Innocence Saved

Prologue

I saw the story as a video on the CNN website today. Down in Lincoln County , Georgia a drama recently unfolded that affected me, and apparently many others. Four stray dogs were taken into a gas chamber to be killed by the Lincoln County Animal Control. The Carbon Dioxide was turned on for 30 minutes to suffocate the animals. The neighboring Humane Society was contracted to dispose of the bodies, and Deborah Palpal-Latoc had the unfortunate job of hauling them away.

But there amongst the bodies, a heart was still beating.

It was a crucial moment. "It will never leave me,” said Palpal-Latoc. “I have had nightmares and don't think I'll ever forget this as long as I live."

She pulled the dog out of the cage, now filled with a new sense of urgency, and got the dog to a veterinarian. When speaking of the incident, Palpal-Latoc was in tears, "The dog above her – its bodily fluids were dripping all over her. And she was cowering and scared and foaming at the mouth and trying to get out."

The “she” in this story is a cute beagle mix, now named appropriately Amazing Grace (see photo below). With the exposure of the incident, Amazing Grace immediately had many willing adopting humans.

It’s Not About the Dog

We may cheer for Amazing Grace. We may get up-in-arms about the inhumanity of a faulty gas chamber. We may wish that Grace, in fact that all the animals that are killed everyday, had been adopted in the first place. We may do all of the above.

However, this article is not about the dog. This article is about the analogy, the parable that lies behind this story. All who know me know that I am a sucker for animals of all sorts, but when I saw this story I was deeply saddened, borderline desolate even, because my heart immediately went elsewhere. My heart went to Haifa . My heart went to Beirut . My heart went to Somalia and western Sudan ( Darfur ). My heart went to Iraq .

Quite simply, my heart broke, and breaks.

You see, when the attendant entered the gas chamber and saw the life struggling to hold on and in great pain, she was immediately moved to save that life. Had the life been instead a corpse, the bodies would have moved out and cremated back to dust, and the emotions would never have been born. In the same way, it is my fear that by sterilely watching death and civil war on the television, or on the printed page, or perhaps even ignoring it altogether, we spare ourselves those emotions. All of us can admit to avoiding bad news at times, simply to avoid the emotions that invariably come along.

From afar, we can twist our minds to justify the violence. In the same way that we might easily be able to say, “Yes, yes, it’s a sad thing, but I realize many animals must be euthanized,” don’t we also say or think, “It’s a shame that there is a civil war in Iraq and a budding war in southern Lebanon, but these are the growing pains of a new Middle East.”

Friends, my thesis is that this type of thinking (and I do it often, cowardly) is utter hullabaloo, and if we were to see first hand the death, the fear, and the displacement of human beings from their homes and ways of life, that we would feel differently. Just as the Humane Society attendant who walked into the gas chamber and saw the pain and struggle for life and was moved to save this life, might not we also be moved by the struggle of human life? Yes, we would. We would be moved in terrible and wonderful ways. We would react with a sense of urgency that would far transcend our morning coffees and commutes, our mortgages, the price of gasoline, and our 401k programs. We would be moved to save life, not end it. There is a hero inside of all of us, and most of us spend our lives killing that hero. So perhaps we all have a war waging.

We are born to love, to defend innocence, and I believe that innocence outweighs all the powers-that-be. I am by no means a pacifist. I confess to owning about every Clint Eastwood western there is, and my favorite DVD collection is headlined by Saving Private Ryan and Braveheart. Movies have the luxury of making cut-and-dry the emotional ride for justice, though. Reality is rarely like this (despite the flashy blockbuster-style “themes” of war that the media presents). My collection of favorites also includes such movies as Never Cry Wolf, Paths of Glory, Children of Heaven, and The Weeping Camel where the quest for truth and innocence comes from surprising places. Perhaps defending innocence, in the real world, means being honest with ourselves that innocence and evil exist inside every man and woman.

The battle for peace must begin with the battle for our own personal innocence to win out. This is why Jesus appealed to the child in all of us, because children have an inherent innocence. When Jesus says the kingdom of heaven belongs to the children, I believe he refers to that bit of innocence that might survive with us to adulthood and maybe live with us to our death.

I believe it is that child inside of us whose heart breaks with the puppy in the gas chamber, and whose heart leaps to save it. My prayer is that we might cultivate this reaction when innocent human beings, unfortunate ones by time and place, continue to die in droves each and every day.

America , and mankind, must one day become a nation that craves peace, a nation whose heart breaks at death and leaps at life. That starts with me and you. Optimists are called by creed “to be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.” Well, I challenge us all to realize that “others” is not limited to national borders. It’s a small world, after all.

Likewise, many of us are Christians. Religion is the cause of many wars, and this is sad and ironic. We are called outright to “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus is not nebulous when he defines a “neighbor.” He tells the story of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritan nationality was at the time hated by Israel for their practices and differences or lack of religion. In Jesus’ famous lesson, known very well to young and old, the neighbor was neither the religious priest nor the Levite, but the Samaritan (Luke 10:25 -37). When we wage battles, along with international ones, we should be mindful of this teaching.

I am struck that we need to put a national priority on being better neighbors. In doing so, I believe we would inspire others. Peace, like war, is contagious.

Epilogue

Amazing Grace, the dog, lived. Humans saved her, and loved her, because they saw her plight. But it didn’t end there. The story broke in Georgia and people acted swiftly and emotionally, and within the week the gas chamber was decommissioned. I suspect that more dogs might get adopted down there in Lincoln County , too, at least for awhile. The new owner of Amazing Grace will likely often remember what might have been. It might make them shudder.

Meanwhile, back in the human race, I think often of one of my childhood mentors. He was my Missouri Select Team soccer coach for several years, a role model, and a friend. He exuded energy and fairness and discipline. He would take me aside, as team captain, and put his hand on my shoulder and scold me, thank me, and inspire me. My friend’s name is Ali, an Iraqi (and now American citizen). These days, I often think about what if he had not immigrated to America decades ago, and instead lived in Baghdad . I think this, and I shudder.

 

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