“Elise,” our four year old’s brother said urgently. “What do you call animals that lions catch
and eat.”
For the last three weeks, our home has been deluged with
coloring pages of lions and tigers.
Elise loves to color (some might call it scribble) and the only thing
she wants to color are pictures of big cats. Other girls might like princess pictures or
things like that, but Elise has moved from an obsession with dinosaurs onto
tigers.
Elise began to think.
You could see on her face that she was trying to remember if she learned
about this in preschool. “Come on,
Elise,” Elliot said. “What do you call
animals that lions eat?”
At this point, something clicked in Elise’s brain. “You call them MEAT!” She said and shrieked with laughter.
“No,” Elliot said. “They
are prey.”
Elise was not listening to her brother at all. “They’re meat! They’re meat!” She chortled as she colored a coloring page
with a tiger on it a luminescent shade of green.
Lions are supposedly the kings of the jungle. Whether or not the other animals view them as
such, they have been named animal royalty by humans.
(Lions are not particularly royal, neither do they live in
the jungle – they live on the savanna.)
In a way, I suppose it doesn’t really matter if you call
antelopes prey or meat, the ones that are caught by lions do not enjoy their
fate. A cow on the table is steak or
beef, but the name doesn’t change the life changing event that brings them to
the dinner plate.
It seems as though humans are good at giving things names
that soften the impact of their actions.
Pastors have moral failings rather than immoral, sinful behavior. People
don’t tell the whole truth rather than indulge in lies.
The problem is that as long as we are not honest with
ourselves about the significance of our behavior, we will never have victory
over it. In Romans 12:3, Paul told the
Roman Christians, “I give each of you this warning: Don't think you are better
than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring
yourselves by the faith God has given us.” (NLT)
Honesty about the severity of our sin and the impact it has had on those around us is the beginning of a new path that leads way from
euphemisms and towards conquering that sin. That is the most important thing of all.
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