A Bear Named Duncan

Watch the video

There once was a bear named Duncan, kind and sensitive but rather timid and quite terrified of being caught by hunters. Hunting season seemed a bit busier than in recent years and gun-toting bear shooters seemed to be getting a bit more aggressive in their efforts to hunt down their prey, so Duncan spent much of his days deep in the woods, trying to avoid the danger.

One day Duncan the Bear was walking by his favorite feeding spot when he saw a hunter setting up a trap. Duncan recognized the metal jaws and gears of the machine. It looked like countless other traps he’d seen, but for some reason this hunter was standing in the middle of the trap, in the space designed to ensnare any beast foolish enough to come near. Duncan knew that he ought to walk into the woods and not engage the man, but curiosity got the better of him.

“I’m sorry, what exactly are you doing” Duncan asked.

“I’m bear hunting, stupid bear,” the hunter replied. “I’ve set up this trap to show you how much smarter and better I am than you and all your furry friends.”

“No, I get that,” Duncan replied. “But why are you standing in the middle of the trap?”

“Look, you woodland creatures are all morons. You don’t know how the trap works. I do. I’m smart. I bought this off of E-bay and I read like thirty percent of the instructions on some website that some dude mentioned on reddit. I know what I’m doing. I’m an expert hunter. I know that as soon as you rest your foot on this thing here in the middle…”

The hunter slammed his foot down on the plate to demonstrate and the jaws quickly dug into his leg. As the man screamed in agony, Duncan walked back off into the woods, figuring that maybe he didn’t need to be so worried about the hunters after all.

Hear the fable of the hunter and the bear explained. Duncan the Bear is the Christian who is nervous about being targeted for ridicule by unbelievers. The hunter is the typical internet atheist who overvalues his knowledge of the Scriptures. And the trap is all of the Levitical laws prohibitions against certain kinds of foods.

So whenever someone responds to the Church’s condemnation of homosexual acts with “well, the Bible also tells us not to eat shellfish,” immediately you know that you’re dealing with someone who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Instantly this person has shown you that he is the hunter who thinks he’s set up a clever trap to humiliate Christians but is actually standing in the midst of his own device with the jaws about to close on his leg. So don’t be bullied by these people. Don’t be intimidated by them. They are ignorant, uneducated people who have, with their very first sentence, publicly declared that they don’t understand the simplest, most basic principles of Biblical interpretation that Christians have been employing since literally the days of the apostles. So talk with your pastor about how Christians read the Bible. Learn about the difference between the moral law and the ceremonial law. Then talk to those who think they are experts. Confess Christ to them. Tell those whose legs are stuck in the trap about how Christ has set us free from sin and condemnation. They may still hate you and mock you and belittle you. But, as they’ve already shown by clamping the jaws into their own legs at sentence one, they can’t hurt you.

~Rev. Hans Fiene