Where Do Our Pets Go When They Die?

Last Sunday we had to put down our lovable boy-cat Copy. He was 18 years old, had lost sight in his left eye, had thyroid and arthritis problems, and suddenly his upper lungs stopped working. This was not a happy afternoon for us, and we miss him. It raises an age-old question that Christian parents have had to answer their children for generations: where do our pets go when they die? It isn't the world's most important religious issue, to be sure, but it has its importance.

Solomon said this, in Ecclesiastes 3:20-21:

"All go to one place; all come from dust, and all return to dust. Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and the spirit of the animal descends into the earth?"

Some have interpreted Solomon's words as if he were skeptical about the immortality of the human soul. Yet, later in the same book, he said about human beings, "The dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it" (Ecc. 12:7). Solomon believed the human spirit lived on after the death of the body. The body returns to the dust, but the spirit lives on.

Psalm 104 said this: "All creatures look to You to give them their food in due season. When You give it to them, they gather it up; when You open Your hand, they are satisfied with good things. When you hide Your face, they are terrified; when You take away their breath, they die and return to dust." When God withdraws the life-principle, "they", the whole animal, returns to the earth.

Genesis 1:27 said that God made humanity in His own image, which included the quality of spirituality immortality. Unlike the rest of creation, into Adam alone did God individually breathe life (Gen. 2:7). These qualities place even the least intelligent human in a whole higher category than the most intelligent animal.

During last week's sermon I referred to "cat heaven", but I meant it tongue-in-cheek. We sometimes tell our little children about cat heaven, dog heaven, horse heaven, and so on, but the truth is that animals don't have that special quality of God that makes our spirits immortal. This doesn't mean we can mistreat animals. By no means. A righteous person takes proper care of his animals (Proverbs 12:10).

In fact, many horrifying atrocities have been committed by governments who believed that people (or certain specific people) were just a form of animal. Whether it's Andrew Jackson's murderous campaigns against American Indians, or the British abuse of the Irish over the generations, or the Nazis, or Planned Parenthood, the dehumanizing of humans is always key to mass murder.

This is why it's important to maintain the essential distinction between human beings and animals. In one verse, Solomon said we cannot know, using our natural powers of observation, that the spirits of human beings return  to God. This is true. But we can know this by divine revelation, through the pages of Scripture. Solomon affirmed this in chapter 12.

As much as we love our animals, none of them rise to an equal level to us human beings. Perhaps this is why Solomon said that a proper burial for a person is important (Ecc. 6:3) -- we are all made in God's image, and so our bones shouldn't just be scattered about. By maintaining the distinction between man and animal, we honor mankind even as we take good care of the animals.