A Deformed Dog

 

You may have never heard of the word, ¡°deformed dog,¡± unlike a deformed child, but since this is not a thesis submitted to a professional scholastic journal, I¡¯ll move on. I¡¯ll get to the point without any detailed explanation believing that most people have experienced the case of a deformed child directly or indirectly. There may be other reasons for abnormal dogs, but in many cases, it results from inbreeding. Cunning dog merchants try to increase the price by making a pedigree through inbreeding including breeding of the parent dog with its puppies.

 

According to the statistics, 75% of the 7 million dogs in England are purebred. According to BBC on Aug. 2008, costs for the veterinary hospitals of these dogs are over 10 million pounds every week. A considerable number of them are deformed dogs. Since people seek for a dog¡¯s appearance to have things like a small face, many wrinkles, curly tails, and short legs, unexpected problems arise. For instance, a Spaniel has syringomyelia,  a Boxer has epilepsy, a Pug¡¯s breathing problems, and a Bulldog who needs man¡¯s help in mating or giving birth.

 

To prevent this, dog experts claim that we should seek outbreeding. Dogs should find partners that have no blood relationship, or at least a far relational distance within the same breed. If it can smoothly happen, a dog¡¯s appearance may not be controlled but still their health would be very good.

 

There is a mission organization I am deeply involved in. It is a national evangelical organization called CBMC consisting of Christian businessmen. Founded in Chicago during the great depression in the 1930s, it carries out its ministry well in 75 countries around the world including Korea, whose branch started due to the Korean War. Of course, we Koreans are doing the ministry most actively fitting our hot tempers. However, according to statistics and research for the last few years, the case of meeting Jesus through this organization, namely, mission activities is very rare and instead, it reaches mostly those who already serve the church or have accepted the gospel. Also, since there are many Christians who are already familiar with church life instead of new unbelievers who came to know Jesus and serve through CBMC, most of the events and formality are hard to distinguish from the church.

 

I often see that even the church and mission organizations come to repeat formal events, meaninglessly flocking together through inbreeding and forgetting why it was that they started. Also problems naturally cased in this environment can no longer be hidden. At times, when things like the local president bringing temporarily useful workers in from his own church to increase the number keep being repeated, fundamental problems can arise.

 

Then what is the solution? The method implied here and there in the Bible and known through the common sense is outbreeding. In other words, if the church or organization wants to stay healthy persistently, new blood should be transfused unceasingly. It means the adding of new believers or guiding and encouraging those who have been to church for a long time but are not really Christians so that they can find their own purpose and calling. One more important thing is to suggest a direction to people who became Christians, but wandered because they have yet to see a good model on how to serve.

 

Going back to the report of BBC, according to modern medical technology and DNA results, statistically, only 50 of 10,000 dogs are different. Because of extreme inbreeding, dogs have become all alike. When the church and organization repeat formal events and meetings of their own every week or month, the result is, ¡°Sermons are all alike,¡± ¡°People are all alike,¡± and ¡°Meetings are all alike.¡±

 

As different colors are more beautiful than just black and white, I hope that churches, mission organizations, dogs and we all live excitingly balancing each one¡¯s own color given to us by the Creator.