Millions of people in the online world have watched livestream video for days on end for a 15-year-old named April to give birth to her baby. April, though, is not a teen mom. April is a giraffe who lives at Animal Adventure Park in New York.<\/p>\n
People often are as emotionally attached to the lives of animals as they are of people. We see it now with \u201cApril the Giraffe,\u201d as we saw it when many grieved over the deaths of \u201cHarambe the Gorilla\u201d and \u201cCecil the Lion\u201d in recent years.<\/p>\n
Why is that? First and foremost, animals are an important part of God\u2019s creation, and they command our attention and, in many cases, our affection.<\/p>\n
Beyond that, there is something in human nature that responds more acutely to a single life, than a bunch of lives. A quote attributed to the evil Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin says, \u201cThe death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Think about it. According the latest data, some 58 million children have been aborted in America since the 1973 Roe V. Wade Supreme Court ruling. For many Americans, a number like that doesn\u2019t seem real, but more of a statistic. As Christians, however, we know that each of these boys and girls deserved to live and is precious to God and to us.<\/p>\n
To go one step further, it\u2019s not only a single life that makes a birth or death seem more real; it\u2019s knowing a name.<\/p>\n
People know the names of April, Harambe and Cecil. When we do not know the names of these 58 million dead, it makes their lives seem more distant. As Christians, though, we know that God knows the names of these boys and girls.<\/p>\n
In the Bible, we see that one of the first things God had Adam do was to name the animals. The Bible also promises us that God knows each of us by name. To borrow a well-worn phrase, what\u2019s in a name? Turns out, there\u2019s a lot.<\/p>\n
We therefore ought to use this moment to understand what motivates people. It\u2019s not our job to tell people celebrating a giraffe\u2019s birth to stop. It\u2019s our job to help them celebrate the unborn and each birth of a child in their family, neighborhood or church with the same (or hopefully even more) enthusiasm.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not our primary job to tell people to get over the death of a gorilla or a lion. It\u2019s our job to help them to grasp and to grieve over the real human suffering in our world, such as women and children being sold into human trafficking, people of faith being persecuted, kids stuck in the foster care system and, yes, the horrors of human abortion.<\/p>\n
While animals\u2019 lives and deaths do certainly matter, we cannot disproportionately elevate their importance. Socrates taught that you cannot elevate an animal\u2019s rights to that of a person; you can only bring down a person to the level of an animal.<\/p>\n
In the case of April the Giraffe, Harambe the Gorilla and Cecil the Lion, let\u2019s note the moment. Then let\u2019s move our gaze to even weightier matters, which certainly include getting the Gospel to our neighbors in need, people who are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26).<\/p>\n
After all, our primary job is to point people toward the One who came, not to save the whales, but to save the people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Millions of people in the online world have watched livestream video for days on end for a 15-year-old named April to give birth to her baby. April, though, is not a teen mom. April is a giraffe who lives at Animal Adventure Park in New York. People often are as emotionally attached to the lives […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[450,72,679,106],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7544"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7544\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}