Let someone else do it
Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 11:03 am
I couldn’t have done it. I could not have cut the throat of that young lamb. My heart goes out to Dr. Lanik who mustered up the courage to try only to find that the knife was too dull and to have to try over and over again. I probably would have been sobbing with everyone else there that day. To see and experience that life being taken would be a difficult thing.
And yet tonight I will happily go home and enjoy a pot roast, or steak, or burger from the half of half a cow we purchased from a local farmer enjoying the meat’s robust flavor without shedding a tear or giving it a second thought. I’ll probably ask for seconds. What is interesting to me is that both the cow and the sheep were killed to provide food. So why do I care about the sheep and not the cow? I think about it is probably because I didn’t have to think about the cow, to read about its death, I didn’t have to visualize what was happening in the butchering process. I was happy to have someone else do it.
And as long as someone else is doing it and I don’t have to think about it, it is no problem for me. But I suspect that there is a problem there, in that attitude. I wonder if that same attitude has slipped into my Christian life as people overseas struggle and die for the truth of the gospel, as missionaries struggle to bring fresh drinking water to villages in Africa, as battles are fought for religious freedom even within our own court systems, as all for these sacrifices are made. I wonder do I really care, do I feel it in my life, is my heart broken for these sacrifices that are being made, or am I happily sitting at home sitting at the dinner table, eating my beef, content to let someone else do it? It’s a hard question, and the answer is harder still.
And yet tonight I will happily go home and enjoy a pot roast, or steak, or burger from the half of half a cow we purchased from a local farmer enjoying the meat’s robust flavor without shedding a tear or giving it a second thought. I’ll probably ask for seconds. What is interesting to me is that both the cow and the sheep were killed to provide food. So why do I care about the sheep and not the cow? I think about it is probably because I didn’t have to think about the cow, to read about its death, I didn’t have to visualize what was happening in the butchering process. I was happy to have someone else do it.
And as long as someone else is doing it and I don’t have to think about it, it is no problem for me. But I suspect that there is a problem there, in that attitude. I wonder if that same attitude has slipped into my Christian life as people overseas struggle and die for the truth of the gospel, as missionaries struggle to bring fresh drinking water to villages in Africa, as battles are fought for religious freedom even within our own court systems, as all for these sacrifices are made. I wonder do I really care, do I feel it in my life, is my heart broken for these sacrifices that are being made, or am I happily sitting at home sitting at the dinner table, eating my beef, content to let someone else do it? It’s a hard question, and the answer is harder still.