Zookeepers, Tigers and Jesus

Editor's Note: I wrote the following article for the Easter edition of our church's bi-monthly mini-magazine, which gets sent out to 250,000 homes in our immediate mailing area. I am under no illusion that most people in South San Jose use the mailer to line their canary cages, but a lot of people do end up coming to check out our church because of this simple periodical. Anyway, I thought I'd share what I wrote.



A while ago, I spent the day at Six Flags Over Marine World up in Vallejo. If you’ve never been there, it’s a cross between a zoo/aquarium and an amusement park. It’s also kind of like a camera-phone – you know, not that great of a camera and not that great of a phone. Same thing. It's not that great of an amusement park and not that great of a zoo.

Plus, I only counted four flags. So that's a rip off.

But I did learn some things about myself. I learned that I don't like roller coasters too much anymore. They give me a headache. And I kept wanting to turn around and tell the masses of young people, "Would you mind not screaming so loud?"

My favorite parts were when I got to sit in the shade and watch the animal shows.

When did I turn into my grandfather?

The Killer Whale show was astounding. This whale was just ginormous. When it swam around, the pool, which was 68 feet wide and 30 feet deep, swished around the way that water moves in a bathtub when a toddler tries to make waves. I mean, it was sloshing around like coffee in a mug. So much power in that animal.

The best part was at the end when the whale breached entirely out of the water, and did a one-and-a-half forward flip. It was magnificent. The trainers said that all the tricks were variations of naturally occurring behavior, but I'm pretty sure in the wild, Orcas don't jump 25 feet in the air to hit red balls with their snouts. And rarely do they time it perfectly to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy."

Everyone knows Orcas like Prince's later stuff. Alphabet Street. New Power Generation.

The other super cool part of the day was the Tiger exhibit. There were Siberian Tigers and Bengal Tigers. The Bengal Tiger was about 500 pounds and was white and black. It was pretty darn big. But we were told the smaller two Siberian Tiger cubs - who were 10 months old – would grow to be about 750 pounds, which is just gigantic. The weird part was that inside the cage, there was this guy – a zookeeper. He was there inside the "natural habitat" with the tigers. I asked him through the fence if he was in danger. He said, "Potentially."

At one point, one Siberian tiger cub started "stalking" the older white Bengal tiger. It would hide behind logs and when the white tiger would look over, it would duck really low, but you could see its tail sticking out. Then it got closer, jumped on top of the log and then onto the white Bengal tiger. Apparently, Tigers don't hunt by instinct, but learn by watching tapes of professional wrestling.

The white tiger batted the cub in midair with its massive paw and the tyke went flying. So the cub came back and appeared to attempt to eat the white Tiger's huge paw.

"Hey, Odin! Stop that!" the trainer yelled. He went over to the cub and pulled him away from the white Bengal tiger who was now agitated a bit.

It was then that I realized that this guy's job was pretty much to stand in a locked, sealed cage and break up fights between fully-grown tigers.

And you thought your job was tough.

While I was sitting there, I had a revelation. That trainer’s situation is similar to Jesus. The Bible says that Jesus was God, and that he came down from heaven to show humanity what God is really like. He came to help mankind. But mankind doesn’t always want help. Because getting help often means you have to change something. And people don’t like change. And if someone is helping you, that means they might point out what you’re doing wrong. And people really don’t like that. If history has shown us anything through the lives of revolutionaries like Lincoln and Ghandi and Martin Luther King it’s that trying to get people to see that they’re wrong and then change their course is deadly work.

It’s like being locked in a cage with tigers.

So then why would Jesus willingly lock himself into that cage? I mean, why would Jesus - why would God – come to earth and put himself into a position where He would be constantly mocked. Where people would call him stupid, and disregard what he said. Where people would eventually gang up on him, strip him of his clothes and dignity, and torture him to death. Why would Jesus go through with that?

Jesus said it was because of his love. He knew that many would reject his words, call him a fool, and eventually kill him. But his mission was, in part, to show mankind what God was really like. There are lots of people who might be willing to die for their friends or their family. And I have heard stories of brave soldiers diving on grenades to save their comrades. But in Jesus we find a man who is willing to die for his enemies.

Now that’s a love that’s out of this world.