On Being Ready

My dog was looking a little glum this morning as I was reading my bible and having a quiet start to the day. He didn't know what I had planned for him so, to cheer him up a bit, I decided to tell him.

Talking fairly quickly so he would not quite get everything and act prematurely, I told him that he was coming with me in the car and that I was taking him to spend the day with a friend of our's of whom he is particularly fond - but not yet, he would have to wait.

I could see from the expression on his face and the tilting from side-to-side of his head that he was listening intently, trying to make some sense out of the stream of noise I was producing. He got the word 'car' and our friend's name but, as I expected, missed and was a little bemused by all the padding.

Well, once I had stopped talking, you could see the cogs still whirling behind his eyes and the excited whine he suddenly emitted told me that he had worked it out. Of course, being a dog, and living in the moment, he missed the word 'wait' and wanted to do it now. He settled again as I read on but gave out a pleading, and sometimes demanding, whimper every so often, just to let me know that he hadn't forgotten what I had promised him and he wanted to get on with it! (No, I'm not imagining all this, he really is that bright.)

The time came to go, and his contained excitement exploded into action. He started crashing about the place while I tried to put his lead onto his collar, bit on his collar as I tried to pass it under his chin, jumped on me as I tried to put my shoes on and basically got in the way of all my efforts to prepare him for the journey. If he had cooperated calmly, we would have been under way sooner... Silly dog. But we did get there, in the end.

Unfortunately, Christians can be a bit like this. We hear from God about something he has planned for us but he leaves the picture a little hazy so we don't jump the gun. We don't get quite the whole picture but grasp enough to understand the general idea. Then we get all impatient and want to do it now, and start telling others what they should be doing (why is grace so often the first casualty?) before we have understood properly and they are anywhere near ready for it. Then the time comes and we try to do it ourselves and get in a right old tangle; unfortunately, we can do a lot of damage in the process.

So many moves of God have fallen into disregard and disrepute because of our immature behaviour. We get caught up in the excitement and forget the purpose. We think we are ready but he still has preparations to make. We decide we know what we are doing and miss the guiding hand of God; worse still, we think we are the only ones who know what we are doing and form factions. We even get in God's way and stop him doing what he wants to do. We think we've arrived but, really, it's only the next step in the journey.

Silly people. But he gets us where he wants us, in the end...

The Value of Discipline

Last weekend was a difficult one, at least as far as my dog and I are concerned. Last weekend I had to administer discipline, and it was not easy. What it taught me, in a limited measure, is how God must feel when he has to discipline me. It makes me feel sorry for the grief I have caused him in my time, never mind the grief I have caused others. I think of David’s statement in Psalm 51, ‘Against you, you only, have I sinned,’ and maybe for the first time understand what David meant.

We had family staying with us, and my dog decided to let my nephew know his position in the pack. He did so in a typically doggish way by snapping at the boy: no serious harm intended, just a warning. Naturally, we humans disagreed with Max’s point of view and he had to be disciplined – a measure amounting to immediate isolation for a while. Later that day, he decided to assert his ownership of a tennis ball when I approached him by snapping at me. Again, this was not an opinion I could share with him, and so, once again, he was dragged into isolation by the scruff of his neck. The outcome was his total lack of interest in the tennis ball, even when I later offered it to him.

The next day, he had another argument with my nephew. Realising that he had not learnt his lesson, I put him into isolation for the whole of the evening and, whenever I had to enter the same room in which he was incarcerated, totally ignored him. This time, the message got through. Max lay in his cage looking forlorn. At each of my appearances, there was the most pathetic of appeasing flickers from the end of his tail, and an upward glance in my direction from beneath flattened ears; he was in the doghouse and he knew it. The punishment was compounded by my bringing my nephew into the room, both of us ignoring Max, and my making very clear the boy’s rank in the pack above Max.

Max had to be allowed out for essential relief before bed-time, but the whole process was conducted with curt orders and immediate compliance, and ended with a return to solitary confinement.

The following morning, Max seemed to be behaving himself. As far as he was concerned, this was another day, and the pack order had been changed for reasons he was unable to remember. He showed no interest in my nephew, who still wanted to stroke Max, and who had learnt to act important so as to reinforce his status in the pack.

The whole episode was a painful experience for dog and owners alike. The problem is, we love our dog and are fully aware of the extreme circumstances under which his unruly behaviour was being expressed. As a dog, he needs exercise, discipline and affection, in that order, to be a balanced, calm animal. Currently, he is recovering from major surgery on his hind leg and is not able to have all the exercise he needs. To his credit, he has needed very little in the way of discipline during this time of inaction but, perhaps to our discredit, and, because of our anthropomorphic tendencies towards our dog, he has had more than usual affection. Added to this, he found himself in the unusual circumstance of being surrounded with new house guests who had to be fitted into his world view. It is not entirely surprising that he had ideas above his station.

Nevertheless, as responsible dog owners, there is no way that we could tolerate his wrong assessment. We also love our nephew, and would be horrified to think that he came to any harm because of our dog, or even became afraid of dogs. Max wasn’t going to learn the easy way and so he had to learn the hard way. Even so, I wanted to let him out of solitary and tell him that everything was OK, and I found it very hard (but necessary) to hold my nerve and persist with the discipline.

I am reminded of passages in Isaiah where God expresses his anger at the sins of his people, and in the next breath his agony of love for the same offenders, his only desire being to show them mercy.

When we do wrong, we hurt not just the person we sin against, but the God who loves us. The pain he feels is not because he is just and holy but because he loves us and wants us to live in relationship with him. Scripture tells us of a God who is slow to anger but quick to be merciful, who bends over backwards to avert judgement, who sent prophet after prophet to his people with warnings when he could have justifiably dealt out wholesale justice without delay.

Well, I think Max has learnt something. He has certainly been more readily obedient since, and has enjoyed restored favours: he is certainly loved no less for his misdemeanours. I think I have learnt something too. God does not enjoy handing out discipline. He would far rather show mercy but discipline us he will, when we need it to bring correction of behaviour and to restore right relationship to him. I have realised that I cause God double grief by my offences, firstly by the offence itself, and secondly because he has to embark on a course of action that is not pleasurable for him. Furthermore, the purpose of discipline is not to mete out justice but to restore the balance and preserve the good, to make love available to us once more.

That makes me want to live right.

Vision of Delight

I wonder how many people understand what God thinks of them. I mean, really understand what He really thinks. I have, I think, some insight into what He thinks about us because of what I think about my dog.

Max was a rescue dog; we adopted him into our family (more on that one later, perhaps) as a totally unknown quantity. We liked the look of him and, when I get around to uploading a picture of him, you will understand why. Actually, I must confess to being a bit put off by the drooling he demonstrated on his first trial walk with us, and the potentially soggy carpets of which it was a portent. Fortunately, we managed to see past that to - well, what? Obviously, in the 40 minutes or so that we spent with him, we had no idea what he would be like or if we would be able to manage him, especially as we had never owned a dog before. I don't know what it was about him, but we decided to take him on.

He's a big dog, a boxer-labrador cross (I usually explain to people that he runs and dribbles like a boxer and eats and swims like a labrador) and has loads of personality; a great sense of fun, and is full of vitality. Consequently, he needs lots of exercise, and we have no option but to go with him. That is usually no problem because we enjoy the excercise too.

The thing about Max is that he is always behaving like a dog. He spends his whole life doing doggy things. He loves to play with his tennis ball, to chew sticks, to roll about on his back, to run and run and run, to swim, to sniff (all sorts of things), to do the things a dog must do (doggy-doo) and, having done them, to make sure other dogs know he was there (graffiti is much less of a problem when seen in this light). He likes to meet other dogs; sometimes he likes to play with them, and other times, for some reason, take a dislike to them. My amateur behavioural psychology of dogs is not yet well-tuned enough to see for certain who starts the bother that we sometimes get into. Sometimes it's Max, sometimes it isn't.

Whatever he does, he is doing what he is designed to do. He can't help it, he's a dog, and being a dog is what he does best. The point is, I love him being a dog. He delights me in all sorts of ways, just by being what he is, and doing what he does. It is fascinating studying him, and interacting with him. There is one specific aspect of his behaviour that is especially delightful: his willingness to please and live under my authority as his pack leader. Even when he gets things wrong, I still love him, and so I correct him, and he still follows.

What can we draw from all this? Well, God made us as human beings and he really likes what he has made. He doesn't expect us to be anything other than human beings, except, perhaps to be human beings in full possession of our spiritual faculties. He made us with incredible talents and abilities, and I'm sure he is disappointed when we invent all sorts of religious reasons for placing aspects of our God-given make-up off-limits (see the entry on 'Grace'). Of course, there are contexts where our nature may be wrongly indulged but our human condition is not, of itself, abhorrent to God: after all, he brought it into being.

God is most delighted with us when we recognise his authority in our lives and follow him and his plans and purposes for our lives. Even when we get things wrong, he still loves us and corrects us as necessary; always with the intent that we continue to follow him; never to push us away.

So, just as I delight in my dog because he is a dog and want him to be the best dog he can be, God delights in me because I am a human being, and his longing is that I become fully the human being that he made me to be.

Just knowing that God delights in me makes a whole lot of difference to the way I view Him, and approach Him. It makes me feel special just as I am, and does my self-worth a whole heap of good.

Me and My Dog; My God and Me: Introduction

It's surprising what manner of things can inform one's faith. We acquired a dog during the tail end (no pun intended) of an episode of reactive depression triggered by the illness and death of my mother. Apart from the benefits that derive from having a great big, furry friend to cuddle (and I'm talking about the dog, not my wife who is neither great big nor furry), I discovered that my developing relationship with this intelligent animal made me think about my relationship with God in ways I previously had not.

We are, the dog and I, different species and we look at the world in different ways. For all that the British like to treat their dogs as children or anthropomorphised family members, dogs are dogs and they only ever interpret our behaviour in the light of their own understanding. Nevertheless, it is possible to develop a strong and mutually rewarding relationship with a dog. The trick is in communicating with the dog in language that he understands, and abandoning any expectation that he will learn any more than a few words of the Queen's English or accommodate human social conventions.

He is a social animal, like the human being, and that is why we are able to relate as well as we do. Even so, his society is based on the pack with a clear pecking order, and not democratic principles or freedom, fairness and equality. It has to be said that the pack is not a concept foreign to man: even our democratic society has its pecking order, oppressive regimes more so, and criminal and street gangs display pack dynamics with graphic clarity.

So, although we are different, we have points of contact, my dog and I, where our worlds collide; an interface through which we can express our wants and needs, joys and sorrows in ways that the other can understand and so respond. I have discovered many parallels between my two relationships, one with my dog, one with my God, and in this series of articles I intend to unpack them in the hope of encouraging my readers, whoever they may be. There is no heavy theology here, nor is there any intended trivialisation, merely simple observation that can inform the way we live our lives.