Several years ago, we went to an Easter service at the Bellevue First Presbyterian Church. The pastor shared a story as follows: Two neighbor ladies were quite friendly. One owned a pet rabbit, the other a golden retriever. One day, to her owner’s horror, the golden retriever arrived home with the neighbor’s prized rabbit, dead, in its mouth. Totally flustered, the kind but embarrassed woman decided on a plan to solve her dilemma. She brought dead rabbit in, bathed it and used a hair drier to fluff up the fur. Then surreptitiously she stole into the neighbor’s yard and placed the poor dead bunny back in its hutch. Several hours later, she received a somewhat frantic call from her neighbor, “You’re not going to believe this. My rabbit died two days ago, we buried him, and I just can’t believe it. He’s back!
It seemed odd to me to tell this “resurrection” story in this Holy Season, but at least it does remind us of one of those lessons to be learned in kindergarten, “honesty is the best policy.” Also noted, “we tend at times to create our own crisis.” Perhaps the woman should have asked the eternal Christian question, “What would Jesus have done?”
I am no authority on matters related to Jesus but I would hope he would speak to the owner of the dog and say that she clearly loves her neighbor but now should appreciate that dogs are often fierce predators of rabbits, if this dog, indeed, did kill the neighbor’s pet. That a good neighbor would tell the other neighbor that her dog brought the beautiful rabbit to her that morning and she, too, mourns that this would be her dear friend’s pet and a big loss. That in the future she will keep her dog inside unless supervised while it hunts. Then the neighbor who owns the dog, should listen carefully to what her neighbor says and the neighbor’s feelings, putting aside her own embarrassment and ego. In this case, both neighbors might have enjoyed a laugh but had the dog actually killed the rabbit, they might have grieved together, and the dog kept from hunting when not with a human being ‘supervised’ Trying to lie by sneaking around the truth is a sure fire way to erode important relationships with others. I would not trust someone who created this untrue ‘story’ behind my back. But I would appreciate a friend and neighbor who ‘owned’ what she thought happened, ie. that her dog had killed my rabbit. Meanwhile, said ‘dog’ ‘s owner should decide how to keep her dog from digging around in other people’s gardens! Perhaps the dog deserved a nice apology, too, in the form of a good bone.