Out Our Way: Cows don't know any better

Out our way, as big and powerful as most cows and bulls are, they need direction or they will perish. When the grazing is gone and the reservoir dried up, Charlie and I move them to fresh pasture and clear water they would unlikely find on their own. When calving season comes and the helpless young ones are barely able to stand, Charlie and I are the ones who keep the coyotes and cougars that roam the Bear Paws away. “Thy rod and thy staff” of Psalm 23 may be “thy rifle and thy rope” on Tiger Ridge, but the comfort remains the same.

As I have shared before, when it is time to push the herd from the dried-out ares to the lush pastures, Charlie and I not only push the main herd, but seek out the strays — and there are always a few who somehow get the idea that they know more than Charlie and me and have no need for us. Fortunately we know better, for if we left them in their hiding places in the arroyos and the thorn thickets, they would die from starvation, thirst or predators. Charlie and drive them, not to harass them, but to save them. But cows don’t know any better.

Sadly, humans are often not much smarter than cows. In Genesis is the account of the Devil fooling Adam and Eve into thinking they not only didn’t need God, but that God was the enemy. They should replace Him with self. And just like some of those knothead strays who assume they can find their own green pastures and still waters, they doom themselves to self destruction, so many knothead humans do the same. Satan planted the noxious weed that we can replace God with self, and over the ages, there have always been those stupid and foolish enough to buy the lie. 

Years ago, before his disgrace and removal from the U.S. Senate, Al Franken was a comedy writer for Saturday Night Live who did a bit about an incredibly self-centered character for whom the whole universe existed solely for his benefit. The only thing that mattered was how it benefited “Me, Al Franken.” Hilarious, and yet disturbing, for in the character “Al Franken” I see myself. Like Adam and Eve, I, too, have a tendency to put self ahead of neighbor and certainly before God. Like the character, I buy the lie that I am the ultimate arbitrator of right and wrong, good and evil, justice and injustice,   

Who among us is not guilty? And the lie “the end justifies the means” is just another version of Satan’s deception of the gullible. Politicians, the media, and, sadly, even the church are often guilty of this, for all of us are still fallen and sinful humans, still easily flattered and deceived by the poisonous lies of Eden’s snake. So many cultures have risen and fallen because of the lie we can replace God with self and become our own gods. And the result is always the same — self-destruction.

Satan tried the same trick on Christ, offering Him power, control, self-worship; but Christ was not so easily fooled. The Gospel shares the temptations of Christ so that we can warned — for the Enemy is trying to pull the same stunt on us. We see politicians who willingly lie, deceive and cheat in the “name of a good cause” and work with the Darkness to fool us as well. But if we use Satan’s weapons even in the Name of God, whose cause are we really serving?

Christ was not fooled by the lie — as so many of us are — and the Gospels record the event as a warning and reminder there is only one God and none of us are Him. Cows don’t know any better when they stray from the trail that leads to green pastures and still waters. Are we no wiser? Satan says we are not; Christ says we can be. Whom do we believe?

Blessings.

Brother John 

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John Bruington can be reached at [email protected]