KURIOS: You Can't Call Yourself Your Pet's Owner

When I finished guffawing, I grew reflective, then sad, and thought, “No more Kurios.” I was listening to an episode of a YouTube channel to which I subscribe, and the monologist was talking about his dog. He was surmising what his dog “thinks about his owner.” An off-camera crewmember facetiously interrupted with, “You can’t say ‘owner’ anymore.” The corrected elocutionist looking into the camera responded, “Oh, that’s right. I forgot. You can’t call yourself your pet’s owner anymore. PETA has said it's derogatory to your pet. You are supposed to call yourself your pet’s companion.” I was laughing at the ridiculousness of such offense taken on behalf of animals. But, as I began to reflect on this new impermissible expression of our language, I first noted how a dog’s owner was once also called the dog’s master. The two were hand-in-glove synonyms. For much of human history owners of land, resources, businesses, animals, etc., were masters. My sadness came when I realize that the same mindset that does not want to call a human a pet’s master also does not want to call God a human’s master. Post-modernity humanity, where it has not gotten rid of the idea of God altogether, has been quite successful in demoting God from master to friend, buddy, man upstairs—anything down on humanity’s level. (The whole driving force behind the promulgation of the evolutionary theory to explain existence is to get rid of God, for, if a man has no God, he has no master.) Humanity has elevated animals up to its own level by demoting humans from animals’ masters to companions (which they also are). All this about a master is where the Kurios comes in. Clearly, all slavery, servile-feudalism, etc.—any relationship where one human owns another is reprehensible and flagrantly immoral. Yet, for much of human history, as also reflected in Bible culture, such relationships existed. People were owned. And those who owned them were masters. (There were master-servant relationships, not in the mode of what is called to mind by American slavery, that were not inherently evil.) The Biblical word for master was Kurios. God is called Kurios. As is Jesus. Kurios. Lord. Master. Although one human owning another and, thus, being his master is evil, the same is not true with God. God owns us. He created us. He gave us life. He gives us each breath we breathe. God also owns us in another way. He purchased us. With His own Son’s blood. As our owner, God is our master, our Kurios. Yes, the modern mentality that insists that one not call himself his dog’s owner may on the surface stem from the love of pets, treating them like children and grandchildren, etc, but at a deeper level, it is part and parcel with the desire to erase the idea of God as our master. This, folks do not want to acknowledge. The Apostle Paul makes clear God is our owner. “You are not your own. You’ve been bought with a price.” As owner, God is Lord and Master (Not to be confused with the KJV “master” which at the time of translation was the word for “teacher.”) A Kurios is a master, one with complete authority over another. In the end, all this about ownership is about not wanting to acknowledge, surrender to, and bow to God’s authority. Paul was not only quick to call Jesus Kurios but to call himself doulos, a slave, of Jesus. One day, every human will bow and acknowledge this Kurios—doulos relationship with God. Those who do it this side of the grave, this side of the coming of Christ, will be eternally saved. Those who wait until the other side will be eternally lost. I don’t have a dog to call myself its owner and master. But I do have a God to call Owner and Master. Unabashedly. He is Lord! Kurios! By the way, something else might be said of those reluctant to call themselves their pet’s owner. It’s Freudian. It’s that, truth be told, their animal owns them. :) --Pastor Clifford Hurst