A Snarl Theology — mind-blowing expansion of God's love
Released soon by Wipf & Stock - Excerpt included below
Excerpt from Chapter 1:
A Snarl Theology isn’t just a radical idea. It’s a mind-blowing expansion of God’s love. The notion that all animals have relationships to God opens the windows to a backroom of empty shelves where much study needs to be done. If animals are genuinely ours to steward, then their relationship to God plays a part in our caretaking. There’s a lot more stuff on our plate than we thought.
In Judeo-Christian studies of God, the animal kingdom rarely exists beyond the backdrop. Looking at Snarl’swoven lives of animals and humans, not just in contrast where brutality and compassion collide, but in sync, a mix of rush and calm where God must be involved, my novel’s scenes go way beyond the static staging we assign the "lesser” creatures. It’s time to change the way the stage is set. Animals and we are the same, yet not the same, and the difference matters for all creation due to God’s invested role in our lives.
Read every creation story with tales of frogs, wolves, eagles, and giant fish. You follow, with skepticism, the notion that animals can meld or morph into various gods. Animals and humans appear to be the same in these stories, able to be gods, with a slight uplift to the human creature. Theologies from myths remain largely mythical to a Christian-trained mind. I bring this up to assure you that stories outside the Judeo-Christian frame do not mold A Snarl Theology. Not purposely. I may periodically fail and go off script. I’m not always sure.
Our discussion of animal theology rejects an inclusive-minded pantheism where God is everything. The Snarl theological exercise is meant to delve deeper into our friendship as creatures among all living beings as described by a Trinity-revealed God; and religions bent on worshipping and collaborating with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We will rely upon Christian influences, Catholic Church scholarship, and the scriptural revelations of patristic fathers, theologians, and doctors of the Church.
This theology tackles the details of God’s purpose, place, and person within the limits of our Christian faith. At a basic level, this theology intends to ensure our existence is not accidental, not just a function of evolution, and not merely a temporary appearance. God, then, as three persons in one, has relationships to every aspect of his creation, and that’s the whole point of A Snarl Theology. These are my limitations and John Sorensen’s, so we’re admitting them.
What, then, about the Judeo-Christian view of the animal kingdom? Are creatures not supposed to be just our backdrop? I set the scene in the first chapter of Snarl according to animal world reality. No humans are involved yet in the story. Stare, Snarl’s mother recognizes her deterioration. She is bothered with many concerns and has been her entire life. And now she must deal with a new reality. Not that she sees her own death but that she knows her limitations exceed her expectations.
She lifted her head. Snarl did the same. She must either leave them or hope they leave her. The cubs no longer played together, certainly not over this past winter, and the last time one cuddled his head upon her neck, the weight had strained too much. She growled him away. Strangely, she remembered, that cub had been Snarl.
What must she do now? Stare’s body had always given her the signs of what was next, like the scent that would attract a male, or the sour sweat from harboring kittens inside her. What was her body saying now?
(Snarl, page 7)
The earthly scenes we typically set in theological circles ignore the animal kingdom and only position people in communication with their God and themselves. That makes perfect sense. Animals sit, fly, run, swim, or wrestle with humans, but not with theology. Our co-citizens of earth end up as props or idyllic elements of our scenery, rarely described as participants and collaborators with the divine. Whether we know it or not, God is very aware of their existence. He has gone to great lengths to toss all species into the salad of life.
Suddenly, something deep inside Snarl, a decision that he knew was not his own, appeared to him. He might need to kill his brother. The idea startled him. It was a charged feeling, a rushing emotion, from a dark influence he had experienced before. Snarl did not trust dark compulsions.
(Snarl, page 14)
I extend to Snarl both temptations and grace, from which he has to choose. It’s a noticeable stretch, one which I cannot shake off. So much happens with animals where God must indeed be engaged.
Snarl studied his confusing brother. His fur quaked like a trapped rabbit. Snarl stared into the frightened eyes of Spit to calm both his own dark urges and his brother’s distress. Snarl also missed his mother. He lowered his head to get his brother’s attention and waited for another more acceptable idea. Killing his brother seemed compelling but resistible.
Snarl measured his actions with practiced detachment.
Another, better sense finally rose within Snarl when he held back the rushing urges. Patience. Better purposes grew more significant than the compelling dark desires. He didn’t think killing his brother was a good idea. So, he waited.
(Snarl, page 14)
When God joined us as a babe, he did so in a cave where creatures lived, not humans. Humans were dragged unwilling there, forced to birth him in hay and place him in a lamb’s feeding trough as his manger. He was warmed with the breath of beasts. Shepherds, caked in the smell and oil of sheep, arrived as the first witnesses. Weeks, or even years, passed before kings arrived at Jesus’ birthplace and camels brought them. The cast of the animal kingdom wasn’t just backdropping.
God didn’t create semi and fully-sentient [1] beings merely as a test tube preparation for humans. The trial and error deduction found by some in science disregards God’s design. Accidents and malformations take place from an ordered layout, somehow radically maligned. The layout as God created the universe matters. This is critical in Christian thought, arising from and maintaining a consistently biblical worldview.
The animals took two of God’s stretched-out days in Genesis to create. On the fourth day, he placed beings in the sea and in the sky. On the fifth day, “tame animals, crawling things, and every kind of wild animal.” God’s interaction with his creatures did not stop there. God walked with creation in Paradise, but his penalty of exclusion from Heaven’s hold did not mean God abandoned his creatures. He set them on the path they chose.
Am I too literal? Is the scriptural creation story too simplistic? OK. I’ll take that bludgeon and let theologians correct my assumptions.
In any observation, though, God is highly engaged in our struggle with nature, present and accounted for. With God's acknowledgment, Earth’s creatures live on the edge of daily extinction. Our concern for the animal kingdom is built-in, stamped into our being. God’s yearning for us is proof of this hereditary concern. We are like God in yearning for him, as he is for us. We share this yearning with animals, who, eons before our species walked the earth, also yearned for the proper order of life’s design. We readily imagine our existence as permanent, designed for immortal life. Something ruined our world.
[1] I’ve been advised to explain sentience and why it matters in describing living beings. Sentience is a combo (combined?) word, taking(melding?) conscience and thought together. A sentient being has memories, formed ethics, and derives an idea from experience and knowledge of things. Few people imagine birds, fish, or even dogs as sentient. Though minimal in the smallest of brains and often regarded as “instinct,” the training of animals and the existence of animal languages allows them to be seen as sentient.