Flexing Your Muscles

If you are a human being, God commands you to take dominion over the earth, even if it’s just a very small corner of it.  We should all look for ways to take what God has made and use it for our enjoyment and flourishing.  You might not be a farmer or land-owner, or even a hunter or a fisherman, but there are still a myriad of ways for you to take dominion.  Make your bed, organize a room, clean up a mess, mow the lawn, plant a garden, get a bird feeder, create art, or even just go for a walk.  Whenever you bring order from disorder in this world, you are taking dominion over it.  You are demonstrating that you have authority over the earth, not the other way around.  Whenever you use the world that God has made to create something good, you are taking dominion over it.

My son and I recently became trappers, partly out of necessity, and partly out of interest.  I say that it was partly out of interest because we are always looking for more ways to be involved in the outdoors, and getting into trapping gave us the opportunity to do just that.  And I say that it was partly out of necessity because a friend of ours had several species of nuisance animals that were terrorizing his property.  One of the animals that was causing the most havoc was a group of beavers.  They were damming the creeks that flowed through his land and causing flooding, not to mention that they were cutting down numerous valuable trees.  In short, the beavers had taken dominion over his property. 

But God did not give dominion over the earth to beavers.  He gave it to man.  Beavers do not have the authority to dam up whichever creek they’d like; they don’t have the authority to cut down any tree they want.  No, these decisions have been given to man because dominion has been given to man, not to beavers.  So when an animal prevents man from taking dominion of the earth, the animal must be dealt with. 

The property owner gave us a tour of his property and the damage the beavers had caused.  We saw the beavers’ point of entry and exit to and from the water, known as slides.  We made a mental note to install castor mound sets at the slides.  These are trap sets that are designed to lure the beaver up out of the water using the glandular scent of an unknown beaver.  The territorial beaver will be inclined to mark the territory with his own scent, but he’ll have to climb through the 330 conibear body-gripper trap to do so.  The 330 conibear is sufficient for a clean and instant kill, snapping the spine of the animal and bringing immediate death.

We also saw the main problem the beavers were creating: a dam.  A portion of his property that drains into the creek had been dammed and the man’s property had begun to flood.  There wasn’t a dry spot on the back area where the creek ran through.  Most of the ground had standing water on it, and the parts that didn’t were saturated to the point that my boot went deep into the mud with every step. 

The most sure-fire way to catch beavers is to damage the dam that they have built.  This we did with some shovels and a bit of effort.  After a few minutes, the creek was flowing again, and the flooding began to slowly subside.  But more importantly, we knew that the beavers in the area would come to repair the damage that we had done to the dam.  If we set our traps in the right spots, the beavers would walk right into them. 

The next morning brought two surprises: first, a 53-pound beaver walked into our trap and was instantly killed as he attempted to fix the damage done to his dam.  To put the size of the beaver into perspective, he was nearly double the weight of my then-four-year-old son.  Second, other beavers in the area continued the repair work he had started by using his carcass as fodder to reinforce the dam.  They thought nothing of using his body for their own ends.  Using the body of the deceased beaver, along with other sticks and mud, they had succeeded in repairing the dam overnight.  This meant that in order to take dominion, more beavers had to go.  Curiously, however, after a couple more weeks of trapping, no more beavers were caught, and all evidence of the existence of the beavers in the area disappeared.  They were apparently scared off by the untimely demise of their large friend. 

Although it might sound like a silly example, I believe that what we did in trapping and dispatching that beaver was an entirely biblical and God-centered undertaking.  As I stated previously, God gave dominion over that property to my friend, not to beavers.  In fact, those beavers were prohibiting my friend from taking the dominion that God had divinely created him to have.  And since my friend has been created in the image of God and the beavers were not, the decision as to which one had to go, was easy.  At the end of the day, my friend had his dominion back, and my son had a beaver pelt to use, beaver hams to eat, and a beaver skull to mount by which to remember the experience. 

When God created the earth, he took six days to do so.  At the end of those days he looked back on what he had made and said that it was all “very good” (Genesis 1.31).  The reason for this pronouncement was that God had brought order from disorder.  Before the six days of creation, the earth was “without form and void” (Genesis 1.2), but then God brought order from the chaos, and the result of that process was “very good.”  As part of making us in his image God has likewise given us the ability to create order from chaos.  When we use the earth and its resources for their intended purposes, that’s what we’re doing.  When beavers dam up the creek and cut down trees, they’re creating chaos.  Taking care of those beavers brings order that enables us, the crown jewel of God’s creation, to take dominion and that order is “very good.” 

Hunting and fishing are opportunities to exercise the muscle of dominion.  In fact, the primary reason I hunt, fish and love the outdoors is that it affords me a hands-on opportunity to take dominion.  I hunt the animals because God gave the animals to me; I work the land and spend time in the woods because God created them for me to enjoy, and for the animals to make their homes, and for me to harvest them in order to flourish.

Excerpt from "A Glorious Arrangement: Christian thoughts on hunting, fishing, and creation" by Joel Detlefsen