Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 190 ｜ We're Too Obsessed with Our Pets

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relene. Well, happy Monday. Did everyone have a great weekend? I hope so.

00:00:06.000 And you're looking forward to Thanksgiving. Maybe you're not looking forward to Thanksgiving.

00:00:09.480 Maybe you hate Thanksgiving. Maybe you don't have a good relationship with your family.

00:00:14.280 And if so, I am thinking about you this holiday because I do know the holidays can be stressful,

00:00:19.420 especially if you're going through a hard time. Maybe you lost someone that you love and this is,

00:00:23.940 these are the first holidays that you are going through and you are not looking forward to it.

00:00:28.800 And I'm with you. I don't want to pretend like holidays are always this easy, fun thing for

00:00:33.500 everyone because that's not always the case. There could be conflict. There could be sadness.

00:00:37.620 There could be all kinds of things going on. But I want you to know that I'm thinking about you

00:00:42.100 and that I really will be. I don't just say this in kind of like a trite way, just to say,

00:00:46.380 I really will be praying for you. I'll be praying for all the people that are dealing with any kind

00:00:49.540 of conflict or chaos or sadness or loss or anything like that this Thanksgiving. I hope that all of you

00:00:55.580 are looking forward to it. I hope that all of you are excited about it and all of you are going

00:00:58.720 to enjoy it. But for any of you, even the one person out there who is not looking forward to it,

00:01:03.580 I am thinking about you and I'm sorry. Know that it's over quickly. All of this stuff is difficult

00:01:11.320 as it may be this year. It's all over quickly. And then you've got a new year. And that's the

00:01:15.880 beautiful thing about seasons, about time that God has graciously given us is that when difficult

00:01:21.380 things happen, there can be joy in the morning. There can be joy in the new season. There can be a

00:01:26.100 renewal and we should all be very thankful for that. I do hope that we can all find at least

00:01:30.880 one thing that we are thankful for this Thanksgiving. Even if you don't have any physical

00:01:34.940 things to be thankful for, we can all thank the Lord for sending his son Jesus to die for us. So

00:01:39.280 that's the ultimate, that's the ultimate thing that we can be thankful for. Okay. That's not what

00:01:44.520 we're going to talk about today. We are going to talk about a touchy subject, but you know,

00:01:49.280 that's what we do on this podcast. We talk about touchy subjects. We talk about things that make

00:01:54.060 people mad. There's probably been at least one episode in the history of Relatable that has made

00:01:58.640 you angry at one point. And that's okay. That's what we do. We talk about the controversial stuff

00:02:03.680 because not enough people talk about it, especially from a biblical perspective. There are too many

00:02:08.200 people that are scared to talk about the controversial things. And so Christians end up 1.00

00:02:13.400 making their decisions on what to think about these things by listening to celebrities that have no

00:02:18.540 biblical worldview at all. And so we try to tackle the stuff that I know that all of us are curious

00:02:23.560 about, and all of us are wondering what the Bible has to say about them. And today it's animals and

00:02:28.180 the obsession that we have with dogs and pets and all of that. And we are going to talk about what the

00:02:34.640 Bible has to say about it. I am going to try my best to build a case biblically that it is not 1.00

00:02:40.140 biblical, that biblically mighty Christians should not be overly obsessed with animals. And we will talk

00:02:46.280 about what that looks like, why we have that obsession and how we should view animals from a biblical

00:02:50.740 perspective. Um, I do want to give a little bit of a premise before we get into this, because like I

00:02:55.860 said, this is a touchy episode, but we talk about touchy topics on relatable. That's part of why it's

00:03:01.600 called relatable because I try to answer the questions that a lot of us have, but maybe are

00:03:06.460 afraid to ask, or we just don't even know how to address. That's why I take your guys's suggestions

00:03:11.520 so much because I care about the things that you're thinking, the things that you're concerned about,

00:03:16.040 the things that you see in the world. And you're like, I just don't know how to fit this into a

00:03:19.100 biblical worldview. I try my best from God's perspective, from a biblical perspective to do that.

00:03:24.320 Do I get it wrong? Absolutely. Are there things that I don't know about a million bajillion things

00:03:29.580 that I don't know, but we are learning together and we try our best to fit everything, um, that's

00:03:36.040 going on in the world that we have to make sense of into, uh, God's word, or we let God's word inform

00:03:41.660 the things that we think. Um, now there are going to be things in all of this, in the vast, in the vast

00:03:47.160 plethora of things that there are to talk about. There are going to be things that you disagree with

00:03:51.940 me on. Like I said, uh, I've probably said something or many things that you disagree,

00:03:57.300 uh, on with me and that's okay. Every podcast that I love or commentator that I listened to

00:04:02.580 has said at least one thing that I don't like that I, I, maybe I didn't like how they said it.

00:04:07.240 Maybe I didn't like what they said. Maybe I vehemently disagree. I can think of people in my head

00:04:11.980 right now that I love that I'm a huge fan of that. I look to for insight in their perspective

00:04:16.880 for wisdom, knowledge, all of that, who have said things that actually really offend me that

00:04:22.060 legitimately offend me. And then I don't like, but that's okay. I have learned to sift through those

00:04:27.140 things and to say, okay, I didn't like that. They said that one thing I didn't like that. They, um,

00:04:31.940 that they disagree with me there. They said something that I don't agree with, but that's okay. I take the

00:04:36.200 insight where I can. Here's what we need to be careful about, especially with something like this. And the

00:04:40.740 reason why I'm saying this is because I got this reaction when I talked about, uh, this perspective

00:04:45.860 on animals on Instagram the other day, we have to be careful that when someone says something that

00:04:50.740 you disagree with to not characterize that disagreement as an attack on what you believe.

00:04:56.160 It seems to me like in this day and age, there is a glorification of agnosticism. There is a glorification

00:05:02.680 of not knowing. So people want other people to be content with moral relativism. They want other

00:05:10.020 people to be content with saying, you know, I don't really know about this XYZ controversial 0.99

00:05:16.420 subject, whatever makes you happy. You do you. That's what we're supposed to think. Unless we're of course

00:05:22.020 on the progressive side of the aisle, unless we're liberals, then we're allowed to be very outspoken

00:05:26.020 and very dogmatic about what we believe. But if it's anything outside of that, we're supposed to just

00:05:30.220 pretend like we don't really know, like we don't really care, whatever makes people feel good. And that's

00:05:35.100 fine. But when someone speaks up and says, actually, absolute truth exists, actually God has something

00:05:40.300 to say about that. Actually God cares about this. And here's what the Bible says. Then all heck breaks

00:05:46.260 loose. And we hear people saying that you're a bigot, you're self-righteous, you're a legalist,

00:05:51.680 you are a Pharisee. You're trying to push your views on me. I get that a lot. People who come to my

00:05:57.100 Instagram page, they take the time to listen to one of my five minute IGTV videos. And they say,

00:06:03.420 why are you pushing your views on me? Well, okay, you came to my page. I have the right to say what

00:06:09.760 I want to say. You have the right to not listen. But it seems to me, so I get this a lot, not just

00:06:15.140 in relation to this animal topic, which I have learned in the past few days is insanely controversial.

00:06:21.040 I've learned that you will do better saying you will get less pushback saying it's totally fine to

00:06:27.400 kick toddlers in the head whenever you want to than saying, hey, humans are actually more important

00:06:32.640 than animals, which is the case that we're going to make today. People will freak out. They will lose 0.95

00:06:38.640 their minds. And what I've learned, not just in accordance to this, not just in relation to this,

00:06:43.540 but just in general, is that there seems to be, especially it seems among teenagers, teens,

00:06:49.900 teen girls who come to my page and say like, I don't like what you have to say. There's also this

00:06:55.280 other mentality, this other layer of that, that I see so often in these comments from these

00:06:59.380 young women coming to my page. You don't like what I have to say is it's not right that you're 1.00

00:07:04.080 saying this. You don't have a right to say this. You're indoctrinating people. You shouldn't be

00:07:08.360 allowed to say this. You shouldn't be allowed to force your views on people. To me, that is another

00:07:14.020 level of intolerance that we're seeing from young people, that they have it backwards. They think that

00:07:19.880 the First Amendment protects their right not to be offended rather than my right or anyone's right to

00:07:25.620 free speech or religious exercise. There is definitely a mentality among young people that

00:07:31.240 their feelings take priority above anything else. Someone actually commented, a young woman,

00:07:36.460 teenager, by the looks of it, commented on my hearing testimony about abortion that I posted

00:07:44.060 last week and started out her long diatribe by saying, I am honestly so offended by this speech.

00:07:50.520 You should go back and listen to my speech. It's only offensive if you don't agree with what I have to

00:07:54.960 say. There's nothing that is ad hominem about it. There are no personal attacks. There's really not

00:08:00.240 an opinion in it either. It is really just, okay, here are the facts of what an abortion is. Here is

00:08:06.040 the logic behind why abortion is wrong. And you, of course, can disagree with that. But she starts out 0.82

00:08:10.460 by saying that I am highly offended by the speech and then goes on to give her argument for why abortion

00:08:15.740 is okay, which is that embryos aren't human, that fetuses aren't human, which, of course,

00:08:20.700 is completely nonsensical. So we cannot have conversations about controversial topics,

00:08:26.300 which we should have conversations about controversial topics, but we're not going to

00:08:30.140 be able to do that if society, if we are unable as individuals to resist hysteria when someone says

00:08:39.040 something that we don't agree with. It's just not going to work. We're not going to be able to live

00:08:43.360 in a free republic if we can't discuss issues without one side growing truly hysterical and so

00:08:50.340 emotional to the point to where they're not making logical or scientific sense anymore.

00:08:55.100 We can't have conversations. We can't get anything done. And that leads to tyranny. Well, first,

00:08:59.640 it leads to anarchy and anarchy then leads to tyranny, which, of course, we believe is the direction that

00:09:04.700 the left is going. So when I talk about something, this is not an agnostic podcast. Okay, I'm just

00:09:11.780 telling you right now. It's not an agnostic podcast. We don't believe in moral relativism on this

00:09:15.740 podcast. We believe that there is absolute truth in every single episode that we do is in pursuit

00:09:19.860 of that truth. Like I said, we get it wrong. We definitely get it wrong. Even though my effort

00:09:24.260 and my aim is to bring everything back to God's word and to have God's word inform everything I do,

00:09:28.660 I make mistakes. I am totally fallible. And when I do get it wrong, my hope is that I can be humble,

00:09:35.300 correct my wrongs, correct my mistakes, and take correction and instruction from you guys.

00:09:39.380 But we have to be able to hear something that we disagree with or that we don't like

00:09:44.760 without accusing the other side or accusing me in this case of attacking you or attacking your

00:09:50.880 position. There are all kinds of people who listen to this podcast who reach out to me on a regular

00:09:56.180 basis and say, I don't have the same view as you, but I appreciate your podcast. I appreciate your

00:10:01.100 views. I have atheists that listen to this podcast. I have liberals that listen to this podcast. I've got

00:10:04.920 Catholics. I'm a Protestant. I've got Catholics that listen to this podcast. I've got Mormons that listen to

00:10:08.880 this podcast. I have Muslims, Jewish people that listen to this podcast. And I have had people from

00:10:13.300 all of those groups reach out to me and say, I disagree with you on XYZ, but I like hearing your

00:10:17.760 perspective. I appreciate you guys so much. What I do not appreciate is when I say something and

00:10:24.020 someone leaves a review that says, because you said what you believe as a Protestant or whatever,

00:10:29.960 you're attacking Catholicism. Or because you said what you believe as a conservative,

00:10:33.040 you're attacking progressivism, which yes, I have attacked progressivism, not progressives,

00:10:37.960 but progressivism. But you cannot just say just because someone is building a case that you don't

00:10:42.560 like, they are attacking you. You can be offended by all that you want to, but please allow yourself

00:10:49.420 to, I do the same thing, open yourself up to valuable perspectives, discard the things that you

00:10:54.800 don't. But I actually had someone leave a review the other day that said, I think I'm too sensitive

00:10:59.180 for this podcast. That might be true. This is, like I said, it's not an agnostic podcast. It's

00:11:04.060 not a morally relative podcast. It's not a podcast that's going to, on most things, on the important

00:11:08.880 things, say, oh, it doesn't matter. You do, you think whatever you want to. On some things, yes,

00:11:13.280 there's room for subjectivism. And I think Christians in good faith can discuss and debate almost all of

00:11:18.240 the issues that we talk about. But we are in pursuit of truth. We believe absolute truth exists. And we

00:11:23.280 believe that God is the transcendent moral lawgiver from which we get morality and truth.

00:11:28.340 Okay, we're going to talk about animals. Let's go ahead and get into all of that. Since I have

00:11:33.740 given you a large premise, because I know, I have learned, apparently, that this is a very

00:11:39.480 controversial topic. You can email me and tell me all you want about what you don't like about this

00:11:45.500 episode. But I think, I think that you are going to appreciate at least some of the perspective that

00:11:51.560 I give, or at least what God's word gives. Because if we are Christians, that is where we land. So

00:11:56.600 let me first say, I love animals. I do. I love animals. I love my pets. I love other people's

00:12:03.800 pets. I love your pets, probably, unless you have an iguana. I don't know. I might like your iguana.

00:12:09.000 I'm not sure I'm going to love your iguana, just to be honest. I love dogs. I love cats. I love

00:12:14.340 bunnies. I love horses. I love dolphins. I like gorillas. I like elephants. I love elephants.

00:12:20.020 I love animal videos. I love animal pictures. I love we rate dogs. I like doggos doing things.

00:12:28.500 I like all the Instagram dog accounts. I follow the kitten lady. I like all of that kind of stuff.

00:12:33.820 Okay. I like stories about animals. I want to hear about your animal. I want you to send me pictures

00:12:38.000 of your animal. I love animals. Okay. So let me just tell you that straight up. But I know,

00:12:45.320 and have always known that animals are not people. And therefore, because they're not people,

00:12:51.620 they are not as valuable as people are. We love our pets. But when our daughter was born,

00:12:56.700 they were relegated to second fiddle. They still get plenty of care. They still get plenty of

00:13:01.760 affection and attention. They kind of keep each other company. But they don't occupy our affection

00:13:06.820 and time the way that we used to. And that's okay. That is how it is supposed to be. That's a good

00:13:11.800 thing. Our love for them doesn't even come within light years of our love for our daughter. And that

00:13:17.420 is exactly how God means it to be. And yet culture seems to be headed in the opposite direction and

00:13:24.940 instead prioritizes animals, not just the same as people, but even higher than people in some cases.

00:13:30.620 And that's just, that's not just me saying this. A vice ran an article last year titled why millennials

00:13:36.040 are so obsessed with dogs. I mean, that's just true. We are obsessed with dogs. I mean,

00:13:40.380 you can look at social media. There's a dog park on every corner. Millennials are obsessed with dogs 0.94

00:13:44.520 and we're getting married and having kids later and later. The article discusses how we have taken

00:13:48.640 animal obsession to the next level. I mean, man's best friend has been around for a long time,

00:13:52.800 but millennials, we just, we have turned up the notch of animal obsession. So the article says this,

00:13:58.980 none of my friends in their late twenties talk openly about the hopes of having a baby. Rather,

00:14:04.140 we flinch when we see a child walking around out in public on its hind legs. I mean,

00:14:08.640 this is just terrible. Um, it's a fluffy friend. We want one that'll love us, not drain our minimum

00:14:14.340 finances and not get in the way too much. Oh, that's just that alone just makes my blood boil,

00:14:20.540 but we won't get into that right this second. We'll get into that in a second. Um, so anthropomorphism,

00:14:25.200 the attribution of human characteristics to animals has become the new norm. Our dogs and cats are,

00:14:32.360 are so-called babies. There are two States, Illinois and Alaska. They are the first to consider

00:14:36.780 the wellbeing of animals and custody battles. So that gives them rights as individuals. That's

00:14:42.640 what they're called individuals rather than property. Uh, Tony Ellison is a senior staff

00:14:47.060 attorney at the animal legal defense fund. And he told the journal, the new Republic that

00:14:52.040 recognizing animals as persons entitled to rights has graduated from quote, a very fringe area of the

00:14:57.680 law to very mainstream. Just in the last five years, hasn't everything become crazy in the last

00:15:02.240 five years. Um, in her 2018 book, fellow creatures, there is a Harvard or Harvard philosophy professor,

00:15:09.460 Christine course guard, who says, uh, the animals are just as important as people. Therefore they

00:15:14.180 are worthy of many of the same protections under the laws that we have. Uh, this theory has actually

00:15:19.880 become a full fledged reality for at least one animal, Sandra, the orangutan, who was given the

00:15:26.160 status of a non-human person by Argentinian judge Alina Liberatore in 2015. That is true. You can look 1.00

00:15:33.580 it up and she now resides in Florida and 2013, uh, the peer review journal Anthro Zeus published a

00:15:40.180 study by Richard Topolsky. You guys have probably seen this question. It's been posed by PragerU plenty

00:15:45.480 of times. Um, he is a professor at Georgia Regents university. He asked about 500 respondents to

00:15:51.520 question. If a bus were bearing down on a dog and a person, and you could only save one, who would you

00:15:56.460 save? A full 40% of respondents, 40% said that depending on how well they knew the person, they

00:16:04.020 would save the dog. So if it was a stranger, they would definitely save the dog. I think it was, I

00:16:08.940 don't know if it was their dog or a dog, but 40% of respondents said that depending on how well they

00:16:13.400 knew the person, they would save the dog. That was 2013. So that was six years ago. My guess is that

00:16:19.960 number would be a lot higher today. I would say that that number is well over half today.

00:16:24.080 Um, the animals have become the center of people's lives. Social media accounts galore. Some of them

00:16:28.720 I named and follow myself, um, are dedicated to videos of our pets. Google, if you Google the phrase,

00:16:34.780 uh, humans don't deserve dogs, you will find a dozen articles and YouTube videos explaining why

00:16:40.020 our animals, why our pets are better than we are and more important than we are. Uh, we have seen laws

00:16:45.560 in the United States reflect this in 2019, New York passed a law that criminalized the declawing

00:16:51.060 of kittens, which I don't think we should declaw cats, but just let me finish. Um, and legalized

00:16:56.780 abortion through nine months. So the same year that they passed a law declawing kittens, they also

00:17:02.100 passed a law legalizing abortion through nine months. Um, in the same year, the United States or this

00:17:08.840 year, the United States made animal cruelty, a federal crime, uh, yet failed to pass a bill to protect

00:17:14.740 babies who survive abortions. We're not even talking about babies inside the womb. Uh, let's first think

00:17:20.260 of this from a practical perspective. We'll talk about the moral and the biblical perspective.

00:17:25.280 Let's look at this from a practical perspective before we get into, uh, the other part of the

00:17:30.100 analysis of what I consider this, uh, degeneracy. Uh, if humans are considered as important or more

00:17:37.200 important as humans to the point of granting them personhood under the law, to the point of referring to

00:17:43.320 them or thinking of them as individuals, thereby granting them the legal rights applicable to

00:17:48.580 people, what is stopping someone from marrying their dog? And people will say, Oh, that's a slippery

00:17:54.460 slope. Ha ha ha. But can you tell them, can you give me a logical basis for why, if we consider

00:17:59.620 animals, people under the law, why someone wouldn't be able to marry their dog? Certainly you're not going

00:18:06.140 to hear any arguments from the people who believe that there are really no sexual ethics at all.

00:18:10.420 Um, if humans are just animals, as animal rights activists say, there are a lot of people who make

00:18:16.240 that statement and vegans often say that too. Uh, what really is your logical argument for saying

00:18:21.960 that people can't have a romantic relationship with their animal? Uh, because there's also the

00:18:26.780 argument from the same group that animals basically have all of the same abilities and capabilities and

00:18:31.540 functions that humans do. They're just nicer than humans. If all of this is truly the case,

00:18:36.560 what is going to logically or legally stop people from entering into unholy matrimony with their 0.79

00:18:42.640 gerbil? That's what I want to know. Um, I posed this question to someone who was messaging me on

00:18:47.340 Instagram. They were offended by me saying that people are more important than animals on Instagram,

00:18:51.740 which I did last week. And they were saying that this is wrong and the animals are people are people

00:18:57.600 or animals rather. And I said, okay, why can't an animal and a person get married? Why can't they be in a

00:19:04.200 romantic relationship? They didn't have a response to that. They said, that's just weird. That's not

00:19:08.900 normal. Well, that's not, that's not actually an argument. There are lots of things that weren't

00:19:13.300 normal 10 years ago. We weren't even talking about transgenderism two years ago. And there are things

00:19:18.300 that are considered normal now. So it's not normal really doesn't argue against the logic that inevitably

00:19:25.560 seems to be coming together from considering animals as persons or as individuals. There's a kitten

00:19:32.680 rescuer that I follow. She sells t-shirts that say love knows no species. And I know she doesn't mean

00:19:37.980 it in a weird way, but it did strike me as soon as I saw it as strange. I thought, is this the new

00:19:43.480 love is love? Actually, this is why love is love has always been such a stupid phrase. Love is not 1.00

00:19:49.800 love. There are lots of different kinds of love that should not be considered love. This should be

00:19:53.820 considered perversion. A 50 year old and a 10 year old who say that they're in love, that shouldn't be

00:19:59.440 considered love. That should be considered wrong. Love has a definition. And as we Christians believe,

00:20:05.880 it is best defined by the embodiment of love, the creator of love, the arbiter of what love is and

00:20:10.340 what love isn't, which is God himself. And we'll get into more of that in a second. So that's one

00:20:15.400 practical outcome of elevating animals to the point of personhood. Another is how it affects humans.

00:20:20.780 If animals are individuals and even legally people, hunting is considered murder. Is someone going to get

00:20:26.980 the death penalty or go to life in prison for killing an animal, for hunting an elk? Milking cows would

00:20:32.320 be considered an assault. Are we going to have to get consent from our animals to be able to scratch

00:20:38.140 their belly? I mean, I wouldn't want someone to come up to me and scratch my belly because I'm a human

00:20:42.080 being. If we consider them people, what's our what's our legal relationship with them now? Honestly, a lot of

00:20:49.280 animal rights activists would be totally fine with seeing eating animals or killing animals as assault

00:20:54.440 and murder. But it has serious implications for how we live and what we eat. And these are serious

00:21:00.500 negative implications because people around the world actually need meat to survive no matter what

00:21:05.140 a vegan activist tells you. Also, we have to kill animals in order to feed certain animals like cats

00:21:10.500 and dogs. So my question is, how would all of that work out? There are a lot of questions that come

00:21:15.740 with ascribing personhood and individuality to animals. And on a practical level, regarding animals as

00:21:24.280 people is completely nonsensical. It doesn't make any sense. There are too many conundrums. There are

00:21:30.980 too many contradictions. There is there are too many problems with that. There is a reason why the

00:21:36.500 species have been separate and why we care for them. And while you're why you're never going to

00:21:40.780 listen to a podcast of a dog talking to you about whether or not we ascribe personhood to people

00:21:47.080 like or to humans, there's a reason for that. There's a difference. Now, let's talk about this on a

00:21:52.700 biblical level. The way we obsess over animals today is a symptom of godlessness, is a symptom

00:21:59.400 of godlessness. Let me explain. Christians know something that the secular world does not, that 1.00

00:22:05.900 human beings and human beings alone, according to Genesis, are made in God's image. That means humans

00:22:12.760 alone have a soul. That means humans alone live forever. That means always in all cases, a human is

00:22:19.020 more valuable than an animal because they are an image bearer of God. Even a person with physical

00:22:24.600 disabilities, mental disabilities, or a human in a coma, or a human seconds after conception has more

00:22:30.900 inherent worth than the winningest racehorse in the world, strictly because they were made in the image

00:22:38.620 of God. God gave Adam the responsibility of naming the animals, stewarding the earth. Animals were made

00:22:44.800 by God for us, not the other way around. So as Christians, we can discuss and debate the virtue

00:22:52.260 of veganism. We can talk about how to best care for the earth and how to care for animals, which is

00:22:56.720 something that we should be doing. We can talk about the just punishment for those who abuse animals,

00:23:02.320 but we cannot make the mistake of elevating non-humans to the place of image bearers. Jesus uses animals as a 0.53

00:23:09.660 parallel to humans and multiple parallels or multiple parables to emphasize the higher value

00:23:15.880 that people have than animals. Matthew 12, 11 through 12 says this. He said to them, which one of you who

00:23:21.820 has a sheep, if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out? Of how much

00:23:27.660 more value is a man than a sheep? Now, that's not the point of this. He's actually talking about the

00:23:32.940 Sabbath and what we can do on the Sabbath. But he makes the point of how much more value is a man

00:23:40.160 than sheep. This is the God of the universe, the God who created us, Jesus himself saying this.

00:23:45.520 In Matthew 6, 26, he says, look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into

00:23:50.820 barns. And yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Are you not

00:23:58.720 human being of more value than they? Humans have more value to God than animals do? This is clear 0.89

00:24:07.000 throughout the biblical narrative. God made us in his image. God's plan of redemption through Christ

00:24:12.200 saves us, not animals. The fact that so many people, Christians included, get this wrong,

00:24:18.720 shows how important it is to ensure that every aspect of our worldview is based on God,

00:24:24.460 the giver of truth, the creator of the universe, the maker of order. It shows how important it is

00:24:31.620 for us to make sure that we are getting our wisdom, our knowledge in how we view every subject from the

00:24:37.340 word of God. If there is one word that describes our current age, it is this, disordered. It is

00:24:46.560 disordered. People's view of sex is disordered. People's view of sexuality is disordered. People's view of

00:24:52.800 gender is disordered. People's view of life in the womb is disordered. People's view of animals is 1.00

00:24:58.160 disordered. People's view of the family and children is disordered. How the majority of people view the

00:25:03.640 world today is disordered. It is chaos. It is backwards. It doesn't make any illogical sense.

00:25:09.320 And everything, every single thing that we see wrong in our society today is a symptom of ignoring the

00:25:15.480 fact that God created the world. The most cataclysmic worldview-defining verse in the Bible is

00:25:22.580 this. Genesis 1.1. God created the heavens and the earth. Because if God created the heavens and the

00:25:31.020 earth, then he alone has the authority to say what is and what isn't. He alone has the authority to

00:25:37.860 assign value, to give roles to humans as a whole, to give roles to men and women specifically, to animals,

00:25:44.460 to plants, to the sky, to all of creation. He is also then the author of salvation. He is over all of it,

00:25:52.400 all of it is his jurisdiction. He created all of it. He is in charge. He sustains all of it with the

00:25:59.380 power of his word. Nothing exists without God's active permission. God is in charge of it all.

00:26:06.680 He defines and assigns and we are to fulfill and obey. When we're talking about the definition of

00:26:13.260 marriage, we're talking about the definition of gender, the differences between men and women,

00:26:17.780 how government should function, how human beings relate to one another, how we should treat children,

00:26:22.840 the role of the family and of parents. We look to God because he created these things.

00:26:28.300 Our over-obsession with animals is another symptom of a disordered worldview that is based not on the

00:26:34.960 will of the God of scripture, but of the feelings of the God of self. Our fixation on pets,

00:26:41.860 especially involuntary replacement of human relationships, is selfish. Saving your dog

00:26:49.200 over a human stranger is a self-serving choice, not a compassionate one. The death of that stranger

00:26:55.960 likely affects hundreds of people. So her husband, her children, her parents, her co-workers,

00:27:01.260 her siblings, her church, her friends. The death of your dog affects you and maybe a few other people.

00:27:07.560 While sad, it is sad. I will cry when my dog dies. While that is sad, you'll be able to get another

00:27:15.120 dog. Her kids, that stranger's kids, will not get their mom back. It is not a coincidence, in my

00:27:21.840 opinion, that our infatuation, over-infatuation with animals seems to have grown at the same time

00:27:27.680 that this whole self-love epidemic has taken center stage. This big reason why we choose pets over

00:27:34.240 people is because pets are easier, both physically and emotionally, than people are. Anyone who says

00:27:39.420 that they're not has not had children. Yes, they require a certain level of responsibility, a certain

00:27:44.720 level of money and care, of course, and it's okay to be responsible for them, but not nearly as much

00:27:51.980 as a child or even a friend or a significant other. We don't have to worry about betrayal or rejection

00:27:58.920 or judgment or being pressured to go out when we want to stay in. In exchange for just a tiny bit of effort

00:28:05.180 and commitment on our end to our pets, they give us unindeed loyalty, unindeed love, a friend to watch

00:28:11.260 Netflix next to. We get the good end of the deal. We will never have to give up any bad habits for our

00:28:18.080 dogs. We will never have to examine our vices for our cats. We can be almost as self-centered as we want

00:28:24.820 to be and our pets will love us just the same. Why? Because they don't know how not to. They love

00:28:30.240 the person who feeds them. They love the person who pets them. They're not interested in our

00:28:34.420 personalities or our hobbies or our dreams or our deepest desires. They know us only instinctively.

00:28:40.760 In this is both their charm, the reason why we love them and why they're so awesome, but it's also

00:28:46.800 their inherent inability to satisfy us like other humans do. Let me be clear about this. God does care

00:28:54.600 for animals. Of course he does. We read in the passages in Matthew that God meets the needs of

00:28:59.760 animals. He sees them and he hears them. Job 38, 41 says this, who provides for the raven its prey

00:29:06.620 when its young ones cry out to God for help and wander about for lack of food? That is a rhetorical

00:29:11.800 question, but the answer is God. He also has something to say about how we treat animals. Proverbs 12, 10 says

00:29:19.660 the righteous care for the needs of their animals, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel.

00:29:24.220 The righteous care for the needs of their animals. We know that people who abuse animals are very

00:29:30.580 likely to end up being murderers. There is something wrong and again, disordered if we view animals

00:29:36.580 strictly as people, as people, well, yes, but as also if we view animals as things to be abused

00:29:45.960 and really just used or exploited, we can talk about better conditions for dairy and beef cows. I'm open

00:29:56.500 to having that conversation. That stuff actually does break my heart. We can talk about problems

00:30:00.820 with factory farming. I do believe that cruelty goes on at these farms, that it's reprehensible. I believe

00:30:06.240 that God actually cares about that. Our kindness should absolutely include animals, but animals are

00:30:12.100 still subjugated to our rule. It should be a compassionate rule, but it is a rule nonetheless.

00:30:18.520 They are ours to use and to care for, and because they are less valuable than we are in God's eyes,

00:30:24.120 yes, we are permitted to eat them. There is certainly no biblical mandate against eating animals in the

00:30:30.800 Bible. The Bible does not speak to the virtues of veganism. That's just not an argument that you're

00:30:39.380 going to be able to make that our compassion for animals has to extend to not eating them. God is

00:30:44.780 clear. Human beings are more important, more inherently valuable than animals are, and that

00:30:51.300 needs to be reflected in our life. If we are putting off children strictly for animals, if we are denying

00:31:00.460 obligations and responsibilities to people in exchange for animals, there's a problem for that. Abortion should 1.00

00:31:07.140 break our heart a lot more than animal cruelty. Our time would be better spent at homeless shelters than

00:31:12.840 animal shelters. And again, I'm not saying that you shouldn't volunteer at all. I'm not saying that you

00:31:18.560 shouldn't spend any money or spend any time helping animals, but it should not replace, supersede,

00:31:25.540 or come even close to the tangible, monetary, time-wise, compassion, and help and service that you are

00:31:32.980 giving to people that does not reflect God's heart. If God's heart is more for people than it is for

00:31:37.900 animals, then our hearts should be too. That means the things that we care about, the things that we

00:31:42.500 cry about, the things that we donate to, the time that we spend, the thoughts that we have, the

00:31:46.440 responsibilities that we are given, we are obligated to our fellow man a lot more and a lot more seriously

00:31:54.140 than we are to our animals. I hope all of that made sense. Again, I know a little controversial,

00:32:00.280 and I'll probably get some pushback on that. Feel free to let me know. This is what I believe

00:32:05.420 to be a very clear and easy subject, honestly, for us to approach from a biblical perspective. I don't

00:32:13.120 really see how you can make a biblical argument to elevate animals to the same place as human beings,

00:32:21.120 but I am, of course, open to your perspective. I've had conversations, got tongue-tied conversations

00:32:26.980 about this with other people recently, and I am happy. I'm happy to converse with you.

00:32:33.740 Thanks for listening. Love you guys. I will be back here on Wednesday, and then it's Thanksgiving.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - November 25, 2019

Ep 190 ｜ We're Too Obsessed with Our Pets

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