Of the Tiger, Terri Schiavo, and True Freedom

Yesterday, a tiger roaming the southern California hills for much of the past two weeks was killed by a team of trackers from the US Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services and California's Fish and Game department.

Later, officials felt compelled to explain that the killing was necessary. The tiger was dangerously close to ball fields in a Simi Valley residential area and was also walking near a highway. A tranquilizer dart would have taken five to ten minutes to bring down the 495-pound cat. By that time, it could have run onto the highway or attacked someone.

There are two elements to this story that hit me like a freight train.

One is represented by two questions I pondered after I'd learned of it. First: What on earth was anybody doing with a dangerous carnivore as a pet?

Second: Why would anyone fail to report that their tiger was missing, especially when the information the owner could provide might spare the lives of many people and maybe, the life of the tiger?

A second element of this story hit me. The network news account which I watched last evening included "people on the street" interviews with several area residents. Each lamented the loss of the tiger's life. That's understandable. But one woman said that she was mourning.

Perhaps unfairly, I couldn't help wondering if this same woman would have mourned the killing of the cat had it mauled or killed a loved-one before officials took the only action they could take.

I wondered too, if she was mourning the possible death by starvation of Terri Schiavo. She is the apparently brain-dead woman, still allegedly open to stimuli, who has been the subject of so much controversy over the past few years. Recently, a judge stayed the decision to allow her to, in essence, be put to death by withholding food from her. Right now, it's unclear what the courts will ultimately decide about Schiavo. She's like a Death Row resident whose life or death depends on a last-minute commutation.

The difference of course, is that Terri Schiavo's only crime is that her continued living is inconvenient.

And unlike that tiger who had to be killed, she is a human being, representative of a species of life that I regard as being more important than big cats. Also unlike the tiger, Terri Schiavo menaces nobody, although she should perhaps menace our consciences.

Two strands of thought:

A person who keeps a tiger for a pet and then lets his neighbors be endangered by failing to report it as missing; and

a portion of our society that mourns a dead tiger but pays little heed to the impending death of an innocent human being.

These two strands represent two dots, if you will, and I believe that there is a line connecting them. It's this: a false notion of freedom.

The owner of the cat would argue that he or she shouldn't have their freedom infringed upon. No one, they would say, should tell them whether they should own a dangerous carnivore or not.

The advocates of Terri Schiavo's death would say that it's time to turn the page, to set Schiavo free, to set her husband free, and even to set her parents, who oppose taking her life, free.

Freedom without responsibility and accountability is license. It makes our species no better than a dumb cat.

According to the Bible, a man named Cain took a disliking to his brother, Abel. So, he killed him. When God confronted Cain, he tried to fend God's queries off by asking, "Am I my brother's keeper?"

The answer, of course, is that we all are our brother's and sister's keepers. Unless we surrender our lives to the God revealed in the Bible--and ultimately in the Person of Jesus Christ, we will continue to go the way of Cain. We'll continue to live by the law of the jungle and in the end, all of us will be endangered, spiritually as well as physically.

But we can have our humanity restored and see changes in our society when we simply and humbly call on Jesus Christ to save us from ourselves and help us to experience true freedom, the freedom that causes us to love God with our whole hearts and our neighbors as ourselves; freedom that gives to each person the opportunity to live in peace, without fear.