Thursday

Pets: To Be, or Not To Be

I enjoy taming animals and owning pets, but news articles and remarks led me to question whether animals should be tamed, or left wild. To some "the 'real' or 'natural' animal to them is the wild one, and the tame animal is an artificial or unnatural thing."* Proverbs 12:10 (NIV) says "the righteous care for the needs of their animals, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel." This explains why animal ownership, per se, does not always lead to good results. In the best cases, however, it can be speculated that the taming and training of animals to be in relationship to humans is as proper - in a similar way -  as the teaching of people to be in right relationship with God. In this sense, "the tame animal is therefore, in the deepest sense, the only 'natural' animal - the only one we see occupying the place it was made to occupy,..."*

*"The Problem of Pain" in The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics, pg. 636