What the Gorilla's Death Teaches Us About Our Culture

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A mom's mishap brought a tsunami of public shame over social media.
A mom's mishap brought a tsunami of public shame over social media. (Rob Schreckhise)

As I scrolled through my Facebook feed Memorial Day morning, I saw this letter: "An open letter to the mom of the boy who fell in the gorilla enclosure."

Having not yet heard about the boy who managed to get in the gorilla enclosure at the zoo, I was naturally intrigued by this title.

The letter was kind and gracious, but the comments revealed a whole different side to the way our society thinks today.

Let me start out by saying this:

There are many people out there who, despite not having been present when this situation occurred, seem to have intimate knowledge about how well the mother was watching her child.

I find this puzzling, because those who actually were present when the boy got in the enclosure with the gorilla paint a whole different picture of this mother.

And I must insert myself here, being a mother of two boys, one of which is extremely active and at time precocious. It doesn't even take so much as a split second to take your eye off your child for him to get into something he shouldn't.

This could have happened to any parent, and it unfortunately happened to her. I can only imagine the amount of terror she must have felt until her child was rescued.

And lest she thought that knowing her child—although seriously injured—did not have life-threatening injuries could bring peace to her mommy-heart, little did she know that it was only the beginning of the story.

Moms are incredibly hard on themselves. We blame ourselves for every cold, every flu, and every injury. The accusations in our head tell us if we "had only done ___________ (insert any number of helicopter-parenting skills here)" we could have somehow prevented whatever it was that assailed our child.

We are not God.

No amount of helicopter parenting can ever prevent bad things—even tragic things—from happening to our children.

And the most helicopter of parents will at some point sneeze or be distracted by a bird flying three inches above their heads or a voice that sounds familiar and take their eagle eye off their child ... only to discover that this is the exact amount of time it takes for a child to go from the safety of his mother's watchful eye into danger.

And beware that this ever happen to you because all of Hades will be brought down upon your head by the millions of people who have either never parented, and thus have no idea what it means to care for another human life who ever lives to extricate himself from his parents' care, or who have chosen to raise their children on deserted islands where no danger ever exists anywhere, and thus have no idea what it means to raise children in the real world.

But there is an even more serious lesson to be learned from this tsunami of public shaming we've been subjected to on social media.

It actually goes back 150 years to the theory that man was not created, but rather evolved from apes.

By erasing the hand of God from existence of mankind, and the very important fact that mankind was created in the image of Almighty God, as opposed to all other life forms, the value of human life was demoted to that of every other living thing.

But God, throughout His Word, expresses that human life has greater value that animal life.

This is why, in Genesis, He gave mankind dominion over the animal kingdom. The value of human life is not equal to that of animal life, but greater.


But sadly, it doesn't stop here.

Forty years ago, we chose to diminish the value of human life even further when we began rationalizing away the immorality of taking human life.

  • Abortion
  • Euthanasia
  • Doctor-assisted suicide

Ironically, many who support these issues when it comes to human life are radically against the same practices being done to animals.

And here we've come to a time when, for many, human life has lesser value than animal life.

The worst comment I read about this issue was on this Facebook thread:

"The silverback gorillas are an endangered species. 4 year old boys are not."

Jesus warned of this when He said: "Because iniquity will abound, the love of many will grow cold" (Matt. 24:12).

As we have legalized increasingly more methods of murder in our society, the love of many has grown cold. In the Greek "grown cold" literally means that rigor mortis has set in.

The honor and respect we would naturally and instinctively have for human life has quite literally died in many, and rigor mortis has set in, as they have elevated the value of animal life above human life, being willing to sacrifice an innocent child to save an endangered gorilla.

This is a clear and demonic distortion of God's order.

In the Old Testament, the Israelites were commanded to sacrifice animals as a temporary way to cover their sin so that God could at least look upon fallen man, until Christ came and offered Himself as the final sacrifice.

Yes, God actually commanded the sacrifice of animals to save mankind from God's wrath.

And yet now the cry goes out by many that sacrificing this endangered gorilla to save the life of a 3-year-old boy was wrong and immoral.

The lesson we have learned from the death of this gorilla is that when we erase God from society, there is no end to how Satan distort the thinking of man.

We have been given over to such depravity that we have:

  • Legalized mothers murdering their babies
  • Refused to make illegal in all States the neglect of babies who survive abortion
  • Legalized the murder of the elderly and terminally ill in some states

And now many even rationalize sacrificing the life of a preschooler to save the life of an animal.

If there ever was a time that the church needed to repent for having lost her salt and light, it is now!

"If My people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray, and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and will heal their land" (2 Chr. 7:14).

Rosilind Jukic, a Pacific Northwest native, is a missionary living in Croatia and married to her Bosnian hero. Together they live with their two active boys where she enjoys fruity candles, good coffee and a hot cup of herbal tea on a blustery fall evening. Her passion for writing led her to author her best-selling book The Missional Handbook. At A Little R & R she encourages women to find contentment in what God created them to be. You can also find her at Missional Call where she shares her passion for local and global missions. She can also be found at on a regular basis. You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google +.


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