“I wish good dogs never got gray and old…”
– Riley Green
“That’s putting a lot of trust in a dog,” White said.
“Right now,” Sanderson said bleakly, “a dog’s all we got left to put any trust in”…..
I don’t guess a dog understands many words, but I think he can listen and tell more than a lot of people believe about the feeling back of the words. And right then, I was so desperate to make Sam understand that I’ll always believe some of my feelings got through to him.
– Fred Gibson (in Savage Sam)
“If there are no dogs in heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.”
– Will Rogers
“Be thou comforted, little dog; in the Resurrection thou shall have a little golden tail.”
— Martin Luther
When we got Chloe, I reminded my kids that all dog stories end in the same way. They had read enough of the great dog stories — books like Old Yeller, Where the Red Fern Grows, and Stone Fox — to know exactly what I meant. On Wednesday, our beloved Chloe’s story came to an end.
My kids begged me for years to get a dog. I told them towards the end of 2009 that 2010 would be the “year of the dog” for the Lusk family. We got a dog sometime in the middle of the year but that puppy (named Jack) turned out to have so many health problems, we ended up having to give him back within a week, before we really bonded with him. By the time fall rolled around, I realized it was getting to be late in the year and I still didn’t have a dog for the kids. I was running out of time to keep my promise. But the Lord has his ways. We were at a church picnic at Veterans Park in October and my kids all came running up to me, exclaiming, “Dad, dad, there’s a guy over here who has a bunch of black puppies. You have to come see them!” I knew right then that one of those puppies would become the Lusk family dog. The next week, we went and picked one to take home. She turned out to be the best seventy-five bucks I ever spent.
Chloe was one of six black puppies born on Friday the 13th, August, 2010. Chloe and the rest of her litter were an accident – an accidental mix between a yellow lab and a Boykin spaniel that were supposed to be kept apart. Neither parent had any black, but all the puppies were completely black. We joked that “labkins” (lab + Boykin) should become a new breed because she was an excellent family dog from the beginning. She had never been inside a house til we took her home with us. I still remember how scared she was the first time we brought her inside. But other than when she went to vet, that’s the only time I remember her being scared. From early on it was obvious she was both very social and had strong guarding instincts. She had a great bark – loud, deep, and just raspy enough. She loved kids, even the ones from church who would lay all over her and grab her tail. She was a very protective dog. Even late in her life when she could no longer see or hear well, she would try her best, though it was a bit funny to see her barking at night at a window with the shutters closed. I’m sure she just thought she was doing her job.
She got her name because I was preaching through 1 Corinthians when we adopted her, and Chloe is one of the only female names in the book. Somehow it just seemed fitting. She quickly bonded with all of us, but she knew early on that I was the master of the house so she would follow me everywhere. If I was sitting in a room, she would lay down near me, positioning herself where she would have a view of me. If I got up, she would get up. If I walked to another room, she followed me. She waited on my every move, like the servant looking to the hand of his master in Psalm 123. I have no doubt she lived to please me and she only held on to life as long as she did because she wondered if I could make it without her. If I hadn’t taken her on a walk in a while, she would start to get a little bit fidgety and look at me with eager, expectant big brown eyes that seemed to ask, “What are we gonna do next?!” Chloe could communicate more with her eyes than any dog I’ve ever known. When she heard my garage door go up, she would be ready to greet me at the top of the stairs. If she heard me start up my truck, she’d jump around wondering where I was about to take her. Jenny is sure that she often knew when I was on my way home from somewhere (and no, Jenny, has not read any Sheldrake).
Chloe had her faults. She never had the best table manners; she was definitely a beggar for table scraps (but isn’t that biblical – see Matthew 15:27?) She wore out her welcome at a neighbor’s house when she ate through their kerosene can and gnawed on some shingles in their backyard. She was pretty destructive at times in her early years. One time when she was a puppy, she got hold of one of the girl’s shoes in the backyard, and all six of us together could not catch her before she chewed it up. She shed like crazy. In fact, we’ve joked that Chloe will always be with us because I’m sure we will be finding her fur in various places of the house for years to come.
Over the last 13 2/3 years, I’ve spent more time with Chloe than any other living creature (since I work from home and Jenny and the kids were often at school). We took walks every day until her back legs started to give out in the last year. My goal had been to walk 25,000 miles with her over the course of her lifetime (so we could say we circled the earth together). I don’t think we quite made it that far but we got pretty close.
Age took its toll on Chloe. Her black fur started to gray in certain places, including her whiskers, which came to be known as “wisdom whiskers” (interestingly, I got some wisdom whiskers of my own at about the same time!) Chloe had a long list of ailments that piled up in her later years. Dr. Skocelas, her vet, took great care of her, but some of her problems were never going to get better. She had skin problems, ear problems, and hip problems. She had hot spots and arthritis. She had hematomas and boils. She got cataracts, probably losing all sight in one eye and partially in the other. She lost a lot of her hearing. But none of those things ever seemed to dampen her enthusiasm for life. She was incredibly resilient. As a younger dog, she once ate paint from an aluminum tube. Ingesting paint changed the color of her you-know-what, but no other damage was detected. She got stung by wasps one time and her snout swelled to preposterous proportions. I think I saw her swallow some gravel once. She chomped on sticks. She loved to hunt frogs at night in the summer. One time she got a frog in her mouth and I couldn’t get her to drop it so we walked about 3 miles with the legs of the frog hanging out of her snout. Amazingly, both Chloe and the frog survived. There was the time when she licked paint right out of can. Another time, some chocolate bars the kids’ got at Halloween went missing. Jenny and I suspected one of the kids had eaten them but they all denied it. Sure enough, the next day when Rebekah and I had Chloe on a walk, she passed the candy, wrapper and all. There was the aforementioned kerosene can. There was another time she got into all kinds of stuff in the bottom of the pantry (including chocolate – if chocolate is supposed to kill dogs, Chloe didn’t get the memo). Once she got hold of a corn cob; she swallowed it, then regurgitated it. On top of all of that, she had the usual dog habit of drinking water from strange sources, including stagnant ponds and the not-so-clean Cahaba River.
By the time she got to be about 12 years old, we started to joke that maybe she was the dog that just wouldn’t and die. She kept defying expectations. The kids’ started to give Chloe a “final” goodbye every time they left home for college, thinking they might not get to see her again. But then they’d come back home for another visit and Chloe would still be there. She was just a fixture in our lives – so much so, it’s hard to remember a past without her or envision a future without her for our family. We joked about how she was on hospice care when she started having to take pills every day, and yet her zest for life did not seem diminished at all. Even when her seeing and hearing were waning, she still loved every day she got on this earth. She was a grateful dog, happy to live each of her days to the fullest. She was loyal to the end.
Her favorite place to go were the woods behind our neighborhood, leading down to the Cahaba River. Once we got to the woods, I’d let her off the leash as we made our way to the river. Until the last year or so, she loved to get into the river and swim around and fetch sticks. The water was like a second home. We had a lot of adventures in those woods and by the water. Sometime, when the whole family is together, we will take her ashes to the walking bridge over the Cahaba and drop her remains into the flowing waters.
Chloe filled our lives with memories. There was the time that we had driven to a park to walk. Annie (who was probably about 9 at the time) had her on a leash in the backseat and wanted to be the one to get her out of the van. But when we got there, Chloe was so eager, she jumped out of the van before Annie and then dragged Annie for several yards before she could get the leash off her wrist. One time when we had been out of town for a week, unbeknownst to us, some rabbits made a little home in our backyard. When Chloe was turned loose in the backyard, she exterminated the rabbits one by one. That didn’t sit well with the girls, but (again) Chloe thought she was just doing her job. The funny thing is, a few years later my girls got rabbits as pets, and Chloe quickly accepted them as members of our pack. She could be pretty smart when she wanted to be. Chloe was always very spirited. Even towards the end of life, her spirit remained strong, but her flesh was just too weak to carry on.
Dogs are called man’s best friend for a reason. A wise man one said that God puts different people in our lives at different times for a purpose. I’d like to think the same is true of dogs. Dogs really do serve a purpose. They can bring us a lot of joy and a lot of laughter. People often point out that part of what makes dogs wonderful companions is that they seem to love us unconditionally. “I hope to be the person my dog thinks I am,” as the T-shirt puts it. Dogs are faithful, loyal, and loving companions to the very end. But that end always comes.
I don’t have Chris Stapleton’s talent; if I did, I’d write a song for Chloe the way he wrote one for his dog Maggie.
Run, Maggie, run
With the heart of a rebel child
Oh, run, Maggie, run
Be just as free as you are wild
It was rainin’ on a Monday
The day that Maggie died
She woke up and couldn’t use her legs
So I laid down by her side
She put her head on my hand
Like she’d done so many times
I told her she was a good dog
Then I told her goodbye….
I had a revelation
As the tractor dug a hole
I can tell you right now
That a dog has a soul
And I thought to myself
As we buried her on the hill
I never knew me a better dog
And I guess I never will
It’s hard for me to imagine a better dog than Chloe.
Martin Luther put it well: “The dog is the most faithful of animals and would be much esteemed were it not so common. Our Lord God has made His greatest gifts the commonest.” Indeed. Lord, forgive us for taking our four legged friends for granted.
I really do believe that pets – dogs in particular – are among God’s greatest gifts to us. In the beginning, God gave the animals to man, not just so he could rule over them, not just so he could harness their abilities to make his own life easier, but so he could enjoy them. A righteous man is kind to his animals (Proverbs 12:10). An even kinder God has given our animals to us. Chloe was God’s kindness to the Lusk family. One of my kids summed it up perfectly: she got everything a dog could want from us and we got everything from her a family could want from a dog.
I said at the beginning of this tribute, that all dog stories end in the same way, but that’s not quite true. And I don’t just mean that there are literary exceptions, stories where the dog doesn’t die (Savage Sam is my favorite of that subgenre – it’s a great read). What I mean is that I think we Christians have good reason to believe that our beloved pets, and perhaps all animals, will share in resurrection life with us. We will know them in the new heavens and new earth. We will be reunited with them. We will share eternal life and glory with them.
No one should ever confuse a pet with a human. We are the image of God; they are not. We have dominion over the creation, including animals. The modern tendency to elevate lower creatures to equality with humans, or substitute pets for children, is a form of wickedness and idolatry. But that being said, animals have a very important place in God’s creation – so important, we can expect them to be with us in the new creation. The world to come would be incomplete without them.
This means it is fully appropriate to love our pets, call them friends, and grieve their passing. The loss of a beloved pet is obviously not as tragic as losing a human, but it is still significant. Pets are a grace and when they are taken away from us, we understandably feel a profound sense of deprivation. But Scripture suggests that loss is not permanent. To make an argument for animal afterlife would require a book itself but three basic lines of argument stand out to me.
First, animals, like humans, are said to have “souls.” Humanity is distinguished from animal life in many ways, but possession of “nephesh” (the Hebrew word for “soul”) is not one of them. Before Adam becomes a living soul on Day 6 of the creation account, God’s world is already teeming with souls. Cattle, fish, and birds are among the “nephesh” of Genesis 1. The sacrificial system – which is predicated on a symbolic connection between men and animals – declares of the animals to be offered on the altar, “the soul of the flesh is in the blood” (Leviticus 17:11, 14). While the higher animals do no not share in the full range of human faculties, they certainly display many soulish qualities, such as playfulness, sadness, guilt, joy, and even love. For example, there is no doubt that dogs can be purposeful, that they can have aims and intentions, and can communicate in rudimentary ways. There is no questions dogs can have genuine relationships with other animals and certainly with humans. Animals can have some degree of reason (e.g., they can learn), they have feelings, and they have personalities. As C. S. Lewis argues in The Problem of Pain this is especially true for animals that have been tamed and domesticated by man. Animals do not make a culture of their own but they can become part of human cultures.
Elsewhere in Scripture we see that animals can be held responsible for killing humans (Exodus 21:28), animals that belong to human households are to share in Sabbath rest (Exodus 20:10), and animals can somehow participate in repentance (Jonah 3:7-8). Ecclesiastes 3:19 links the destiny of man to the destiny of animals — both have souls that survive the death of the body. We have reason to expect plant life will be in the new creation (Revelation 22:2), so why not animal life as well?
Second, there is evidence God’s plan of salvation includes animals. God included animals on Noah’s Ark so they would not be destroyed in the flood; indeed, the animals share in Noah’s baptism with water from above. The everlasting covenant God made with Noah encompasses “every living soul with all flesh” (Genesis 9:16) — in other words animals are under the gracious provisions of the Noahic covenant forever. Animals have a covenantal relationship with God. Building on this, there are New Testament texts that describe God’s work of cosmic redemption. Colossians 1 teaches all things were created in and by Christ, are held together and sustained by Christ, and are restored and reconciled to God in Christ (1:15-20). The most important text in this regard is Romans 8:19ff, where Paul links the destiny of the lower creation to humanity:
“For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”
The point Paul is making here is simple: the whole creation rides on man’s coattails, for better or for worse. Man’s fall plunged all of creation into death, decay, and corruption. Man’s redemption in Christ will rescue the creation from the curse. In the meantime, the lower creation – including animals – is yearning and groaning for our redemption because our redemption means their redemption. (I heard Chloe groan quite a bit as she got to be an older dog – it always made me think of this passage in Romans. She was yearning for cosmic redemption.)
Death as we know it – death as a curse – comes into the creation through man’s sin. In other words, animals suffer and die because they are under man’s rule. But now, under the rule of Humanity 2.0, humanity in Christ, the lower creation has a secure hope of glory. The same animals that have suffered the effects of Adam’s fall must share in the effects of Christ’s redemption. Their pain must turn to joy. They must share in the rebirth of the cosmos Paul described.
Finally, and most specifically, consider Paul’s teaching on the resurrection body in 1 Corinthians 15. Paul says flesh of various kinds is seed that will bring forth (resurrection) fruit. When various types of bodies return to the dust from which they came, they are being planted. That means there will be a harvest at the last day. While Paul tantalizes us with his teaching on the resurrection, he does not answer all our questions or spell out all the details. But at the very least, this passage assures us that sentient creatures will be raised up. 1 Corinthians 15:38-41 is a summation:
“But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory.”
There will be different kinds of bodies in the resurrection – not just human bodies, but a variety of bodies will be raised. While Paul goes on to focus mainly on human resurrection for obvious reasons, what he says seems to require the resurrection of animals. God created different kinds of flesh; God will resurrect/recreate different kinds of flesh. Various kinds of flesh are planted as seed; those various kinds of flesh will be part of the resurrection harvest at the last day.
Think about it. Doesn’t this make perfect sense? All animals are God’s pets. God created an earthly zoo in the beginning. Why would he create animals just to scrap them forever at the end of history? Given the love and kindness of God towards all he has made, given the explicit inclusion of animals in his covenant with Noah, given God’s cosmic redemptive plan fulfilled in Jesus’ resurrection, given the groaning of the lower creation for the completed salvation of humanity (creation’s captain), what could be more logical than the resurrection of animals?
Allow me to go one step further. To me, the real mysterious question is not, “Will our pets be with us in the new creation?”, but rather, “Will our pets be able to talk to us in the new creation?” It seems that before the fall at least some animals could talk. Adam and his wife do not seem to be at all surprised that a snake/dragon was talking to them in the Garden. Balaam’s donkey spoke in Numbers 24. In Revelation 5:13, “every creature which is in heaven and on earth” is heard by John saying, “Blessing, and honor, and glory, and be power be unto him that sits upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever.” That seems to suggest animals are not only present but capable of verbal praise. Why shouldn’t the resurrection bring with it powers of speech for animals? Just as we humans will be glorified with heretofore unimaginable powers in the resurrection, so I imagine glorified animals will have amazing powers as well. A friend of mine once said to me, “I cannot wait to get to heaven and ask God about my dog’s peculiar behavior when he meets other dogs.” I said, “Instead of asking God in heaven, why not just ask your dog himself in the new creation. I’m sure he’d love to tell you why he acted the way he did.”
This is how John Wesley described the restoration and glorification of animals in the new creation in a rather remarkable sermon:
“Will even the brute creation, always remain in this deplorable condition? God forbid that we should affirm this; yea, or even entertain such a thought! … The whole brute creation will then, undoubtedly be restored, not only to the vigour, strength, and swiftness which they had at their creation, but to a far higher degree of each than they ever enjoyed. They will be restored, not only to that measure of understanding which they had in paradise, but to a degree of it as much higher than that…. Whatever affections they had in the garden of God, will be restored with vast increase; being exalted and refined in a manner which we ourselves are not now able to comprehend….
And with their beauty their happiness will return…. In the new earth, as well as in the new heavens, there will be nothing to give pain, but everything that the wisdom and goodness of God can create to give happiness. As a recompense for what they [animals] once suffered … they shall enjoy happiness suited to their state, without alloy, without interruption, and without end…
What, if it should please the all-wise, all-gracious Creator to raise them higher in the scale of beings? What, if it should please him… to make them capable of knowing and loving and enjoying the Author of their being? …
Something better remains after death for these poor creatures… that these, likewise, shall one day be delivered from this bondage of corruption, and shall then receive an ample amends for all their present sufferings…”
There are other saints who have addressed this question of an animal afterlife. Randy Alcorn’s book Heaven devotes two fascinating chapters to it. C. S. Lewis had some fascinating speculations, as already noted. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia implies the inclusion of animals in the new creation. Joni Eareckson Tada expresses my own thoughts well:
“If God brings our pets back to life, it wouldn’t surprise me. It would be just like Him. It would be totally in keeping with His generous character…Exorbitant. Excessive. Extravagant in grace after grace. Of all the dazzling discoveries and ecstatic pleasures heaven will hold for us, the potential of seeing [my dog] Scrappy would be pure whimsy – utterly, joyfully, surprisingly superfluous…Heaven is going to be a place that will retract and reflect in as many ways as possible the goodness and joy of our great God, who delights in lavishing love on His children.”
Goodbye, Chloe, old friend. You were one of God’s finest creatures. We will see you in the world to come.
ADDENDUM:
I have preached on this topic a handful of times. One sermon in particular can be found here; supplemental notes are available here.
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