We experienced our first episode of puppy “resource guarding” here at the epicenter of puppy training 24/7. We were expecting such challenges between the puppy and the older dogs, but painfully Cai perceived the threat to his chew bone to be Lori. Ouch! “Resource guarding” is that almost reflexive protection, via a snarl or a baring of teeth or a quick snap, of a highly valued object - such as a toy or food or the aforementioned chew bone. In essence, it is an act of communicating, “This is mine. I have it and you don’t, and you can’t have it.”
Our dwindling bandaid supply confirms that assessment. It isn’t a behavior we can or intend to tolerate. It isn’t a permissible style of interaction for a community of humans and canines that share a common space.
Sadly, the human community at-large hasn’t adopted for itself that simple but essential wisdom. We are resource guarders. With seasonal exceptions, signaled by the Salvation Army bells outside of grocery stores, our primary business is taking care of ourselves; hoarding our own bones; hovering over our dinner plates.
It is a persistent pattern that prompts no small amount of dismay in a guy like me who has spent his entire life in the church, first being taught and then proclaiming a very different character of life. This year the evidence has been acute. As we noted in our annual Advent reflection, “Each passing week of 2020 has confronted us with mounting and irrefutable evidence of how little skill we have for living together as a people, as a culture, as a country and world. Two thousand years after Jesus elevated love of neighbor to the second highest commandment, and told the parable of the “Good Samaritan” by way of illustration, we reveal how much we still have to learn about discipleship.”
It isn’t just our behavior. Our theology has gotten twisted up as well, though which came first - our snapping or our believing - is hard to say. As Richard Rohr recently noted, “The common Christian understanding that Jesus came to save us by a cosmic evacuation plan is really very individualistic, petty, and even egocentric. It demands no solidarity with anything except oneself. We whittled the great Good News down into what Jesus could do for us personally and privately, rather than celebrating God’s invitation to participate in God’s universal creative work” (Daily Meditation, 12/7/2020).
For all our talk of “love,” we demonstrate little comprehension of it, or facility with it. Our literary luminaries recognize the problem. Leo Tolstoy, for example, once observed that, “Love is real only when a person can sacrifice himself for another person. Only when a person forgets himself for the sake of another, and lives for another creature, only this kind of love can be called true love, and only in this love do we see the blessing and reward of life. This is the foundation of the world.”
Of course Tolstoy didn’t simply make that up. Long before him, the apostle Paul admonished, “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:4).
Even Paul, though, had whispers in his ear.
It was Jesus, after all, who taught, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise” (Luke 3:11). And later, still more boldly, he asserted, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13).
Indeed, our puppy has much to learn about living within a household economy. As do the rest of us. There simply aren’t enough bandaids to go around.
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