Blog #219--Loving ALL Members of a Species

Becoming a veterinarian was an easy choice for me because I wanted to serve others. And it is especially easy to love pet animals like dogs, the species that can provide humans with unconditional love and years of companionship. But even dog lovers sometimes have trouble loving certain individual dogs that misbehave. That may not seem an important issue, but a spiritual principle of most religions is to love all of creation. How can one reconcile love for those who treat us badly? It can be a difficult concept to understand.

I met a large number of animals working as a veterinarian, enough to realize some can be intractable, especially if they are frightened and fight to protect their survival. If we react negatively toward them, they will usually behave worse. Gentleness and patience may do little to improve behavior either. But that doesn’t mean they have no purpose or value in this world. We can always learn lessons from interacting with animals, including how to vary our behaviors to meet their needs and how to accept and forgive them for being different than we want them to be.

I mention dogs and other pet animals because they have a fairly simplistic range of behaviors. Many people prefer animal companionship to human companionship. After all, humans are the most complicated and most potentially destructive of all species on Earth. We can always find a few people we respect and even love, but loving all humans is an extremely difficult task for those who are judgmental.

I could site many current examples of human misbehavior, but those are emotional issues fresh in our minds. Perhaps we can look more rationally at something that happened long ago. In 1864, white settlers in Colorado, including many with gold rush fever, were in the process of stealing Cheyenne and Arapaho land. Many Indians fought back, creating great fear among the settlers. Colorado Territory governor John Evans brought in volunteer militiamen led by Colonel John Chivington to solve the problem aggressively.

A former member of the Christian clergy, Chivington hated Indians despite Jesus’s plea to love our neighbors as ourselves. Black Kettle, leader of a group of 600 Cheyennes and Arapahos, sought peace and surrendered, hoping to trust his white neighbors. He brought his tribe to a place called Sand Creek, 40 miles north of Fort Lyon. Despite posing no threat to any settlers, Chivington wanted a major victory to prove his value, so he attacked Black Kettle and his entourage with cannons and rifles.

Whipped into a frenzy by the admonitions of their leader and plenty of alcohol, the soldiers created atrocities that still represent an open wound in the minds and hearts of the Plains Indians. An interpreter in the camp was quoted describing the massacre: “They were scalped, their brains knocked out; the men used their knives, ripped open women, clubbed little children, knocked them in the head with their rifle butts, beat their brains out, mutilated their bodies in every sense of the word.” More than 100 women and children were killed and mutilated. This massacre delayed peace for another 20+ years.

How can we love someone like Colonel Chivington when he is responsible for such atrocities? It certainly isn’t desirable to love what he did, although a significant number of white settlers at the time celebrated his “victory.” Chivington no doubt felt his God was on his side; indeed, it was his destiny to be a destroyer rather than a creator.

But like the May 4, 1970 Kent State shootings that became a major turning point of the Vietnam war, he did provide a bench mark against the extreme treatment of the mostly peaceful Indians, the original owners of the land. It gave some people sympathy for the plight of the Indians, which began to reverse the one-sided attitude whites had toward those they considered heathens because they weren’t Christians.

It is also true that Chivington likely had events in his life that traumatized him and made him increasingly hateful toward Native Americans. Perhaps if we had been him, we might have ended up feeling like him. A few of us might have been caught up in the swarming mentality that led to the massacre. I’m not saying we should celebrate Chivington’s life and actions. But even with an extremist like him, it is possible to accept and even forgive his behavior. As they say, “There but for the grace of God go I.”

Using this template as an example, we can see many situations occurring around the world today that are similar if not identical. Christianity and most other religions teach love as a basic premise of spirituality. Despite that, exceptions are made. Many Christians are willing to accept some of their fellow humans, but they don’t mind fearing and killing entire races and/or religious groups that don’t conform to their point of view.

Curiously, members of other religions do the same thing toward Christians. Some learn to accept and forgive Christians, but some wish to kill them. It is exactly the same type of thinking, and the resulting behaviors are the same. Likes repel, so wars are created. These wars are predictable and inevitable.

Unfortunately, like magma rising in an active volcano, more wars appear likely in our immediate future. Of course, any massacre by today’s standards could lead to an all-out nuclear war. But we as a species still don’t seem capable of finding good in our enemies and treating them with the respect and equality necessary to create peace.

Whether it is our fellow humans or some other life form, it is possible to find something about them that we can label as good. We can learn to love that even if we don’t appreciate their lifestyle or behavioral tendencies. We can look for our commonality with them and begin to realize a bigger, more spiritual world. We may have to fight our brothers, but even then we can appreciate the gifts they use to protect and defend themselves.

Loving every member of a species seems impossible to most of us, but if we love one we love them all. After all, we are them.

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