Tom Horn -Do Our Pets Go To Heaven?

Before you read the amazing stories of pets that saved people, provided companionship, and healing [in Do Our Pets Go To Heaven?], I must admit I cannot recount the number of times when, as a pastor of more than two decades and as a public and media personality since, I have been approached by an adult or child—eyes filled with questions—who wanted to ask me very sincerely if I believed their pets would go to Heaven. I often noted the apprehension on their faces, as if they feared this man who typically speaks out on “more important issues” like social or world events would find their questions trivial, especially in light of increasing human challenges facing people around the world. Of course, most of these dear people were unaware of how often this question has come up for me and other Bible expositors. In fact, it seems to be one of the biggest secrets in Christianity: that our Western mindset has made it difficult to discuss what people in other countries as well as theologians down through time believed to be an important and theological question. Why is this believed? One major argument has to do with God redeeming what He, Himself, made in the first place and called very “good.” For instance, in Genesis, chapter 1, God creates “every living creature that moveth…and every winged fowl after his kind…and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good” (emphasis added; see Genesis 1:21–25). The Hebrew word translated “good” in this text is towb and means the creatures were exactly what God wanted them to be; they pleased Him. But if in the Garden, as a result of the temptation and fall of man, God forever lost what He created, the enemy won part of the battle that day by stripping God of His aspiration. This suggests that God can never again have what He, Himself, desired in the first place—that the deceiver somehow permanently undid the Creator’s pleasure. This is considered foolish reasoning by some doctors of theology and contradictory to other aspects of the New Testament regarding redemption or deliverance of “all creation [which] is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay” (emphasis added; Romans 8:19–22, NLT). Eden was perfect. But without animals Eden wouldn’t be Eden. The New Earth is the new Eden—Paradise regained, with the curse of the first Adam reversed, transformed into the blessing of the last Adam (Jesus) (Rom. 5:14–15). Would God take away from us in Heaven what he gave, for delight and companionship and help, to Adam and Eve in Eden? Would he revoke his decision to put animals with people, under their care? Since he’ll fashion the New Earth with renewed people, wouldn’t we expect him also to include renewed animals?[i] Alcorn’s approach is shared by others who believe our pets will be in Heaven simply because we love them and God promises to give us the desires of our hearts (Psalms 37:4). For instance, in her book Holiness in Hidden Places, Joni Eareckson Tada says of “Scrappy,” her deceased pet schnauzer: