Sudden, Random, Unprovoked, and Violent

"Newark, Ohio, and Niagara Falls, NY are two cities with a few similarities and with many differences. The cities are so different it would be pointless to make comparisons, but for the fact that in January 2015 both cities found themselves beset by pit bull problems. The problems these two cities are currently confronting are echoed across the country; how they resolve these problems may be instructive for dozens of other cities in the near future."
- SRUV

Read more:

Sudden, Random, Unprovoked, and Violent: Pit Bulls in a Humane Society, Newark and Niagara

Sometimes people do evil because they mean to. Sometimes people do evil because they stumble. Either way the Orthodox Church teaches us they are sick.

That's why throwing the word evil around is risky business for us. The Church welcomes the sick.

We are taught to pray for people who are sick. We try to steer them back on the right path. We remember we stumble and are sick also.

However, we do not call sickness wellness, or wellness sickness. This also would be to stumble.

We live in that tension. Tension is what most people are trying to escape with the distractions of the world, with ideologies that settle everything for them and in fact become religions that trump even their Christianity.

In the mind of one stumbling, liberalism, and any -ism, will trump Christ. It must, because it bows to the idol of an ideology.

Christ is not an idea. The Truth is not an idea. Love is not an idea.

Love is someone. Love is Christ. Love is Christ in the incarnation.

It is liberalism and dog fighting that is responsible for the suffering of pit bulls, and has caused the need for BSL.

People believe it is hate that has caused the problem. People believe it is close mindedness that has caused the problem.

But it is not. Well meaning people and not so well meaning people who both stumble over the Truth, they have caused the problem.

The real victims are the innocent. Pit bulls and the victims of their sudden, random, unprovoked, and violent attacks are the innocent victims of these sick well meaning, and not so well meaning people.

There is nothing beautiful about ignorance. There is nothing beautiful about a dog whose gut has been ripped open by a pit bull and has been disembowelled. There is nothing beautiful about a child whose eyeball has been found clear across the room, who has been scalped, and lay dead in a pool of blood because of a pit bull.

But ideologies caused this. Even dog fighters did not cause this. They bred the dogs, yes. They selected for the genes, yes. They created the Frankenstein, yes, but they did not bring it into our homes and neighbourhoods where it could kill our children, our elderly, our trusting pets. Liberalism did that. Soccer moms and dads did that.

I believe in liberality, but I will never be a Liberal.

The truth always speaks for itself. Christ is no -ism. Love never ignores sickness. Christ never ignored the sick. Christ never ignored the truth.

The innocent are dying every day and people stand smugly behind their ideologies, ignore it is happening, and encourage more of it to happen. This is a sickness and we must pray for them and not stand silent.

Animals depend upon us to care for them. Animals depend upon us to make this world a safe place for them to live.