For all those moviegoers, this is a spoiler notice. I am going to talk somewhat about a current movie that is out and playing at the Neptune Theatre: ‘War Horse'.Last night my wife and I drove out to Dockyard as the wind continued to pick up and an occasional raindrop splashed against the windshield. We were on our way to the Neptune Theatre to see ‘War Horse'. Going out there is a nice way to spend an evening. We usually give ourselves enough time to have a glass of wine at the Frog and Onion before going into the theatre.Last night we sat in front of a row of horse owners. They came with their own supplies of tissue. I said: “Is this supposed to be a sad movie?” They affirmed that it was.Now, I am an animal lover. I am not a fanatic about it, but I have pets. My wife and I currently have cats. I talk to them. I speak to them in complex sentences, because that is the way I speak, but I don't believe they can understand what I am saying. I do believe they can pick up my feeling tone and whether or not I am pleased with them. I think they can understand single-word commands. Anyway, yes. I am an animal lover, but you won't see me posing naked to keep anybody from slaughtering a cow. I don't care if someone wears fur.If people are around animals, I think they should take good care of them and treat them with kindness. One sign in children that a person has serious psychological problems is if they mistreat animals. Psychologists and FBI profilers have come to believe that one sign of an emerging sociopathy, even psychopathology (the more serious version of this manifest by serial killers and rapists), is cruelty to animals when a person is a child. Investigators theorise that children act out and rehearse the cruelty they will eventually perpetrate on human beings by venting themselves first on animals. Therefore, if a parent observes a child being cruel to animals, that parent is well advised to seek help for their child before it becomes too late. One sign of a conduct disorder in children is such cruelty to animals, and it is a small step for a child with conduct disorder to begin using and abusing other children as well as animals. Anyone observing a child being cruel to animals should alert that child's parents. It would be a terrible negligence to not do so.So, there I sat watching this story about a boy who raises a horse. The movie was well done. Its plot hung together, and its pace did not lag. However, there was a bit of “Lassie” in this movie. Here is where all the horse whisperers will get on my case, but really.When I was growing up, I used to watch Lassie on TV. Little Timmy would talk to Lassie and give that dog all kinds of complex instructions, then say something like, “Understand, girl? Go do it.” Right. It was like he had said: “There is a basket down the hill, on the other side of a large rock; so, I want you to go down there, find the basket, tip it over, and only grab the pencils in a red canister. Then bring them back to me here. Understand, girl? Go do it.”In the movie there is one scene where one horse nuzzles another affectionately. One horse is black and the other brown. Seeing the brown horse nuzzle the black one looked just like our grey cat licking the face of our black cat. I whispered to my wife: “Looks like Dixie and Doodle.” I made that connection. I know I attribute human qualities to our cats, and I think some of that kind of attribution was going on in the movie.It makes me ponder. We will attribute human qualities to non-human animals and then demand that they be treated well; however, we often treat other human beings like animals and abuse or neglect them. Women call men dogs. Men say women can be catty. We say some people are pigs.It is not like we don't have a sense of the standard. You see that? We do understand that there is a way in which people or animals should be treated. We just don't do it, and when we don't it makes it easier if we de-humanise what we want to take advantage of.What is there about humanity, about human beings that we attribute to animals so as to elevate them or take away from persons so as to destroy them? I believe it has something to do with the fact that we are made in the image of God. God made us to have relationship with Him; so, we have the capacity for discourse with divinity. Nicholas Wolterstorff wrote a great book about it, titled Divine Discourse, and others have addressed it in books titled Knowing God (J.I. Packer), Knowledge of the Holy (A.W. Tozer), Hearing God (Dallas Willard), and I and Thou (Martin Buber).I also believe it is a sign of our fallen state, our imperfection, our giant flaw, that we have such trouble relating to others. The very thing we were designed to do has become one of the greatest flies in our ointment. We are so locked up in the cell of our own subjectivity that we cannot step outside of ourselves to understand others. We imagine things about others rather than truly comprehend what life is like for them. Sociopaths use other people, not responding to persons, but rather responding to opportunities to take advantage of persons. We imagine things about others, and when we need to, we discount them by debasing them, lowering them to realms beneath us, where we also believe dogs, cats, pigs, lizards, and snakes reside. We squash some people like bugs when they annoy us. Sometimes we shoot them.Something is wrong.