilder than my ones, and included tarantulas, monitor lizards, and pythons. He still has several pythons, and his YouTube videos of his young daughter playing with them have received global attention both from news programmes who want to show his videos, as well as the occasional call from social services, who have been alerted to his videos by worried YouTube viewers (you can see one of his videos here if you’d like to see why he gets calls from both).

Whilst these may be the most famous references to animals in the Scriptures, one of my favourites is a little less well known and occurs in the middle of a conversation between God and Job, when in a discourse about some of life’s big questions, God says to Job “Ask the animals and they will teach you.” (Job 12:7). I like it, because I think it’s a good reminder to stay humble and open to the wisdom that animals can offer us if we have ears to hear and hearts that are willing to learning from them.

For Job in particular, this invitation to “ask the animals” came at a time when life was painful and wasn’t making a lot of sense, and so I find it really interesting that it is in that context, that God’s response wasn’t to take Job out of his struggles or even give Job the any form of answer directly, but instead to point him to animals to help him gain some wisdom and perspective during his trials. Jesus also picked up on this idea when he taught his first followers to “look at the birds of the air…” when they were concerned about the daily worries and struggles of life, so that they – and we – can learn from them. It’s a good reminder that some of what we need in the middle of our trials, is actually all around us if only we stop long enough to notice.

As well as the above stories of animals in the Scriptures, there are also the times when God is likened to an animal – either through God’s own self-disclosure or when someone is trying to describe what God is like. The most famous of these are probably when God is called the “Lion of Judah” in the Old Testament, or when Jesus is referred to as the “Lamb of God” in the New Testament. However, there are plenty of others as well. For example, when Jesus likens himself to a mother hen when he tried to describe how he felt about the people living in Jerusalem, or when the Holy Spirit is described as a dove at Jesus’ baptism, or when God is described as an eagle in the book of Isaiah. There is also the surprising description of God, which I’d never heard of before, where God is likened to a moth! (Psalm 36:11)

It seems that whether we are simply caring for the animals in our world, or learning from their example and the wisdom they have to offer, or even entering into the deep waters of how we perceive God – animals can play a key role in informing our spirituality. Given that we share the planet with a scary number of them (it is estimated that when it comes to insects alone, there are 1.4 billion of them for every human being on the earth 1 !), perhaps it really would be worthwhile to see what we can learn from them.