Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?” –Jonah 4:11
Animals have become too humanized. They deserve respect, care, and love, indeed. They serve as companions, and as a source of comfort and release (and sometimes terror). But at the end of the day, they aren’t human beings. They have their rightful place in an “order of being,” but that order cannot (should not) supplant the value of a human being vis a vis God. I’m not suggesting that a family pet doesn’t become “part of the family,” they often do. But I am asserting that animals are inherently worth less than human beings. But as with everything else, sin disorders the way we operate as fallen beings. As such we ascribe and project value upon things, that in their proper order before God, don’t deserve that value, per se. Family pets, particularly dogs and cats, have a certain stability and unconditional love type of loyalty for their owners. And in this sense, they can offer things to people that make them seem more valuable than what humans can offer. But by implication, this ends up dehumanizing humans whilst humanizing pets into an image that we declare valuable; indeed, towards meeting our perceived needs and desires.
Understand, I’m only making my observations on a relative continuum. I’m not targeting folks who have pets, and love their pets as part of the family. I’m just targeting an imbalance that has crept into the broader cultural psychology, relative to an imbalance that has most certainly obtained, in regard to the valuation of animals juxtaposed with the valuation of other human beings. That is to say, more biblically: that humans are created and recreated in the image of God, who is the image of Christ for us. As long as we keep this theological order in mind, we will approach animals/pets with the right type of contextual order that God has declared both good and then VERY good. In our profane society we often see people replacing having babies with, as the alternative, having pets; as if there is a one-for-one correspondence between the two. All I’m saying with my post here, is that biblically, this ultimately is not the case.
Indeed… there is a divine order of being, for which mankind should have substantial consideration and regard. But biblically, there is not a one to one correspondence between all living creatures…. except they are given life from the One who is life and Creator-source of all living creatures.
Moreover, we can never lose sight of the Divine order imposed upon and conveyed by the use (by Divine command) of certain animals for sacrificial interposition— “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”— The death of the Covenant-Maker, which must be represented symbolically in the covenant-making ceremony.
…Yet, which is met de facto by the Covenant-Maker himself!
@Richard. Indeed. God’s gracious distinction between humans and animals. They have dignity insofar that they likewise have the capacity to bear witness to God’s triune love and reality. Even insofar as you not: as antitypes to the type of Jesus Christ. Amazing.