The Boy and the Gorilla

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen 

Shock, horror, outrage, and a host of other reactions when a 3-year-old boy climbed into an enclosure with silverback gorillas. Harimbe, the male, dragged the child through the water and stood over him, and zoo officials decided the best course of action was to shoot the animal. Expert Jack Hanna is certain that shooting it was the correct course of action, since the gorilla was showing signs of agitation.


The death of silverback gorilla Harimbe is tragic, but it could have been tragic for the boy and his family. Unfortunately, some people have a bad perspective and consider human life far less important than animals.
Silverback gorilla image credit: Freeimages / Chad Littlejohn
Instead of being thankful that a human child was saved from a powerful wild animal, there has been a great deal of outrage and finger-pointing as to who is to blame: the parents, the zoo, and so forth. Read the news reports and watch for emotionally-laden terminology and provocative wordingSome animal "rights" people want the parents held responsible for the gorilla's death. (Trophy hunters Rebecca FrancisMelissa Bachman, and Walter Palmer received death threats, and I'm pretty sure others have been threatened as well.) Matt Walsh contends that "One Human Is More Important Than A Million Gorillas. And We All Know It". Keyboard warriors who were not there and are not wildlife experts get angry over the death of an animal, but don't care a whit about how we're murdering millions of our own kind in the mother's wombs.

Not hardly! We should know it, but because of secularism and evolutionary thinking, people believe man is not special or created in God's image, but just a highly evolved animal. (I maintain that they are being inconsistent, on factor in goo-to-gorilla evolution is "survival of the fittest", so we should just do what is best for our own survival, right?) Some extreme environmentalists believe that most humans should be exterminated, since Earth is of primary importance. "All life is sacred", say some, but "sacred" is meaningless and subjective in this context. Ken Ham had some thoughts to share on this as well.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that the whole thing was tragic. Pointing fingers and placing blame isn't going to solve anything, nor is holding a candlelight vigil (which sounds quite pagan to me). God is the Creator, and he makes the rules, and has made himself known to us — including our interactions with animals. Secularization is costing us our humanity. Dr. James White has some similar thoughts, and you can go to the 7 minute 7 second mark in this video, or go to the same point if you download the audio (if it asks you to sign up, you can click the "maybe later" button and it will proceed). 

People need the proper perspective, and also to get all the facts.