Yesterday we made the decision to put our dear dog Mashie “to sleep”. A wonderful euphemism for her death. Mashie has been a special part of our family for the last 12 years. She had been declining in health the last couple of months and yesterday she took a dramatic turn for the worst. We still went to church (although we skipped Sunday School), when we came home she was still ailing, and still dying. We took her to the Vet for an emergency visit. It turned out she had a tumor in her abdomen and it was hemorrhaging – she would not make it through the night.
My son (15 years old) spoke to Mashie by cellphone and told her he loved her. We kissed and hugged her and said our goodbyes. Then we wondered whether we would see her and her brother (Niblick – gone 2 years now) in heaven.
Today I saw this quote from N.T. Wright
This brings me to ‘heaven’. Yes, in the New Testament of course there is the hope for being ‘with Christ, which is far better’ (Philippians 1.26). But have you not noticed that the New Testament hardly ever talks about ‘going to heaven’, and certainly never as the ultimate destiny of God’s people. The ultimate destiny, as Revelation 21 makes abundantly clear, is the ‘new heavens and new earth’, for which we will need resurrection bodies. Please, please, study what the Bible actually says. When Jesus talks in John 14 of going to prepare a place for us, the word he uses is the Greek word mone, which isn’t a final dwelling place but a temporary place where you stay and are refreshed before continuing on your journey. The point about Jesus being our hope is that he will come again from heaven to change this world, and our bodies, so that the prayer he taught us to pray will come true at last: thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as in heaven. That is God’s will; that is why Jesus came; that is our final hope. Of course, Christians who die before that time go to be with him in heaven until the time when the whole creation is redeemed (Romans 8.18-27 — have you studied that recently?). That isn’t a ‘symbolic meaning’, and I confess I don’t know why you should think it does.
The problem is, I think, that there are some Christians who have not been taught what the Bible actually teaches about the redemption of the whole creation. The Bible doesn’t say that the creation — including earth — is wicked and that we have to be rescued from it. What is wicked, and what we need rescuing from, is sin, which brings death, which is the denial of the good creation. When we say the creation is wicked we are colluding with death. Sadly, some Christians seem to think they have to say that.
I gain hope from thinking on the new heaven and the new earth. A physical place with our incarnate Lord. In this physical place, where the whole of creation is redeemed, surely there must be redeemed animals – and than surely redeemed pets?
Won’t that be the greatest joy – to see all our loved ones, including our pets? Of course, we will not be married, nor will be masters of our pets – but maybe, just maybe we will see them romping in fields of green – as the whole creation worships God.
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