Faith: Our dominion over the animals does not allow us to ignore their cries

I grew up in the coal mining area of West Virginia.  The miners would take canaries into the mines to alert them to dangers their own senses could not detect.  The presence of methane and other gasses would kill the canary before It would threaten the miners lives, thus giving the miners time to escape.

When you are 1,200 feet deep in a coal black mine, the death of that canary you brought along means one thing: There is a gas leak and an explosion is coming.  Stop, turn around and get out!

Of course, we are so modern and brilliant.  We know the animals are not sentient and do not have a soul and we are the top species.  Our churches have taught us that God Himself gave us dominion over the beasts great and small, and we can do to them as we wish.

What we have not learned is that we are connected to and are one with all of creation. We are neither exceptional nor are we, as a species, unique. We are one with God and His entire unique creation.  And all of creation is singing a praise hymn to God for all to hear.

In that hymn are messages the animals are sending us as a very special alert.  I can hear them and so can you, when you decide to listen.

Here is what I hear.  The cries of sharks who are unable to swim or feed themselves as they fall to the ocean floor after their fins are cut off for shark fin soup. As they die, they are screaming at us, not for their own already lost lives, but to tell us we are making terrible choices.

The whales are beaching themselves because our military sonar bombardment of the seas has driven them crazy.

The whole Pacific Ocean is in a life and death battle with radiation caused by the meltdown at Fukushima in 2011.

The poor bees, the very beginning of the food chain, see their colonies collapsing, because we pour millions of barrels of pesticides into the environment, which their bodies cannot survive.

Surely, the cry of the elephants as we hunt them to extinction for their tusks, thunders around the globe of our consciousness.

And on and on.

For just a second, stop what you are doing, close your eyes and try to hear them. Their voices cry out in pain, not for their own lives, but for ours and for how we have so terribly misused the power and dominion given us.

Surely you know this cannot go on much longer, and pity those who try to excuse us with the idea that soon God is going to end this anyway, so this does not make any difference. All 8 billion of us, along with all of creation, are in this catastrophe together.

We, being the ones with dominion, are the ones — the only ones — who can bring this looming doom to an end.

Thankfully, I am not in a position to tell you how to handle your part in the solution. The birds and the bees, the beasts on land and the fish in the sea are calling out to all of us to stop this craziness before it is too late.

As we listen to them, they will help each of us find that part of the solution that is uniquely our own.

Can you hear them?

Chuck Robison is a former Protestant chaplain at the United Nations. He lives in Cedar Park.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Faith: Dominion over animals does not include destroyin them