This post comes from a conversation I had in regards to elevating or romanticizing a historical person when the fame of that historical person rests on methods that are outside of God's will or at the very least just plain immoral actions. This comment was specific to elevating John Audubon as America's "lover" of birds. When training up our young people in history, and believe me I am the biggest supporter of teaching more history to our children, we need to teach the historical and cultural context as many of you have mentioned, and bring up issues of Christian worldview lenses. Morality does not change. It is impossible to have morality apart from God and his Holy Spirit. God does not change, so anything that is questionable, morally speaking, is questionable no matter what time period or culture you live in.
To assume that the Christian world view is closed minded because of its moral bias and moral-centricity – that is what the world wants us to believe. To elevate someone whose fame rests on immoral methods for that same fame should be noted with the children. As long as this kind of discussion comes up in our classrooms when reading questionable figures, that should be our goal as well. Therefore, I will encourage the reading of biographies on this historical person, but we will have conversations certainly about his greedy methods.
For those who enjoy citations and verses, here are a few:God’s obvious care and concern for even his smallest of creatures:
Deuteronomy 22:6 (NIV) If you come across a bird's nest beside the road, either in a tree or on the ground, and the mother is sitting on the young or on the eggs, do not take the mother with the young.
• Job 35:11 (KJV) Who teacheth us more than the beasts of the earth, and maketh us wiser than the fowls of heaven?
• Psalm 50:11 (KJV) I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine.
• Proverbs 12:10 (KJV) A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.
Definition of love:
I Cor 13: 4-8 (RSV)
4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends.
Further example of methods: Below is an excerpt of a famous encounter John had with a 3 foot golden eagle
“When Audubon obtained a live Golden Eagle in 1833, he spent three days observing its behavior. In the field, Audubon could bring down a hundred birds a day without qualm, but killing this bird to get the pose he required turned into a prolonged nightmare. A friend had recommended suffocating the eagle with charcoal fumes, and Audubon duly covered the cage with blankets and placed it in a closet over a pan of burning coals. He listened ‘for hours’ (the italics are his) expecting ‘every moment to hear him fall down from his perch.’ But when he peeked inside through the ‘mass of suffocating fumes,’ the eagle was still sitting there ‘with his bright, unflinching eye turned toward me.’ The air in the closet was ‘insupportable’ to Audubon and his son, and the adjoining rooms were beginning to feel ‘unpleasant,’ when Audubon finally gave up and went to bed at midnight.” “Incredibly, he tried again in the morning, adding sulphur to the toxic mix. But the bird ‘continued to stand erect, and look defiant at us whenever we approached his post of martyrdom.’ In the end, resorting to a technique ‘always used as a last expedient,’ Audubon ‘thrust a long pointed piece of steel through his heart, when my proud prisoner instantly fell dead, without even ruffling a feather.’” [Richard Conniff’s The Species Seekers: Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth. incident based on Audubon’s journal]
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