Is My Pet in Heaven? – Crisis Magazine

We should avoid the temptation to provide a peremptory, dismissive—and often negative—answer to this frequently-asked question.

While teaching classes to our deacon candidates, I have told them that, after their diaconal ordinations, this would be the most frequently asked question they would get: Will I see my beloved pet in Heaven? That question will be asked earnestly, even urgently, and not only by children.

The temptation to provide a peremptory, dismissive—and often negative—answer to that query is pastorally insensitive and, I am convinced, substantively mistaken. I am persuaded that our pets will meet us in Heaven. Our task is to get there to be with them again (1 Peter 1:9, Philippians 2:12).

In making this argument at various times and places, I have been accused of being as theologically uninformed as I am emotionally overcharged. I respond, first, that I do not support telling someone that his pet is in Heaven just to make that person “feel good.” Second, I do not support the idea that we can or should twist clear and settled teaching to accommodate wishful thinking.  

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Is My Pet in Heaven? – Crisis Magazine