It is a question common among pet owners: will my pet be in heaven? For many people pets are just like children. They will tell you how each pet is different with his or her own peculiar habits and characteristics. I happened to be looking at Peter Kreeft’s book Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Heaven . . . But Never Dreamed of Asking (Ignatius Press). Here’s what he says.

“The simples answer is: Why not? How irrational is the prejudice that would allow plants (green fields and flowers) but not animals in Heaven! Much more reasonable is C.S. Lewis’ speculation that we will be ‘between the angels who are our elder brothers and the beasts who are our jesters, servants, and playfellows.’ Scripture seems to confirm this: ‘thy judgments are like the great deep; man and beast thou savest, O Lord’. Animals belong in the ‘new earth’ as much as trees. C.S. Lewis supposes that animals are saved ‘in’ their masters, as part of their extended family. Only tamed animals would be saved in this way. It would seem more likely that wild animals are in Heaven too, since wildness, otherness, not-mine-ness, is a proper pleasure for us. The very fact that the seagull takes no notice of me when it utters its remote, lonely call is part of its glory. Would the same animals be in Heaven as on earth? ‘Is my dead cat in Heaven?’ Again, why not? God can raise up the very grass; why not cats? Though the blessed have better things to do than play with pets, the better does not exclude the lesser. We were meant from the beginning to have stewardship over the animals; we have not fulfilled that divine plan yet on earth; therefore it seems likely that the right relationship with animals will be part of Heaven: proper ‘petship’. and what better place to begin than with already petted pets?” (pp. 45-46)

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Heaven . . . But Never Dreamed of Asking is a paperback with 271 pages and sells for $16.95.

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