Nature isn’t all peace and beauty. But even the dark side of creation can tell us something about God’s grace.
The atheist blogger lustily ripped apart the Christian faith as he described a pride of lions pouncing onto a badger from different sides, clamping steely jaws on its flesh, and playing a cruel game of tug of war. The badger’s interminable screaming went uninterrupted for more than 30 minutes. The atheist chastised Christians for believing in a “supposed good God” who would create this chaos of suffering in the animal kingdom.
As much as we love to sing about our loving Father’s creation (and I’m usually the loudest), is it possible we forget the truth of nature’s dark side? Though I love experiencing and writing about God’s creation, I am painfully aware of nagging reminders of tragedy that will simply not go away. I know wonderful things about God’s amazing creatures, but I’ve also seen enough in the wild to know that the earth groans with pain and death (Romans 8:22).
Consider Flipper, the beloved dolphin from the television show of my youth (which was made into a movie in the ’90s). Did you know his relatives kill their own babies, just so a mother will mate again? Do I really want to admit that adorable-looking sea otters drown seal pups? I hesitate to reveal the cruelty of male chimpanzees as they kill, dismember, and eat babies in front of the baby’s mother! And what’s going on with the elephants? They are increasingly attacking and destroying villages in African preserves, even assaulting and killing rhinos.
Why is this happening? Some suggest that this cruel behavior might be caused by increasing animal anxiety stemming from human poaching, human-caused habitat loss that decreases roaming space, and dwindling numbers of mating partners in populations. Some of these explanations may be true in certain instances.
But then I’m reminded of joys I’ve experienced in the forest that are marred by dark reality. Many times I have stopped to admire the beauty of a cowbird, with its noble brown head, lovely against the backdrop of its ebony feathered body. The beauty of this bird reminds me of God’s glory. Then I consider how the cowbird’s mother laid her egg in the nest of another mother bird of a different species. She had no intention of raising it and abandoned it to the care of the clueless foster mother. As it grew, the cowbird most likely shoved its foster siblings out of the nest to their death so it could be the sole heir of that brood. That is the norm for cowbirds.