Dog Zapping and Such Things

      Don’t speak evil against each other, dear brothers and sisters. If you criticize and judge each other, then you are criticizing and judging God’s law. But your job is to obey the law, not to judge whether it applies to you. God alone, who gave the law, is the Judge. He alone has the power to save or to destroy. So what right do you have to judge your neighbor?
James 4:11-12 (NLT)



     I have a big black hairy dog.  We appropriately named him "Bear". When we first got Bear as a roly poly puppy, he stayed right around the house, but as he began to grow in size, he also grew in courage and thought it an exciting thing to take excursions further away from the house.  My husband, Mark, happened to have a friend who offered to loan us a shock collar. We thought it might be a good way to break him (Bear, that is!) from wandering.  We heard that once a canine learns its lesson from the mild shock it receives when his watchful owner presses the "zap" button on the remote at exactly the time when the pup is crossing the boundary, the collar is no longer needed.  The dog doesn't dare leave the yard because of not-so-fond memories of receiving an unpleasant shock at each attempt.
     It turned out to work great.  We only had to press that cruel button a couple of times before our bright young dog got the message that he needed to stay in the yard.  I was pretty impressed.  We only used it on one of the lowest settings, too, so it was a very mild zap power.
     But then one day as I was washing dishes, I looked out the window and what did my eyes behold?  Far off in the distance at the edge of our neighbor's pond stood my Bear dog!  How dare he?  He left the yard? What a disobedient impertinent pup!  Well, I knew that I needed to grab the remote zapper and try to send him a message to help him to return to the straight and narrow!  Drying my hands, I clutched the zapper, noted the low setting, and pressed the button.  Bear didn't flinch.  Hmm, no response.  I turned up the power to a stronger zap.  Pressed button.  He was just standing there as if he could care less!  That was it.  I turned up my zapper to its maximum zapping capability, aimed that black electronic device right at him and held down the button.  About this time, I heard a sound.  It kind of reminded me of a whiny sound of something in pain.  It was coming from just outside my back door.  About this time, my husband came in and asked what I was doing.  I proceeded to complain to him that our zapper was not doing its job and pointed out Bear over by the pond.  He looked, squinted, and said, "That's not Bear.  That's Ranger, the neighbor's dog."
     So yes, compassionate reader. You are correct in concluding that the painful whining and yelping sound out my back door was coming from a dog named Bear who was being zapped even though he was perfectly innocent and exactly where he was supposed to be. I just know he had been doing somersaults out there, not comprehending what in God's creation was causing such discomfort. (Okay, stop that laughing and read on.)  Needless to say, I felt absolutely horrible and guilty for hurting poor Bear boy.  I even let him in the house (a smelly outside dog) and just loved on him and apologized left and right, petted him, gave him cheese.  He deserved any comfort I could give him after what he'd been through.
     I'll try not to sermonize too much as I point out that many times, we do a fair amount of zapping people as we judge their actions and behaviors.  Many times we misjudge because of our own near-sightedness. We think we know what someone is doing or why they are doing it when we really are just coming to false conclusions from our limited perspective and zapping them with harsh words, criticism, or condemnation.  Or maybe we're just talking to others about them, just "praying" that they get back on the straight and narrow (as we hypocritically gossip about them).
     The wisest and most loving response would be to pray for someone if we suspect they are outside their own healthy boundaries and try to be a friend and encourager, not a judge and jury.  Let's pull the batteries out of our zappers and instead work on our own issues. "Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?" Luke 6:41 (ESV).