Touched Only By God

I have a friend named Eric who was with me on an Alaska brown bear hunt.  He and I were privileged to share a tent together and were able to have many hours of conversations as we shivered in the cold.  At the end of a day’s hunt, we would talk together about what kind of mount we would get if we were fortunate enough to harvest a bear.  Eric wanted a large mount, with the bear on two legs in an aggressive position.  I was more partial to the idea of a bear-skin rug or a wall decoration, and the skull to put on my mantle.  Regardless, we agreed that we would each be there to take some good pictures of one another with our kills. 

“Oh, that reminds me,” Eric said.  “I have a weird thing about the animals I shoot.  I want to be the first one to lay hands on it, the first one to touch it.  So if you’re there when I shoot it, please let me be the first one to touch it.” 

“Of course,” I replied.  “No problem.” 

Eric went on to tell me about how, when he had previously harvested deer or elk while hunting with friends, sometimes his fellow hunters would arrive at the site of the kill before he did, and would handle the animal before him.  This irritated him, and it took me a minute to understand why. 

At first his request seemed a bit weird to me, as though he were going to try to have some mystical connection with the bear he had just killed.  But knowing what I did about this friend and his faith, I knew that couldn’t be the reason.  Then the reasoning for his request dawned on me, and it made perfect sense.  In fact, after I thought about it, I realized that I wanted the same thing if and when I were able to harvest a bear.  Eric made the request because he knew that no other human hand has ever touched that bear.  Until the time he laid his hands on it, the only one to know that bear as intimately as the hunter was God himself.  All other eight billion human inhabitants of the earth had never touched that bear – just him.  He would be connected to that bear – and to God through that bear – in a way that was completely unique to him.

Believe it or not, this reality teaches us something about God’s relationship with animals.  For the vast majority of animals who have lived across the history of the earth, the only sentient being they have ever known is the one true God of the universe.  It is presumed that there are more undiscovered species of life in the world’s oceans than the number of species that have been discovered.  This means that there are vast numbers of animals in the sea that are known only to God (see Psalm 148.7), and secrets of land-dwelling animals that only God knows (see Job 39). 

Hunting brings us into a realm that was previously known only to God.  God knows the animals he has made better than we ever will, but being able to join them in the woods, to harvest them, to see them up close, and to put our hands on them, gives us knowledge of those animals that previously belonged only to God.

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