The government closing down the spring hunting season recently was inevitable. It was inevitable because it was obvious that there were going to be several illegal irregularities, as there have always been since spring hunting was allowed, and it was obvious because it is now becoming even more politically expedient to pacify the environmental lobby which is suddenly perceived to be more numerous than the hunting lobby itself! The government I think is now trying to please everyone, both hunters and environmentalists! The objective mistake of course was opening the hunting season in spring in the first place. The subjective mistake I think was that politicians meddled with public sentiment on an issue that should have been purely scientific and rational!
There is a moral object here, a moral object that needs to be clearly identified and recognised. This moral object lies in the fact that it absolutely makes no sense whatsoever to shoot birds in spring when they are reproducing! Once the political establishment in government has sought to brace itself against a moral object, then obviously disorder will follow when trying to control the situation. What establishes this moral object in principle? One should consider two things in order to arrive at a valid conclusion. From the purely secular philosophical perspective, once the laws of nature, in this case biological ecology, shows us what the proper order of nature is (not natural law), it then follows from human reason (natural law) that our moral behaviour towards this order should be in line with maintaining its sustainability by not destroying nature at a time of rebirth! So essentially here we have natural law dictating how to behave towards our ecological environment of which we form a part. The circumstantial determinations surrounding the moral object in order to determine the validity of the moral act should not be allowed to work out during the spring season but in the other autumn/winter seasons of hunting. Destroying the moral object itself in effect destroys the determination of the actual validity of the moral act! It is indispensable in determining its nature!
For those of us who are Christian however, there is another determinant of the moral object and this is the direct source of revelation! A few weeks ago, I wrote an article in this newspaper which showed the continuity of the meta-narrative between the Old and New Testament in defining our responsibilities towards the natural environment and its creatures. In continuation with this exposition, I would now like to add a few more thoughts on the position Christ himself enunciated in the New Testament. The raising from death of the man Christ by God is a renewal of creation, he is the firstborn over all creation, the firstborn from the dead, an event of cosmic proportions; a process where this work in progress will ultimately consume and renew the whole of creation, inorganic and organic, visible and invisible, not just man. This is the promise God made to Adam and Eve after their fall from grace. Man is special but he stands with the rest of creation in a process of physical and spiritual renewal, a renewal now of eternal configuration. In Old Testament language, God always subdues the primeval waters of chaos found in nature in order to allow creation the stability it needed for survival. In Jewish minds at the time, only God could do this. When Christ stilled the waters from the boat during a storm on the lake, he was showing that as creator he was able to subdue the forces of chaos and ensure peace for his creatures. The real stormy waters of the Sea of Galilee represented the sea of chaos. He was now showing that he was God by drawing on the ancient belief that only God could do this and only he could bring this about through a process of pacification. Humans could only ever hope to participate in this process as creatures among others, living in a state of harmony as a community of creation, never as demigods!
When Christ referred to God feeding the birds of the air and clothing the lilies of the field, he was making a point that these completely depended on his providence alone. The lesson was that human beings needed no less to completely depend on his providence than the birds of the air, in order to rid themselves of their untoward anxieties. Man, in his obsessive drive for increasing affluence, never feels he has enough. In this anxious ridden drive for consumption, in the words of the theologian Richard Baukham, man is “depleting and destroying the resources of nature and depriving both other species and many humans of the means even of mere subsistence”. Surely, hunting birds at a time when nature is renewing itself in spring is one such obsessive affluent form of consumption that is contrary to the ethos of the created order and the intention of the creator himself!
After his baptism, before embarking on his public life preaching the word of God to humans, Christ was led by the Spirit into the wilderness for 40 days, the wilderness being a figuration of the non-human sphere. Here he came in touch with three categories of non humans. Satan, the wild animals and angels. It is interesting that he had to establish his relationship as God with all three beings before turning to his mission in the human world. Satan was his enemy, the angels his friends, but with the wild animals, he was peaceably present in a close friendly association. “Jesus does not adopt the animals into the human world but lets them be themselves in peace, leaving them their wilderness, affirming them as creatures who share the world with us in the community of God’s creation... (this) image of Jesus with the animals provides a biblical symbol of the human possibility of living fraternally with other living creatures. Like all aspects of Jesus’ inauguration of the kingdom of God, its fullness will be realised only in the eschatological future, but it can be significantly anticipated in the present by respecting wild animals and preserving their habitat”. This reflects what the prophet Isaiah had previously predicted “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them... for the land will be full of the knowledge of the Lord and the waters cover the sea”. Christ was at pains to show man that through him, chaos is in a sure, irreversible and fixed process of elimination.
With this in mind, I conclude that the maintenance of spring hunting is and always will be against the moral order and that as long as governments insist on allowing it, it will inevitably be followed by disorder, and a large disbursement of the public purse!
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