Smarter than the Dog

Right after we moved to Arkansas, the kids succeed in there campaign to get a dog. For several years, every birthday request and letter to Santa contained the request for a dog. We had been resistant to the idea since we felt we didn’t have enough space in our backyard. Once we moved however that excuse was gone and soon we found ourselves at the animal shelter picking out a dog. She is a good dog but like most puppies she loves to chew, on everything! At first I thought it would go away as she grew up but little by little everything in our back yard has been chewed up. I tried everything I could think of to discourage this habit. The last straw came a week ago when she managed to chew the electric wires to our air conditioning unit (I don’t know how she managed that without killing herself). So now she is in dog training to get it under control. The dog was unaware of the danger she faced. Until she is trained, she will continue to put herself in danger. I don’t know why I thought I could get her to change without instruction, she just doing what dogs do by instinct. I guess I wasn’t much smarter than the dog.

In Jude 1:10, Jude is warning about those that teach false doctrines. He writes, “But these men revile the things which they do not understand; and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed.” When we see so much false doctrine in the world, I wonder if we don’t take the same approach my dog’s dumb owner did. We try to ignore the problem, thinking it will go away. We try to cajole people away but never address the issue. What we need however is to provide instruction.

In 2^nd Timothy 2:24-26 we read, “The Lord's bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will. God’s people must have the heart of a teacher. They need to help those in error see the danger they are in, so they can come to be right with the Lord. We must do so in a way that will facilitate instruction and not lead to a fight. Our goal must be not to win the argument but to save the soul!

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Ecclesiastes 12:10

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