“Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.” (Romans 1:22).

A morally confused age is producing a lot of people who do not know their own worth in relation to their pets and other living things. Are you one of them?

Apparently, Senator Joe Lieberman likes to eat salmon. Recently, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) was trying to persuade the senator to cease eating these fish. And of special concern, according to Summit Ministries Journal, March 2005, PETA dares to compare the barbequing of millions of chickens to the extermination of millions of Jews in World War II.

As we know, Hitler and his henchmen could, in cold blood, eliminate millions of their fellowmen, not for crimes they committed, but merely for being in the way of German ambition. Most of the world abhorred what Hitler did. You see, in world opinion, the human race was set apart from the animal kingdom, and genocide was wrong. Even in war, there are supposed humanitarian minimums for treatment of the enemy. Civilians are to be spared, if possible, and prisoners of war “humanely” treated.

However, I am proposing that Hitler was wrong, not because of world opinion, but in an unchanging, absolute moral sense. In the basic sense of truth versus error, or good versus evil, Adolph Hitler was wrong.

This absolute sense of right and wrong is an example of what the courts in American history used as a common reference point to determine what is just. It crossed all ethnic lines and held all people accountable to certain moral absolutes. It was sometimes referred to as “natural law,” encompassing a morality commonly understood by the people. Courts still make judgments of insanity, if an individual commits a heinous crime yet fails to comprehend the wrongness of his deed.

“Natural law” is just another way of saying that morality is not invented by the courts, but is a commonly recognized rule to which all people are responsible. This is not unlike saying that the locomotive did not invent the tracks, but that it is doomed apart from the tracks.

From the Biblical standpoint, natural law is readily understood. The “tracks” by which we are to be guided come from the same source we come from—the Supreme Being, the Creator God. The Bible also shows that the human conscience is indeed agreeable to the law of God— Romans 2:14, 15. (Where this is lost, justice is perverted, and a culture of sociopaths follows.)

Natural law reaches down (I say “down” in the deliberate sense), to a right regard of the animal kingdom. There is an intended insurmountable chasm between the man and the animal by creation. It is God who appointed the man (made in God’s image) as overseers and steward of the animal kingdom (not made in the image of God). Yes, this includes fishing, and barbecuing chickens for food.

Men may rightly be indicted for cruelty to animals. However, animals cannot be charged with cruelty to men. Moral judgments cannot be applied to animal behavior. Animals can only operate on instinct, including the law of tooth and fang. Thus, a dog cannot be sentenced to prison for mauling a child. However, nuisance animals can rightly be destroyed. This explains why the laws of the land made distinction between killing a man or killing an animal (a line that is being blurred in our day).

Take a good look in the mirror. What you see reflected there is not on a plane with barbequed chicken—nor mink, rats, deer, eagles, or salmon. Neither is it like your favorite lovable pet. If that reflection in the mirror were merely a chance collision of chromosomes, I would have nothing to say about what Hitler did, or what PETA promotes. But neither would anyone else (including PETA). A chance arrangement of molecules cannot validate any position on any subject.

“Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator” (Romans 1:25).

Fringe organizations seem blissfully unaware that the “track” is being undermined. One could suspect that some of them would deliberately derail the train. Interestingly, organizations that shun the very idea of absolute morality from God have no qualms about imposing their own ideas as absolute morality. In the meantime, fringe ideas become more mainstream. The one-time editor of our local weekly claimed that a “crime” against a dog should carry the same consequences as a crime against a man. (Translation? Shooting a dog is like shooting the mayor!) In recent controversy over the propriety of shooting stray cats, the governor made it clear that we don’t want to be known as a state that kills cats.

Before you say we have just given the chicken, or the cat, equal rights with people, let me remind you that we have not. We have merely degraded people to the level of the animal. The young men who released thousands of mink from Midwestern fur farms don’t have a clue. They have merely taken another swipe against true morality. Equating animal life with human life does nothing to improve the lot of animals. It does, however, degrade people. The London Zoo recently proved this degradation by the volunteer caging of nearly naked young men and women next to their “primate cousins.”

Sadly, the locomotive is derailed already. While we have a fringe insisting on Caving chickens (saving from what remains to be seen), true moral standards are falling by the way. Fifty years ago, babies could not be aborted, but mangy strays could be shot. With this entrenched legal “right” to kill millions of babies, gay rights and gay marriage are now driving the train. The government of Canada has recently caved in, as has the United Methodist Church—a position their president deems “courageous.” Can we claim to be a civilized nation while shock proofing ourselves on gay issues, and opting for the lives of chickens and stray cats over our own unborn babies? Do we wonder why an ever-increasing segment of the younger generation exercises no constraint with immoral and violent behavior?

Is the increasingly jealous love of animals displacing human responsibility to make marriages work, to love and to bring up children, and to conduct ourselves with duty, integrity, and responsibility toward God and our fellow-men? (Afterward, we can then properly care for animals.) This is the hallmark of a morally upright people. Pets, however dear they may be, exert no moral or character challenge over their owners. In other words, the affection of cat or dog is no measure of your character or morality.

Sadly, today we would remove all memory of natural law. Would we rather deface or remove the reminders of moral absolutes engraved on historic monuments and buildings, than to admit that perhaps God would have valid input for the affairs of men? Ironically, God doesn’t seem to be especially threatened. He, Himself, respects the free will of people. Not so an atheistic, evolutionary culture. In such a context, there is no plausible reason to be arbitrarily dogmatic. One would expect that those who reject moral absolutes would cease to believe in anything. Wrong! These people arbitrarily invent a new set of absolutes, no matter how harmful or illogical.

“And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind” (Romans 1:28).

Whereas one nation under God produces order and harmony, one nation without God feeds strident discord and moral chaos.

-by Lester Troyer