Not a sparrow falls...

 In my not-very-consistent attempt to keep up with each week's environmental news as part of my job, I came across an article describing what seemed an unlikely animal experiment. The scientists were attempting to measure the effects of fear—separated out from real physical danger—on a group of song sparrows. The control group was left alone to live their usual sparrow lives. The experimental group, by contrast, was subjected to a constant pulse of terrifying sounds associated with the birds' natural predators. 

Now, the ethics of animal testing are complicated and I'm not sure I have a thought-out position. In any event, there are far more questionable forms of testing out there than this experiment—ones that cause direct physical damage rather than psychological (and only indirectly physical) harm to their animal subjects. And none of that is even to mention the animal cruelty that takes place on an even vaster scale in the factory farms, fisheries, and slaughterhouses of the world. 

Still, there was something particularly ghoulish about the thought of these auditory psy-ops being inflicted on generations of sparrows, only to discover—unsurprisingly—that a lifetime of stress and fear contributes to a variety of negative long-term effects. Maybe it was just how adorable the sparrow looked on the featured image of the article. Maybe it was the sinister resonances this all had with the kind of darkly inventive mind games that were inflicted on detainees at CIA black sites and Guantanamo.

Or maybe it was the Biblical resonances buried deep in the our collective cultural memory. "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? But not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father's knowledge." Plainly, there is a concept as old as the Gospels that sparrows and other tiny, helpless, harmless things are especially close to God. No matter how small they appear, not one, the evangelist says, will perish without  God in Heaven knowing about it. 

But of course, sparrows do fall to the ground, even with God knowing about it. So if he knows about it, why doesn't he do something to stop it? 

The image of the divine protecting hand shielding the tiny, trembling bird from harm—which the Gospels at first seem to convey—contains its obverse. The line doesn't make any promise that no sparrows will be harmed in the making of this world. They don't say that evil will not exist or that no harm will come to the innocent and the helpless and the vulnerable. To the contrary: they say that every time a sparrow falls to the ground, God knows about it. And this means he must have approved the operation. 

This is what Thomas Hardy was driving at, in his protest poem: "The Blinded Bird"—in my view one of the most powerful cries of indignation ever penned about humankind's inhumanity to beast. Hardy knew that the Gospel writers had given us a God who was capable of protecting his creatures, but who also sometimes (if not frequently) chose not to—a morally-suspect character at best. Writing of song birds who were deliberately blinded in the belief that it made them sing better, Hardy writes: 

So zestfully canst thou sing? 

And all this indignity, 

With God's consent, on thee! 

The blinded finches Hardy was describing may indeed have sung even after the cruelty they experienced. Not so with the sparrows in the recent scientific study. The journalist writing the article, Ashley Braun, describes how the experimental group of sparrows—the ones subjected to the predator noises day in and day out—in general "sang fewer songs, lived shorter lives, and produced fewer offspring." But just as with Hardy's finches, no divine protecting Father came to their aid. 

If there is no God to save us, then what is there left to trust in? What is there left to believe in? Where is truth? Where is decency? 

Hardy writes that the answer is right before us: the bird itself. If there is neither Christ nor Godhead in Heaven, there is at least Christ on Earth: the innocent, the vulnerable, the helpless, the harmless, the gentle, the wronged and persecuted and beautiful creatures of this world: whether the blinded finches in their cage, or the sparrows trapped in their psy-ops experiment, or any of the other hells that human beings have built on this Earth to torment our fellow creatures:

Who hath charity? This bird. 

Who suffereth long and is kind, 

Is not provoked, though blind 

And alive ensepulchred? 

Who hopeth, endureth all things? 

Who thinketh no evil, but sings? 

Who is divine? This bird.