*** g72 7/8 pp. 6-8 Getting a Balanced View of Pets ***
Need for Caution
If we are concerned about pleasing God in our lives, there is need for caution with regard to the pets we may have. We may note that a wrong attitude toward the animal creation was involved in the first woman’s fall into rebellion against God. She let herself be swayed by words appearing to come from the mouth of a serpent, a creature instinctively “cautious,” yet still an ‘unreasoning animal.’—Gen. 3:1-6.
Throughout the centuries since, false worship has often involved a wrong view of animal creation. Crocodiles, baboons and bulls have been kept in temples, there being bathed, perfumed and fed the finest of foods, while humans in the same area lived in wretched conditions with hunger. Mighty nations have taken a certain animal or bird as the proud symbol of their government and people, jealously venerating that animalistic symbol.
Even though not deifying an animal as sacred, what if we should treat a pet animal as though it were virtually on a level with humans? What if we showed even greater interest and concern for it than we did for other humans, slighting their interests on behalf of the animal? What if we were willing to go to great lengths and expense to alleviate animal suffering in general but failed to ‘love our neighbor as ourselves’ and compassionately aid others in the way God’s Son did while on earth? (Mark 6:34) In any such case, would this not be putting the animal in a position where it does not belong?
While perhaps rare, cases are reported of persons who let their pet animal sit at the meal table with them and eat from a plate with the human members of the household. Some persons make out wills bequeathing sums running into thousands of dollars for the care of some pet animal. Others will go to great expense to keep alive some aged and diseased animal, even risk endangering the health of others in the home by retaining the animal there.
We may recall that the inspired writer Jude expresses God’s condemnation and judgment of those angels that “did not keep their original position but forsook their own proper dwelling place,” doing that which was “unnatural” to their spirit nature and divinely assigned status. (Jude 6, 7) When humans attempt to elevate animals to a human level they are, in fact, degrading themselves, not keeping the dignified, superior position in which God originally placed man. At the same time they are putting the animals in a relationship that is “out of place” with God’s purpose, in an “unnatural” one with man.
