Unshackled Echo May 14, 2019 ~ Momma Giraffes Aren't Mean

There is no shortage of inspirational and moral stories floating around out there, especially on the Internet. Not only is it easy to come across one fairly often, they're hard to avoid, especially if you participate in social media. Stories like the young woman about to be tricked into marrying someone she doesn't want to marry thinking outside the box to use the bad man's trick against him. There are stories about deaf frogs that are supposed to encourage us not to listen to others telling us to give up. One that is easy to find from many sources is the inspirational story about mother giraffes and their newborn babies.

The general idea is that baby giraffes immediately face two hardships. First a ten foot drop due to the mother giving birth standing up; followed by the mother kicking the baby and sending him sprawling. There are variations on the story from the kicking happening only if the baby doesn't get up fast enough to it happening right away with every time the baby starts to rise the mother kicking it back down until it gives up and then kicking it to make it try once more! The idea is that the baby needs to be able to get to its feet quickly if it is going to survive the predators and the hardship of the mother's rough treatment is forcing it to learn this important lesson so that it can survive. If you do a search on Google for this story, you will find many versions to choose from, including many Christian writers and speakers and ministers who use this story as part of some object lesson to remind us that if God is treating us roughly it may be just that we need to learn a lesson that will help us survive later down the road.

It's a good story. There are so many people who feel like God has been mean to them. How awesome to have a tale to tell to give a different perspective on the beatings of our past. The only problem is that it isn't true, or if it is true, it isn't the norm. I found many people claiming this phenomena, but searching led to no documentation.  Even the links that supposedly confirmed the stories led to sites that either were only another person retelling the story or all they confirmed was the mother gives birth standing up, although she squats and the fall is a little over half of the ten feet many of these stories claim.

Animal Planet, The Giraffe Conservation Society and other more legitimate sources say nothing about such treatment. This morning I have watched multiple videos of giraffes giving birth and the moments afterward, and not one kick occurred. So who cares? It's an inspirational story. What does it matter if it's bogus? It's a moral fable.

It matters because it's not being presented as a fable. People are repeating this story as fact and we're learning a false lesson about a real God. The lesson is of a mean mom helping prepare her child to make what we feel like we've been through with Daddy more acceptable to us. It's almost like we are supposed to hear this story and say, OK, God. I get it now. You're were helping me learn something important when you were mean to me, so I forgive You.

But the truth that multiple videos and the animal sites I read showed was not mother giraffes being hard and mean but encouraging. They licked and nuzzled their babies. They cleaned them and made their presence known and stood guard. Daddy does the same for us. Yes, there are times life is hard and we have to endure some hurts and weaknesses. Sometimes the lions show up while we can't stand. There are times we have trouble and are wobbly on our goofy little legs. But Daddy is not mean to us. He doesn't bully or mistreat us in order to toughen us up and make us strong. That's human thinking. God made us strong by becoming weak, taking on our debt, dying and then giving us His power to replace and bolster our own.

We don't need to understand God's meanness so that we  can forgive Him, because the idea that God has been cruel to teach us some much needed life lesson is a myth. God has not been cruel. God stood between our vulnerability and the lions. He encouraged  us. He cleaned us. He called us to Him so that we could be protected and strengthened and cared for. He fed us. He stood by us waiting for us and calling us to come to Him for shelter and supply when life was kicking us and the predators came for our blood.

Today's Unshackled Echo was previously published on

May 14, 2016.

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