Nature, Red in Tooth and Claw... and Original Sin

Hard on the heels of the delights of newborn life roars in the other end of the spectrum.  The other day, the yearling buck that I had kept back from last year's crop jumped his fence.  A fullblood buck, out of our good Eggsfile/Gauge buck who died New Year's Eve and an extremely aged South African based doe, I had high hopes for him.  Long, long, long body, square on his legs, heavily muscled, and pretty docile, I was starting to have fantasies about training him for the show ring (something I have never done).  I had yet to register him, tho we had let him breed our little Nubian doe when she came into heat out of season a while back.  He was with our fainting buck in a big pen, with plenty of hay and water.  He'd jumped the fence several weeks before, I found him browsing in the stubble of the vegetable garden, but quickly put him back where he belonged without any trouble.  I found the sagging spot in the fence and reinforced it, and all seemed well.

But this day, I had not been feeling well, and bestirred myself late in the afternoon to go check on the goats, for there are still several does yet to kid.  A few minutes earlier, I had let the dogs go out -- our fiery red heeler/Aussie shepherd cross and our big black lab/border collie cross. Part way from the house to the barn, I had a sudden "Something's not right!" intuition, looked around and did not see any dogs (who would normally meet me at the door to go with me), and heard a faint bleating of a goat from the back yard.  I started shouting the dog's names, and ran towards the sound.  I turned the corner, and saw the yearling buck lying at the back of the shrub rose bed against the fence, one of the dogs skittering away and the other nowhere to be seen.  When I got to the buck, he was sprawled out, breathing heavily.  I could see that part of his ear was torn away (Boer goats have big floppy ears, that are usually the first casualty of an attack).  I started feeling him over, and looking at him, but found only superficial bites along his shoulder and haunch.  No obvious tears or gashes.  But he was lying flat on his side, with the far leg tucked up under him.  Worried that leg might be damaged, I tried to turn him over.  He was too heavy, and I couldn't see.  There was no obvious pool of blood, but he had been run so hard he was too spent for me to get him up.

Going to phone a rancher neighbor, I found the missing dog hiding in their pen, spattered with blood.  I locked the other in, called the neighbor, and waited for him to come help.  The neighbor quickly arrived, and we started examining the wounded buck.  We got him turned, and found only superficial bites and pulled hair on the other leg.  But he was still breathing terribly hard and couldn't stand. We decided to move him into the barn, and I went to get the cart I use to haul hay bales around.  Ivan arrived home from school, and the three of us got him loaded and carted to the barn.  We gave him some fresh water, but he wouldn't drink it yet, dosed him up with some prophylactic penicillin and gave him some Banamine  to make him more comfortable (basically veterinary aspirin paste).  Not finding any obvious major wounds, we had hopes he would quickly recover.

Later that night, however, he was breathing very heavily.  It appeared that he was having serious lung troubles, there must have been some throat or lung injury we did not find externally.  After giving him some more Banamine and setting a heat lamp on him, I went to bed filled with foreboding.  And by morning, he had died.

The dogs.... I gave them both a bath that night to wash off the blood.  But what should I feel about them?  They go in the pens with the goats all the time, and there is no trouble.  It is only when a goat is out of place that they need to chase it, to corral it, to put it back where it belongs.  One dog alone (usually the heeler) can be a great help in rounding up an escaped animal or herd.  But when both of them are together, pack mentality sets in, the excitement of one feeds into the excitement of the other, and chaos ensues.  And when there is the taste of blood -- centuries of domestication evaporates and they revert to being dingos, coyotes, wolves.   It is only the sound of my voice, shouting across the yard, that snaps them back into being the "good boys" I'm used to.  I can scarcely blame them for being what they are.  They are dogs, bred to corral and move errant livestock, domesticated carnivores, not far removed from the pack hunters of their dim ancestry.  It is perfectly within their nature to do what they did.

[Man] Who trusted God was love indeed

And love Creation’s final law–

Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw

With ravine, shriek’d against his creed–

Who loved, who suffer’d countless ills,

Who battled for the True, the Just,

Be blown about the desert dust,

Or seal’d within the iron hills?

No more? A monster then, a dream,

A discord. Dragons of the prime,

That tare each other in their slime,

Were mellow music match’d with him.

O life as futile, then, as frail!

O for thy voice to soothe and bless!

What hope of answer, or redress?

Behind the veil, behind the veil. 

 ---Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam, from canto 56

Which makes me ponder the concepts of Original Sin and of Total Depravity.  Now I know that this would rank as probably The Most Unpopular Doctrine among progressive Christians -- not only in the present day, but centuries of Pelagians, Arminians, Eastern Orthodox, and others.  But my own Reformed and evangelical heritage held these as linchpins in their understanding of God's grace:  the greater the human predicament, the deeper the sin, the more impossible for humans to break free of their fallen nature, the correspondingly more wonderful, amazing, loving and gracious God is to redeem humans.  While Augustine held to a biological transmission of original sin, that had largely fallen aside among the evangelicals I studied with, where the idea of original sin had more to do with sin's universality among humans.  And Total Depravity never meant that humans could do nothing good or had lost the Image of God in which we are created, but that human nature was predisposed to oppose God apart from God's gracious initiatives towards humans.

In this view, sin is not so much discrete acts of disobedience to God's Law of Love, but an intrinsic, inborn, instinctual, approach to life that is essentially self-centered, self-idolatrous, and heedless of God.  I've liked Luther's image of sin being "curved in upon oneself."  Sinful acts, and sinful human systems, institutions, and structures, are the natural outgrowth of the universally sinful human nature. Of course humans commit genocide, for "Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery are in their paths, and the way of peace they have not known;  there is no fear of God before their eyes" (Romans 3:16-19).  Of course dogs turn into wolves in certain circumstances;  that is what at heart they really are.  Reinhold Niebuhr was fond of saying that "Original sin is the only empirically verifiable doctrine of the Christian faith." An hour with the evening news shows how ubiquitous sin is in personal and corporate manifestations.  And an hour of silence with my own conscience quickly implicates my own acts and motives in these larger systems. 

But it is precisely on this universality of sin that the apostle Paul bases the universality of God's grace in Christ:  "Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are now justified by God's grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" (Romans 3:23-24). Part of the reason sin is such a taboo topic among progressive Christians is because for many churches the focus has been on the sin, it's guilt, and a pervasive undermining of the wonder of the image of God in people, instead of on the grace of God.  But that is having our attention snagged backwards, at the problem, rather than forward, towards God's solution.  For God's grace isn't just a matter of forgiving our sins, it is a matter of whole new possibilities in the way we live in relationship with God.

I don't hold the dog's natural behavior toward the errant buck against them, for I see a larger picture of their being than just that afternoon.  I love Scooter and Zack (yes, they have names).  When they are with me, they are no threat to the goats, they live their domestication, their obedience training, their connection to me.  Their relationship with me shapes their behavior, and eclipses their inner dingo.  By virtue of the relationship of love that I have with them (and at the risk of anthropomorphism, the love they have for me?), they are not wolves but pets.  Do they love me?  Well, I'm reminded of the joke:

Put your wife in the back of your pickup and drive around for an hour.  Now put your dog in the back of your pickup and drive around for an hour.  When you stop and let them out, who's happier to see you?

Scooter and Zack.  Got them to sit and stay!

The love of God transforms us as well.  It comes to us not because of what we do or don't do, but as a gift, something unexpected, something rooted in Christ God's self.  We are not limited by our sinful nature (whether it's "original" or "learned"), we are free to love God and our neighbor.  That is what we were originally created for -- sin is an alien overlay to human nature, not something essential to human nature.  And its universality simply means that God's grace is universal as well; "Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more" (Romans 5:20).

A final note of hope on the goat front:  The dam of the buck who died is bred to same sire as before.  Last year, she had two buck kids;  I hope she might have another.  If that happens, there might be a glimpse "behind the veil, behind the veil."