Bearing With Bad Behaviour

Two major events that happened last week have me thinking about bad behaviour, and they both occurred the same night. One, is the rioting that occurred after game 7 in Vancouver. The other is the bear that decided around the same time to invade our back porch. He didn’t climb right in for which I am thankful. He seems to have been satisfied to destroy the rain-shield and rip out the screen so that he could then lick out the drip tray on the back of the BBQ.

The bear was smart enough not to get his picture taken. Though he left his paw prints in the garden and his sign around the corner, there isn’t a single photo that can be used to identify him. In Vancouver on the other hand, there seems to have been no such discretion shown.

So what are we to think when people act like animals? It scandalizes us doesn’t it. When animals act like animals we don’t think much of it because that is what they are. But when rational human beings, created in God’s image, act like animals, it genuinely shocks us as is evident from the media attention and social firestorm that has resulted.

It seems that the people who perpetrated the violence are themselves even shocked by it. Seventeen year old Nathan Kotylak of Maple Ridge, B.C, a member of Canada’s junior water polo team with Olympic aspirations and plans to enter the University of Calgary this fall on an athletic scholarship was one of the rioters. Now all those plans and aspirations may be gone. His explanation for it? He got “caught up in the moment".

The New Testament authors speak of those who behave like animals. Peter speaks of those who are like ‘brute beasts’ who “follow the corrupt desire of the sinful nature and despise authority”. Jude talks about people being like ‘unreasoning animals’ as well. And it is likely indicative that the book of Revelation uses the term ‘the beast’ in reference associated with the anti-Christ.

But before we get too carried away with our condemnation of these people, we need to exercise some real moral restraint and have some sober thought about our own hearts. The psalmist confessed that there were times when he himself had been a ‘brute beast’ before God, ‘senseless and ignorant’ (Psalm 73:22). The truth of the matter is that all of us have the potential and the tendency to behave in ways that are despicable and quite beneath the dignity for which we were created.

While it is right and appropriate to allow the law to follow its course and see those who violated the peace, destroyed public property and caused injuries to others in Vancouver, to be prosecuted and the due penalties levied and endured, let’s be really careful that we don’t distance ourselves from their behaviour in such a way as to suggest that any of us isn’t capable of making the same mistakes given the right set of circumstances. To quote the book of proverbs in conjunction with the apostle Paul, “Pride comes before the fall … So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!”


PS. We are not evolving.