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Post by Die Fledermaus on Sept 6, 2008 20:50:06 GMT -4
Do Pets Go to Heaven? I am starting this sticky thread to answer that question. Many additional posts will follow. Of course if you do not believe humans do you cannot believe pets do. But for most people we have this thread. . . This came up in my life when a friend was killed and the priest at the Catholic church mass discussed whether or not she'd meet up with her beloved yellow lab who died fourteen months earlier, Jerry. The dog's ashes were in the casket with her, and the priest thought they would be together. It is all in this thread: RIGHT HEREThere was in fact a big portrait of Jerry on the altar all during the mass. So more in this thread as we get to it. For starters. . . PSALM 50:9-11 I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens, for every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird in the mountains, and the creatures of the field are mine. JOB 12:7-10 In His hand is the soul of every living thing and the breath of every human being! Does not God use pets to better teach us about love and loyalty? But Scripture is not adequate as it is something of an instruction manual for redemption and salvation. But animals have never "fallen" and are innocent beings. So the Bible has limitations even if it makes sure we know the creatures are God's and have souls. Although some may argue despite the passage above that they do not have souls. 1 Corinthians 7:12-14 >> To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord): If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. << So if love sanctifies a household, the love between a pet and a caregiver is also sanctifying. Besides that, for what I believe are the majority of humans, at least those in our society, heaven could not be heaven without animals. On a TV special I once saw a mature well-educated man, a veterinarian in India, in tears over a "noble" elephant who had died a natural death. He had survived severe wounds long previous from an angry bull elephant. The respect and love he showed transcended national boundaries. The question of animals, domesticated ones, who have not experienced love, is another issue, but perdition is reserved for those humans who made the wrong and bad decisions, not them. Pope John Paul II: >> "the animals possess a soul and men must love and feel solidarity with our smaller brethren", and that animals are "fruit of the creative action of the Holy Spirit and merit respect" and are "as near to God as men are". <<
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Post by Hamsters82 on Sept 6, 2008 23:28:14 GMT -4
The answer to your question is a definite yes!!! That's where all of my babies are.
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Post by pinky on Sept 7, 2008 0:12:30 GMT -4
Mine too. Critter, Pinky, and Fuzz. RIP them all.
And Pepi Cola III, my poodle as a child.
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Post by Die Fledermaus on Sept 8, 2008 19:03:05 GMT -4
I should add that two days ago was the fifth anniversary of the death of my most beloved hamster, Princess. I have two photos in my memorial gallery in the signature below. She, Leslie the GP, and Sam the Great the gerbil, well, . They were my favorites and are badly missed. (Apologies to all the other sweeties who were also loved).
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Post by ladyjosephine on Sept 8, 2008 19:13:39 GMT -4
No, I don't believe my pets go to heaven..at least not the heaven we all know from the christians etc. My pets aren't just dead and gone, I believe there is something but not a heaven created by 'god' as some people may believe in. Because if this god-person existed he wouldn't allow certain things, not even for the 'greater good' or whatever. Or he isn't that powerful as 'we humble people' believe. So yes, I believe my pets are somewhere, without pain and problems but not that they are in 'god's heaven'. My sister probably is with them, and taking care of them..at least I hope she is
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Post by Die Fledermaus on Sept 8, 2008 20:50:08 GMT -4
"If God is so good and omnipotent why does he allow bad things to happen?".
An age-old question debated over and over. You can surely find websites dedicated just to that question.
My answer is no one ever claimed God is micromanaging Earth. I can't even micromanage my mice or an ant farm. But they never never were given Free Will, and humans were, and the ability to choose good or bad. Their choice; direct intervention in everything by God would not be practicable, more for humans than for God. Direct intervention in everything would among many things eliminate the ability to learn from mistakes and grow, and make humans totally dependent, almost like my mice are for me, but worse as the humans would become consciously dependent and hedonistic instead of self-reliant with their own moral code.
So that argument is one of the weaker ones in that vein and theme, at least for me.
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Post by Hamsters82 on Sept 8, 2008 23:22:00 GMT -4
I will just add one statement. God allows people to make their own choices, it's not God's fault, but the people that make them.
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Post by Die Fledermaus on Sept 8, 2008 23:27:47 GMT -4
That's the whole point of Free Will!
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Post by ladyjosephine on Sept 9, 2008 4:00:46 GMT -4
Well than it's clear to me that the whole bible thing wasn't gods Idea than, because there are a lot of things in there you can't take your own decisions about. Maybe it's your own choice to be a christian or whatever, but when your a christian you can't make your own choices anymore..Yeah, what you have for supper but not about whom you can or can't love...If I wanted to be gay that's my own 'choice'(Well, no not exactly 'cause no-one chooses to be gay or hetero or whatever) and not his choice. And people who don't believe in god wouldn't go to heaven if that existed, they go to hell? Well..very loving and forgiving that god :S *not* But I don't really care..I don't have to believe in any religion to believe there's something where my pets are besides in their grave. Maybe god does exist, well good for him, I don't care because I really don't want anything to do with the guy..or woman
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Post by Die Fledermaus on Sept 9, 2008 18:35:02 GMT -4
>> t when your a christian you can't make your own choices anymore << >> cause no-one chooses to be gay or hetero or whatever << Kate knows of my friend from many years ago, Ali, the lesbian. We had everything in common and did much together. When she went to college, Mount Holyoke, an Ivy League school in Msssachusetts, she was "encouraged" to join the lesbian group there, and did. That was a dozen females. Many years later she told me she was the ONLY one NOT currently having a relationship. . . with a man! (Just my luck! haha.). So, some do and some don't, and those do don't have to practice in promiscuous ways. Of course I started this thread in this manner: "Of course if you do not believe humans do you cannot believe pets do. But for most people we have this thread. . .". And there you go!
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Post by adoptaratcanada on Oct 29, 2008 0:57:47 GMT -4
I'm a fence sitter on the afterlife, and full of contradictions ;D I thought some might find this interview of interest. I only caught the very end of this interview, so can't vouch for all of it. "Suleiman is a worlds events psychic, spiritual receiver and lover of animals and he explores the issue of whether animals have souls." He said some very touching things about our animal friends on the heavenly plane before we come down to earth. Just so you know, the radio station is run almost entirely by volunteers and not-so-much-techies. Glitches are not uncommon. However, I'm happy to put up with the occasional hiccup because they put out a good message. Karl, the main host is very endearing He came out to one of the rat shows here a couple of years ago, and has interviewed several local rodent people. "Animal Voices" archive.animalvoices.org/2008-10-24.MP3
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Post by adoptaratcanada on Oct 29, 2008 1:28:25 GMT -4
The was a t-shirt I bought once because it had a wonderful quote on it, from the bible. I couldn't find it because I had it wrong in my memory, but my web search took me to this page: "Animal Gospel" LINK HEREwhich is full of wonderful quotes from religious personalities (mostly Catholics) although I won't put up with the slams against the Pagans..least not modern-day ones!, and also quotes from the bible. In my preview the link wouldn't show up entirely clickable. I used the HTML version from the Google search because the original one was a site that downloaded. You might have to copy and paste the above link. If you want the URL for the original page, it's the "bolded" part. The quote I was looking for was this one: "Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees.” ~~Revelation 7:3 and as a vegetarian, I liked this one: "And God said, >>Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.<<” ~~Genesis 1:29 If you search for animals in heaven, you'll find lots of really lovely sites. There are lots of good biblical quotes on this site: www.ourchurch.com/member/w/w_lasalle/I have a garden statue from a hardware store (of all places!) that is St. Francis. It sits inside, by the houseplants at my back window. "Not to hurt our humble brethren [the animals] is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission: to be of service to them whenever they require it." ~~ St. Francis of Assisi.
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Post by Die Fledermaus on Oct 29, 2008 9:29:10 GMT -4
I corrected your link above.
I will look over the links when I have time.
Robin (pinky) has an image of St Francis feeding birds on her wall.
I posted this here on RR 1/20/07:
>> St Francis IS the patron saint of animals.
Saint Antonio is the patron saint of domestic animals.
So I guess he is sort of a notch below Francis, but isn't everyone?! <<
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tnh
Rodent Retreat Newbie
Posts: 19
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Post by tnh on Jan 9, 2009 0:49:32 GMT -4
If not to God, then to whom do mice cry out when they're caught in glue traps? They're way down the food chain. Anything big enough to help them is going to eat them. Nevertheless, they cry out for help. A friend of mine inherited a German Shepherd from a neighbor who died. The man had lived alone, except for this dog, which he took hunting with him. One day the man died. When the local first responders broke into his house some while later, they found his body still sitting in his easy chair. Carefully laid out in a semicircle on the floor in front of him were all the dog's toys. This wasn't a stupid dog. It also wasn't a dog who'd never seen death -- not after all those hunting and camping expeditions. Yet he still brought all his toys, one by one, and laid them down in an invitation to come play ... you know, just in case. An animal that's capable of that much wishful thinking in the face of undeniable reality must surely have a soul. I believe that Adam and Eve must have had one or more dogs in Eden, because all the animals were there; but I also believe that the dogs shared their fallen state. My lesser argument is this: can you imagine the dogs letting Adam and Eve leave without them? Never happen. My greater argument: in the Fall, Adam and Eve acquired a sense of good and evil. Now, the rest of the animals don't have that. They exist in an unfallen state. But have you ever come home to a dog that knows it's screwed up big time? For example: www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDMwO6axHag. Never tell me that dogs don't have a sense of sin. I've known people to say that dogs don't really understand that they've done wrong; all they know is that you're not happy with them. But that's not true. They're perfectly capable of ignoring your displeasure if they don't agree with your judgement. Like, if dogs could talk, they'd be saying "LOOK AT THIS ROTTING COW'S HEAD I FOUND! GREAT, HUH? CAN'T BELIEVE SOMEONE THREW IT AWAY!" No amount of disapproval will put a dent in that. They'll be saying exactly the same thing the third time they drag the cow head home, in spite of all the work you've put into dumping it at increasingly distant sites. On the other hand, a dog that's knocked over the Christmas tree already looks guilty when you walk in the door. So, dogs: fallen. And that which is fallen must also be capable of being redeemed. Now consider the hamster. If their lives don't matter, why did God give every one of them a different personality? I had to take my hamster to the vet today. He didn't enjoy it, and he sure didn't understand it. I nevertheless did it for his own good, because I love him and care for him. But how can you convey that in the tiny vocabulary of human/hamster interactions? There are so few words: I hold him and stroke him. I give him a piece of apple. I keep my hand on his carrier while we travel, so he'll know I'm there. I go with him into the examination room. When we come home again, I feed him acidophilus, tuck him in with extra bedding fluff to keep him warm, and work all afternoon at a table next to his cage so I can listen for changes. I hope it's enough. What he knows about me is that I almost always catch him in midair when he walks off the edge. I fill his food dish, give him snacks, let him run around in his ball. When he has his midafternoon nightmares and cries out in his sleep, I'm the one who gently wakes him up. He sniffs my fingers, decides he's back in the right universe, and goes straight back to sleep. At those times, too, I hope it's enough. There's such a gulf of understanding, such a difference of scale. How can there be evil in a world created by a good God? We can't know. If God is as advertised, he's so far beyond us that his ways and means must sometimes be beyond our comprehension. The same answer belongs to textual problems in the Bible: God is very great; but our language, being no bigger than we are, is incapable of holding all that God would say. The Bible is an approximation, scaled to our understanding. God tells us we're precious to him, and that he works for our good. He hopes we'll return his affection. He also hopes we won't chew through the appliance cords. We love, and are loved; fall, and are redeemed. We hope for the survival of all that's unique about us. Because I have that hope for myself, I must extend it to others. And when I consider my hamster, I cannot believe that in all of God's lovingly individuated creation, we're the only part worth saving.
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Post by Die Fledermaus on Jan 9, 2009 1:16:07 GMT -4
That was really beautiful! >> why did God give every one of them a different personality? << I had brother and sisters hamsters from the same litter - all had different personalities. >> I cannot believe that in all of God's lovingly individuated creation, we're the only part worth saving. << So nicely said.
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