Not too long ago, President Trump was criticized for calling gang members “animals.” The response from his critics was that everyone has the spark of the divine within them, and that “animals” was dehumanizing. The truth is that some people invite this description by their behavior.
Read Jude 8-13: “Yet in like manner these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones. . . . But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively. Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain. . . . These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever” (English Standard Version).
The King James Version uses the words “brute beasts”; the NIV says, “irrational animals” as does the CSB, and RSV. The NASB says, “unreasoning animals.” Why does the Bible call them that? It is due to their own behavior. They have no spiritual component to their lives. Their actions are simply based on their primitive animal desires. Everyone has the spark of the divine within them being made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), but if we deny it, we act no different than animals; President Trump was right to use the word regarding such base behavior. Don’t deny your spirituality by acting like an animal.
Brad Harrab