Is It Sinful to Kill Animals Purely for Sport?

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All right, Tim, the question for today's episode is, killing animals purely for sport sinful?

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I guess my inclination is to say it depends on the animal. It depends on the animal?

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Like, if it's an elephant, okay, it's an elephant. Is that okay or is that not okay?

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I don't want to name which animal. You don't want to name which animal.

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I don't know that I feel comfortable answering for animals in particular.

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We finally found the question that you're not willing to answer. Is that what you're telling me? So the idea here is that most people have a category for killing for food, right?

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So most sane Christians, I mean, not a lot of them are sane anymore, but most sane

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Christians have a category for killing in order to eat. So if you're going to kill an elephant to eat an elephant, everyone would say, well, maybe that wouldn't be very good, but that would make sense.

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I think most people have a category for killing an animal for clothing. Now we have different forms of clothing, but assuming you're some primitive person or something like that, you shoot an animal and take its hide and use it for clothing or shelter or something like that, or make something useful out of it.

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I think God's obviously given us dominion over the animals, and most people have those sort of categories.

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But then when you're talking about a sport, you're talking about killing for a game. So a sport is essentially an activity that requires skill and that's often engaged in a competitive way.

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So with a sport, you have this idea of a skill -based game that requires some sort of athleticism that's done competitively and mostly for fun.

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So in that way, just randomly shooting animals for no reason other than you're just having fun destroying

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God's creation, on one level, that does feel a little bit odd.

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So if God cares for the birds of the air in particular or something like that, and that bird didn't do anything to you, there's no good reason why you're killing it other than the fact that you just want to use it for target practice, something seems a little bit strange about that if you're talking about a bird or something like that.

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Now, if you're talking about like a roach, right, then... You kill many roaches for sport.

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I mean, I think most people, if you were to think like, hey, I'm going to get my gun out and we're going to set these roaches free and I'm going to let it run away in the middle of a...

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Caged environment. Caged environment and target practice. I mean, I think most people would think, well,

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I mean, that's a pest, it deserves to die, right? So it's there.

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So the Bible does have some sort of category for an animal that's made to be caught and destroyed.

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So 2 Peter 2 .12 is describing false prophets, but then in the language of 2

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Peter 2 .12 it says, but these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters which they are ignorant, will also be destroyed in the destruction.

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So there is a kind of animal that is made to be caught and destroyed. And I think pests are maybe an example of animals that, maybe they serve some sort of function in the ecosystem or whatever else, but most people don't think twice about killing a spider on site or killing a roach on site.

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And I imagine that if you wanted to make a sport out of bear hunting or tiger hunting with predators and things like that,

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I mean, there are predators out there who are, I think if you were to think about the kind of animals that are put in this kind of category of irrational animals, creature of instincts, born to be caught and destroyed,

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I think the dinosaurs were basically hunted to extinction because they were put on the earth in a fallen world to be a trial for human beings to overcome, right?

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So I think particularly with predators, there's a sense in which they're a dangerous trial for human beings to overcome.

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If I saw, like if I was allowed to, and you didn't have the animal rights activists coming after me, if I saw some kind of lion or something like that,

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I would try to shoot it and kill it. That would be pretty awesome. Yeah, keep my tribe safe. Now, if you all wanted to make a sport out of it, right, and do it just purely for fun, you're just ridding the world of a dangerous predator that's going to possibly kill a human being at some point.

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So I think the idea of doing it purely for sport,

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I think it maybe depends on the kind of class of animal and that kind of thing.

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There's other classes of animals that you probably wouldn't want to do that with.

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Like what if I want to hunt a cow for sport? So I think where this overlaps is that, like with an idea of a cow or something like that, part of the nature of the question is we're asking purely for sport, right?

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Yeah, no, I'm going to hunt it, and then as soon as I get it, I might take its head as a trophy, but then

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I'm not going to make any hamburgers. I'm not going to make any steak. I'm not going to make any cowboy boots.

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Yeah, I think there's a kind of waste. So there is a very destructive kind of impulse to say that, hey,

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I'm just going to, God's made this creature. He's created it. He's given it the breath of life. And he describes himself as having care for the birds of the air in particular.

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He feeds the birds of the air. And just to kind of, for no reason other than personal amusement, you're just going to destroy his creation.

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I think there's something a little bit odd about that. Now, I think if you can attach some sort of useful reason why you're doing it, then you're in a better place.

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Does that make sense? Even if it's like, hey, I'm just asserting my dominion over creation?

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I'm asserting my right to destroy God's creation. I think what you want to do is you want to think about—

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For my entertainment? For my personal entertainment, yeah. This is my downtime. This is how

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I kick back and relax. I think if it were roaches, maybe that makes sense. If it's a roach, but not the cow.

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I mean, I think a cow could be useful. It has a use that you might want to make use of.

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Now, I think the idea of trophy hunting or something like that, you would say it is for sport, but then

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I think that's where it gets a little complicated because then you may get a decoration out of it too, right? Right.

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Particularly when you're trophy hunting for dangerous exotic animals or something like that, if you're not just going out and randomly exterminating them all, right?

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And then leaving. And then leaving, yeah. I think part of it is the nature of what you're doing.

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I think you can make an easier case for saying, yeah, I want to go and get a decoration for my home out of this lion.

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It also happens to be a dangerous predator kind of thing. So I think a lot of it kind of depends on the class of animal.

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But I think, yeah, Christians should be repelled by just wanton destruction of animals for no reason whatsoever other than personal amusement.

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But I can conceive of some scenarios where it could be all right. What if the animal is endangered? Oh, man.

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I knew I'd make you laugh. Yeah, I mean, I think this is where some of these things are absolutely crazy.

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So, I mean, you have government laws where you can literally have some of these endangered species destroying your home and destroying your property and everything else because they care more about the animals and people and preservation.

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And I just think that this is part of life in a fallen world. I think, obviously, the idea of trying not to drive an animal into extinction is largely a good thing.

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I mean, I'm glad that we did that with the dinosaurs, though. I mean,

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I think that they're in this category of irrational animals, creatures of instincts, born to be caught and destroyed.

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So a government can overstep its bounds in that way. But then I think if you're going to go against the government, you might want to count the cost along those lines.

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Maybe it's not worth killing the lion over. Yeah, I mean, it's not worth killing the lion over unless the lion's in your backyard and about to kill you or your kids, in which case you just say, well,

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I'm sorry, you know. Sorry, Harambe's got to go. Harambe's got to go. Do you remember that story?

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Yeah. But I think that's where these things can get somewhat nuts, you know, at that point, too.

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So, yeah, my instinct is just to say, hey, maybe it's a little complicated. But generally, probably you shouldn't just randomly kill an animal for no reason just because you enjoy it.

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But maybe there's some scenarios where it makes sense. Okay, fair enough. This has been another episode of Bible Bashed.

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