Sandra Blackmer I recently attended a lecture by British primatologist, ethologist, anthropologist, and United Nations Messenger of Peace Jane Goodall. Introduced by University of Redlands president James Appleton as “one of the most influential world citizens of our time,” 77-year-old Goodall is best known for her studies of social interactions of wild chimpanzees in Tanzania. Today she works tirelessly on conservation and animal welfare issues worldwide.
Goodall was not always so well respected. Her notion that animals have personalities and emotions appeared radical to Cambridge University professors at the time Goodall was earning her doctorate in ethology there following two years of study with wild chimpanzees. She was dismayed, she said, when the professors insisted that she “had done everything wrong, and the chimps should have numbers and not names, and I couldn’t talk about personality, mind, or emotions because that was unique to [humans].” Goodall disagreed.
It was during a conservation conference in Chicago in 1986 that Goodall embraced another facet of animal and environmental issues. There she learned that the fate of chimps was tied to larger problems, such as habitat destruction, poverty, intensive farming, and illegal poaching.
“I went in as a scientist; I came out as an activist,” she said.
Not everyone agrees with Goodall’s assertions. The courage of her convictions, however, in the face of almost universal opposition at that time by renowned scientists is worthy of emulation by all.
Regarding God’s people in the end-time, Ellen White writes that “the whole world was converted and in harmony with the Sunday law, and this little feeble people stood out in defiance of the laws of the land . . . and claimed to be the only ones right on the earth.” They do this, she says, because they “take their stand on the living Word” (Maranatha, p. 209).
May we too stand firm on God’s Word and display the courage of our convictions.
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Sandra Blackmer is features editor of the Adventist Review.
This article was published May 19, 2011.