Today's Scripture Reading (September 4, 2024): Job 24
Many years ago, I
visited a small town with an unusual museum. The museum was called the Gopher
Hole Museum. I had gone to this small town just to see the museum and had no
idea what I should expect. The museum was housed in an old house, and as I
entered the museum, I saw a book containing some of the fan letters that the museum
had received over the years.
The binder also
contained some of the hate mail. A whole section of the binder was dedicated to
letters from PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) protesting the
museum. As I stood at the museum's entrance, the curator mused that PETA might
not know what a gopher was.
The gopher is a ground
squirrel considered to be a pest on the Great Plains. They are everywhere.
Driving down the road, it is often hard not to hit them. They are a plague to
the farmers as they try to raise their crops. If you wander around a field, you
have to be careful where you place your foot because you could easily sprain
your ankle stepping into an actual gopher hole, not the museum.
The museum consisted of
various scenes where stuffed gophers could be seen doing very human things. One
scene featured a few gophers playing pool. Another featured a wedding. Another
showed a church service, including a pastor and a congregation, and even an
angel floating just over the pastor and his pulpit. All the gophers were
appropriately dressed for the scenes in which they appeared.
I have no idea how the
museum received its gophers. PETA obviously believed that the gophers were
obtained through non-ethical means. Or maybe it is just the display that PETA finds
distasteful. However, treating animals ethically is not just a PETA concern.
Deuteronomy also stresses the ethical treatment of animals. Deuteronomy 25
makes this command. "Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the
grain" (Deuteronomy 25:4). The idea was that it wasn't ethical to make an
ox tread the grain, part of the process of breaking the grain away from the
husk, while restricting the ox so that it could not feed. If you were using an
ox to tread the grain, then sharing the grain with the ox is part of the cost
of getting an ox to do the work.
Job muses about the plight of people experiencing
poverty. In Job's day, the poor struggled to survive, and ethical treatment was
not a priority. Job watched them crush the olives yet not benefit from the food
created with the oil. They would crush the grapes and yet not be able to drink
the wine.
The plight of people experiencing poverty hasn't
changed. These individuals are used to create wealth but are not invited to
share in the spoils. Laws are designed to help the rich but place an extra
burden on the poor. We worry about the ethical treatment of animals, and yet we
do nothing about the ethical treatment of those who occupy the position of least
among us. Jesus left us with this comment:
"Then
the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my
Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the
creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me
something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a
stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes
and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in
prison and you came to visit me.'
"The
King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of
these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me' (Matthew 25:34-36; 40).
Tomorrow's Scripture
Reading: Job 25 & 26
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