For those with pets, they know that dogs are man’s best friend. For others, cats are their best friends. Indeed, when others are too busy to love, pets are there to love them.
I am not a ‘pet person.’ However,
I do understand. One lady remarked, “I understand that you don’t love dogs,” in
an accusatory manner; to which I replied, “I do love dogs; I’m just not romantic
with them.” What I meant is that I love animals at a distance, both me and my
dog knowing our places and keeping some distance between us. To put it simply,
I like to pet dogs, but I do not want them to lick my face.” It is a hygienic
barrier that I see no reason to cross.
The non-romantic part is that I
can love them in their places but need not sleep with them.
Dogs and other pets have non-conditional
love for their masters and instinctive fear and caution when others get close.
They know who their masters are and serve and protect them and their families.
On the other hand, if an unfamiliar person gets near their masters, they get
mean in the face of possible danger. (My brother’s tiny dog gets vicious when I
get near my brother.)
Civilized humans are cleaner than
domesticated animals on the outside, but as a general rule as ‘civilization’
has shown, inwardly humans are the dirtiest of the species. David called that
uncleanliness ‘iniquity’ (Psalm 51:5), and theologians, ‘depravity.’ (I do take
exception to ‘total depravity,’ but humans are depraved enough that they are
their own masters, doing their own thing without regard to others.)
The ‘Golden Rule’ of God is, “As
you would that men should do to you, do you also to them likewise” (Luke 6:310.
That takes much consideration. Psychologically that is demonstrating empathy. If
you seem to be a threat to animals, they will seem to be a threat to you. Be
kind to pets and they will return kindness, not to their adversaries, but to
their masters.
Man (Adam) was intended to
be the masters. Herein, Adam represents mankind, not just one man for ‘Adam’
is not the name of a person but a kind or family of anthropoids in this
domain, to use the words of taxonomy. How is that known? God said about mankind
and only mankind, “Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over
the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over
every creeping thing that creeps upon the Earth” (Gen 1:26).
Dominion is to dominate. Man
stands upright whereas the others do not unless they have tails of
course as counterbalances. We were designed for dominance and that stooped-shouldered
Neanderthal is not a man but some ‘thing’ less! That kind was the beasts and
thereafter upright man has always been dominant. We are still the dominant
species having intelligence for decision-making. Man was meant to consider all
possibilities whereas animals’ natures are to survive.
The animal kingdom was meant to serve mankind. The animals of the Garden of Eden were familiar friends of the man, to wit:
And out of the ground
the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and
brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam
called every living creature, that was the name thereof. (Gen 2:19)
Adam was a familiar friend to God
and to the animals. The animals were familiar friends to Adam and to God. They
were all content in the Garden even with the taxonomical class system
established by God. The animals were to serve Adam, Adam was to serve God by
dressing and keeping the Garden (Gen 2:15), and God would bless them.
God, therefore made the Garden a
Paradise on Earth.
It is to be noted that the composition
of the animal kingdom was the same as man’s. Adam was made from the ground (adama
in the Hebrew) and likewise the lesser animals were made from adama. Hence,
the flesh of mankind is the same as the beasts. The difference is that man
himself was made in the Image of God… Adam was a ‘shadow’ or ‘phantom’ of God.
That described the soul of Adam, the ‘vessel’ that contained the Spirit of God when
God breathed life only into the man (Gen 2:7). Life, therefore, is in the soul
and as such it was the soul that could die. The flesh would merely return to the
dust of the ground (adama) and its composition would go on forever, at
least until the apocalypse when the heaven and the Earth are destroyed.
That is a key issue: Life is not
in the flesh but in the soul. When God spoke of death, He was not speaking of
their flesh, for they were naked to Him; He was speaking of their soul — the invisible
Image of Himself!
Imagine the Garden: Every animal
was a pet, Adam served them, and as such, they loved their master in a familial
sense. (In the Greek, that type of love is called, ‘storge.’). Because God
made for them a Paradise, Adam loved God (agape love, or goodwill toward
God).
Creation was designed such that
the master of the animal kingdom was mankind, and the Master of the Man was
God. He was a good Master, so there was no cruelty or ill-will. (Sin broke that
economy.) The animals served one master — Adam — and Adam one Master — God. Everything
in the Garden was good that way, and Paradise in heaven is much the same, as
Isaiah saw it:
The wolf also shall
dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf
and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead
them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down
together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall
play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the
cockatrice's den. (Isa 11:6-8)
Will there be animals in heaven?
Since they do not have souls, animals will not go to Paradise; the
animals that Christians encounter in heaven will perhaps be the same animals
that were familiar to Adam in the Garden. The dog that licked Adam’s hand will
then lick yours! The canine will recognize you by the smell of your genetic composition
that once was in glorious Adam before he sinned.
The animals were such familiar
friends with Adam that he named them. However, there was only one of his kind
to love; then came the woman who was soon beguiled and a new kind originated.
Adam called her kind ‘Eve.’ She created a new kind of being (Gen 4:1), that
scripture calls ‘man’ disregarding that Cain was of the Wicked One (1 John
3;12). Cain was feral man!
Cain was a wild and fierce animal
of another kind. Natural born men have Cain in us; raising Cain is fierceness;
not all animal and not all man, mankind are not totally depraved but depraved
enough that we do as the animals even would not do. (As far as I know, mankind
is the only species that pays money to watch others pleasure themselves! That
is quite base, or worse yet, debased.)
‘Natural selection’ is that no “thing’
but the world made the classifications in taxonomy — the naming of the kingdoms.
‘Divine election’ is that God made the dominant kind, then that kind was a responsible
man.
Indeed, Adam and his kind were
elected before the foundation of the world to be the kinds with souls, just as
is written, “He (God) has chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world,
that we should be holy and without blame before him in love” (Ephes 1:4). It
was our kind that was to have dominion and God selected man from all the
different kinds to love Him and for Him to love! Not love in an erotic or
romantic sense, but for Him to have goodwill for us, and us Him. He is to be
our Master, not just a Supreme Ruler, but a loving and kind Master that we
should be proud to serve!
Often neglected is what Jesus
said, “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love
the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other” (Mat 6:24).
Sin was not so much changing masters
but endeavoring to serve two masters — God and the world (mammon) at the same
time. Adam and the woman did not serve the Serpent or any other beast; they
served themselves by taking whatever it was that they wanted. That was
enough allegiance for Lucifer (The Serpent). Eve, especially, became the ‘god;’
she acknowledged that when she said to Adam, I “conceived, and bare Cain, and
said, ‘I have gotten a man from the Lord’” (Gen 4:1); not God, nor Adam… she
had created a new creature that she called, not Adama but ‘Is
(pronounced eesh.)
In one generation, Adam’s kind
had degenerated into another mutant kind that Adam named ‘Eve’. Since that day,
we are no longer Adam’s kind but Eve’s kind for she is the ‘mother of all
living” (Gen 3:20), not Adam as the father of all living. It is Eve’s
DNA that is passed down (the ‘excess’ mitochondrial DNA) but only from the
mother and never the father.
Henceforth, Adam lost his dominance, and was master of neither his wife, nor the beasts. The Serpent became the master of Eve’s kind. Genetically, because of original sin passed down in the process of time, John finally revealed the truth about just what humans really are:
You are of your father
the Devil, and the lusts of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the
beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When
he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. (John 8:44)
Since we are all born in iniquity,
according to the wisdom of King David, Satan is our genetic ‘father’ and the
only recourse for mankind is to be re-fathered by a change in genetics
that Jesus called “born again” (John 3:7).
(It is God that should gene-edit,
not Bill Gates!)
The Beast, the ‘Serpent,’
became the master of Adam, resulting from a cunning switcheroo. No longer
dominant over the beasts, Adam became dominated by the Beast. In a
natural state, the master of everyone is Satan, and the Devil is our ‘familiar
friend,’ and it is his will that we do naturally. Like Cain long before, as ‘sons
of Cain,’ natural born humans are of the Wicked One. The only way to correct
that genetic mutation is infusion with new genetics from above (rebirth).
Many people did not abandon God
but added another god, having two masters. That is why there is so much sin in
the Church — people trying to serve both God and themselves. Why is that? Our
own flesh has mastered us since it is the flesh that is of the Serpent. We do
whatever the flesh tells us to do! Our flesh is our ‘familiar friend,’ even
more so than our friends, our pets, or even God. It is our selves we love and pets and such are
just there to please us.
Jesus had a “familiar friend”
named ‘Judas’ about whom David wrote, “Yes, mine own familiar friend, in whom I
trusted, which did eat of my bread, has lifted up his heel against Me” (Psalm
41:9). Judas and Jesus were familiar friends who loved each other. Judas even
kissed Jesus like a brother that he loved. He still served Jesus, but Satan got
into him, and Judas tried to serve two masters.
Judas did not serve Satan like a
brother; it was himself that was another good friend. He loved money
more than Jesus and it mastered him. If it had been a pet that he loved more,
perhaps Jesus would have understood, but it was himself that was the most loved
master of Judas, and to himself that Judas served.
Judas who lost his affection for
Jesus, defected to Satan, not directly but loved himself more than Jesus. (That
you should love yourselves feeds into that as too high esteem for yourselves.)
Pets are a good example since
they are familiar friends. Why did God create mankind? He loved us from the
beginning, and still does (John 3:16). In a sense, we are God’s ‘pets;’ He
loves us and because of that we love Him, or at least we should.
Pets serve their masters, and
their masters reciprocate by petting them for their allegiance. God and man should
have the same relationship, but what do so many Christians do? Bite the hand
that feeds and pets them, and each time we sin, we turn feral against God,
biting the Hand of the Man who feeds us. If you understand pets, you should
understand what your service was meant to be!
Good masters train their pets and
sometimes it takes mild punishments. The same goes for God. The consequences of
our behavior are our own self-punishment and guilt is God’s way of punishing.
Christians who disobey their Master are asking for punishment. Have you ever
watched your dog’s face after it tears up your shoe? You scold the animal, and
it becomes sad. Christians fail so often to do that when they disappoint their Master.
The worst feeling possible is
when you call your dog, and it goes to someone else. God has that same sadness and
never will be conditioned to accept that! He will always be our Master unless
we tire of Him and move on to another. Irreligiously, the other ‘master-to-be’
is always there with a treat to entice you to come to him. Jesus cries at that.
That is why His agony!
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