My soon-to-be 4-year old, Elliot, made a confession to us while we were driving in the van tonight.  He said that he killed a caterpillar.  When his sister pushed back on him and said that he shouldn’t do that, he said it was okay.  My wife, wanting to put things in perspective for him, told him that we shouldn’t kill what God had created.

His response to this profound spiritual insight from my wife?  “It’s okay, mom.  God didn’t make that caterpillar; someone else did.  So, it’s okay.”

It’s humorous how the mind of a 3-year old works, but there is a valuable insight in what he said.  Don’t miss it.  Once you take God out of the equation life loses its value.  If God didn’t make it, then it doesn’t matter what we do with it.  Perhaps this is why we can allow unborn babies to miss out on the chance at a full life or think that atrocities like we see in Darfur are okay or at least not worth our effort.  Maybe it’s why we can be so quick to want to go to war “to get the bad guys.”  It’s perfectly acceptable to exploit the earth for our own gain because there is nothing all that special about it.  If God is not Creator of life, then life isn’t sacred or holy or all that important.

But if you put God in his rightful place, then everything takes on a sacredness.  God creates the earth and calls it good.  It’s valuable and special.  Then he creates humanity in his image, and then he says it is very good.  The earth is now filled with people who reflect the divine.  The earth and it’s people are important, dare I say, sacred.

When the earth is mistreated or people are exploited (girls sold into sexual slavery or albinos killed or maimed in a remote African village, or blacks in racially prejudiced parts of America), or people are killed, whether unborn babies or grown men (regardless of their ethnicity or political affiliations), it breaks the heart of God.  God made it all…he made us all…and it’s not okay.  Sorry, Elliot.  It was cute and humorous, but it was wrong.