The Malinois and Romans 6:1

The Malinois will be a year old this week.  He has elbow dysplasia, which is very disappointing.  For those who are not familiar with the breed, they are very energetic, protective, agile, athletic, and fearless.  The breed was originally bread in Belgium as a herding dog.  Here in the US, they are used in the military, as police dogs and as protection dogs; they can run agility as well as any border collie, and are persistent. They are very sharp, learn fast, are eager to please and are not afraid to try anything. If you are interested, do a quick you tube search and you will see them parachuting or rappelling from helicopters with their handlers, bomb sniffing, chasing and apprehending criminals, climbing fences, climbing up in trees, jumping on top of cars or climbing the sides of box trailers.  When they are given a job, nothing can deter them from that job. One serving in the military was shot in the chest while apprehending a suspect, and when his handler arrived, he was still holding onto and subduing the suspect.

My Malinois is completely fearless, I have found nothing yet that he will back up from.  I had begun to train him, then he started showing signs of the elbow dysplasia, so we had to slow our training.  Now we just play a lot.  He sits, downs, stays, spins, high fives, shakes, rolls over, settles (play dead) and is trying to learn to back up and crawl, and we practice tracking sometimes.  We walk several times a week and we practice his obedience while we walk.  He can heel, but doesn't do it well.  And he would chew the tires off of a car.  Inflicts damage like you would imagine an alligator would.

So while out walking and attempting some training, this Scripture came to me, "What should we say then? Should we continue in sin so that grace may multiply?" Romans 6:1 HCSV. For those of you who know something about dog training, and I don't know much, but you try to correct bad behavior by replacing it with good behavior. So when I see the Malinois running toward me with that look that says, "I am going to grab you by the ankle because I don't want you to go that direction," then I immediately ask him for a sit or a down. If he complies quickly, he then receives a treat. If he jumps up on the furniture, I tell him "off", if he quickly complies, he gets a treat. Well for some people that looks like he might think, well if I do something I know I am not supposed to, I will get corrected, then I get treat, so I will just do bad things and receive treats. Dogs can't make those connections. He will not do bad things in order to get corrected and then get a treat. For him the treat is for the last action he did, ie the off or the sit. But humans however can make those connections, and what Paul is saying in that verse is, we shouldn't continue to sin, just so God can extend His grace to us. That does not magnify nor glorify God. That is someone trying to justify their worldly actions. We are told to live a life that will bring glory to God. We are to look and act different from the world. That line of thinking, I should sin so God can exercise His grace to me, is akin to "tempting" God, which are instructed NOT to do. We believe that the dog might think that way, because we can think that way; so don't think the way you believe a dog does. Dogs are a wonderful creation of God, but to humans He gave the gift of reasoning, so let's reason like a human, and seek to glorify God in our lives. Not try to find a way to justify our unChistian actions. (I just invented that word, unChristian)


That's it for this post, I hope it made some sense to someone.