Will Fido Meet Me at the Pearly Gates?

Back in 2019, I was talking with a Jewish lawyer friend when something in our conversation caused him to ask if Christians believe that pets will go to heaven. My reply didn’t rule out the possibility, but it didn’t lend enthusiastic support, either. However, the question so piqued my curiosity that I turned to both the Bible and Google to do further research. And very soon thereafter, I preached a sermon with the same title as this article. This is a streamlined and adapted version of the sermon. 

Google and Bible Discoveries 

Google quickly led me to the 1989 movie All Dogs Go to Heaven. The movie didn’t provide much theological insight but seems to have done well enough at the box office that a sequel—All Dogs Go to Heaven 2—came out in 1996. That same year a TV series, which survived for three seasons, also made the claim that All Dogs Go to Heaven. It seems that people in the late 20th century found animal salvation to be an intriguing possibility. 

Turning to the Bible, I didn’t have to go far into Genesis—just 20 verses to be precise—before it hit me that, whether or not earthly animals will make it to heaven, they seem really important to God. Which probably tells us something about how we should treat animals. 

Genesis 1:20-22 says: “And God said, ‘Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.’ . . .And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number, . . . ’” (emphasis added). 

Now I’ll admit, I’ve always been skeptical about the blessing-of-animals services that are held in many Catholic and Protestant churches near the Feast Day of St. Francis (October 4). But if God himself pronounced a blessing on the fish and birds during creation week, my skepticism about others doing something similar may be unwarranted. 

God’s Sees Animals as Good 

Although nothing is said about God pronouncing a creation-week blessing on land animals, the Bible tells us that when God surveyed his achievement in creating that category of creatures, he “saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:25). 

In re-reading the creation story, I discovered something I must have always overlooked. I knew humans had been made from “the dust of the ground” (Genesis 2:7). But I guess I’d forgotten that “God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky,” as well (Genesis 2:19). Land animals and birds were created from the same substance as humans, the Bible says. That’s interesting. And maybe significant. It’s worth pondering. 

But back to the creation of humans: “Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground’” (Genesis1: 26, emphasis added).  

Humans as Servants to Animals 

According to the foregoing text, the reason God created humans was—to put it succinctly—for them to engage in animal husbandry. In fact, a rabbi friend of mine says the Hebrew words that are translated “rule” and “subdue” (verse 27) convey more the concept of service than of hierarchical power structures. He maintains that the creation story has God commissioning Adam and Eve to “serve” the earth’s other living creatures. Put in modern parlance, we might say it was humanity’s introduction to the concept of servant leadership. 

Which brings us to the kind of leadership Jesus modeled and urges us to emulate (Philippians 2: 5-7)—which may apply to how we relate to animals: “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, Being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, . . . .” 

The Supreme Ruler of the universe became a servant to his human brothers and sisters. And at creation God asked humans—the crowning act of creation—to become a servant to all other life forms. 

Animals and the Flood

When we come to the story of the flood, God ensures that the rescue boat—which he commands Noah to build—will be big enough to perpetuate animal life as well as human life: “You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you” (Genesis 6:19).

The entire flood narrative bounces back and forth between God’s instructions and comments about humans and his instructions and comments about animals. After the flood, God promises that never again will he destroy all living creatures. 

God’s Covenant with Animals 

“Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: ‘I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth’” (Genesis 9: 8-10, emphasis added). 

God continues: “‘This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth’” (Genesis 9:12-13, emphasis added). God repeats: “‘Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life (Genesis 9:14-15, emphasis added). 

Note that as God keeps repeating his promise, he no longer makes any distinction between humans and animals. “‘Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and  remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth’ So God said to Noah, ‘This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth’’’ (Genesis 9:16-17, emphasis added).

God’s Concern about Animals

Nothing in the flood story suggests whether animals will or will not be in heaven with humans. But God’s consistent statements that all animals are included in his covenant with Noah suggest that God certainly takes no pleasure in animal death, a fact the following two examples support. 

When Jonah was grousing about the fact that God hadn’t destroyed Nineveh, and that Jonah’s plant had died and was no longer providing shade, God replied: “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?’” (Jonah 4:10-11).

In Matthew 10:29, we read: “‘Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care’” (or “knowledge,” as the footnote renders alternatively).

Solomon on Animals’ Future

Solomon throws sand into our theological gears by contending that the ultimate fate of both humans and animals is uncertain, at best: “Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?” (Ecclesiastes 3:19-21).

I always assumed that Solomon was seriously questioning whether there was life after death for humans, while accepting as a given that when animals return to dust, that’s their final resting spot. But it’s possible that Solomon, agnostic as his musings are, would be willing to entertain the possibility that, if after death, humans go to some paradise, then animals probably do too. Because, based on all we see, the exact same thing happens to both humans and animals when either life form dies.  

In his poetic treatise “An Essay on Man: Epistle I,” Alexander Pope (1688-1744) muses about what heaven might mean to different categories of people. Pope postulates that for the American Indian, heaven would be a place where “no Christians thirst for gold,” and where his “faithful dog shall bear him company.”

Inconclusive Conclusion

Who’s to say that the American Indian that Alexander Pope imagines may not have it right? Maybe Fido will meet me at the Pearly Gates. Or not. I don’t find a clear answer in scripture. 

But I do find strong evidence that God is more than casually interested in animals and their wellbeing—though I admit that I have trouble harmonizing what I just said with the sacrificial system. But we’ll have to leave that topic for another time—after a lot more pondering on my part.