Freedom From Pets

Please note: This article is a brilliant piece of satire. It is not intended to be taken seriously. Thank you. — Candace Chellew, editor and proud human companion to three dogs and two cats.

I’d like to announce the Web page of my new ministry, www.FreedFromPets.com.

In our country today, we see many people telling themselves that it’s OK to keep animals with paws inside their houses and pet them. Some people even argue that they can can still be Christians while doing this. A few churches, trying to be politically correct and make everybody happy, have gone so far as to offer to give blessings for people’s “pets.”

What is a Christian to make of all this? Let’s see what God’s word says. From Leviticus 11:

27 ‘Also whatever walks on its paws, among all the creatures that walk on all fours, are unclean to you; whoever touches their carcasses becomes unclean until evening,

28 and the one who picks up their carcasses shall wash his clothes and be unclean until evening; they are unclean to you.

Dogs are mentioned 41 times in the Bible. Every single time, the reference is unfavorable.

Cats are not mentioned at all. But we all know that cats are intimately associated with Egypt, where they were considered sacred, and Egypt consistently symbolizes spiritual corruption.

There is not one favorable mention of pet ownership in the Bible. Not one.

Even without reading the Scripture, common sense is enough to warn us against pet ownership. We’ve all heard the tragic stories of children injured or killed by drug dealers’ half-starved fighting- trained dogs. And in my own life, when I was still in bondage to cat ownership, my cats would sometimes vomit up hairballs onto the floor and track litter around between their toes. What a mockery of the peace and cleanliness that ought to reign in a Christian household!

What shall we say, then, to those who those who say they cannot help loving their pets? That they are doomed, that God does not love them? Hardly! We know that the saving power of Jesus Christ is available to everyone, to pet owners just as much as everyone else. If they will only surrender themselves completely to the Lord and die to their fleshy desires, He will give them power to be transformed in the inner man and give up their pets. We have several success stories of people who have been remade in Christ’s image and are now living victoriously without animals. A few of them have kept it up for more than a year!

Don’t believe the lie that animal-lovers cannot change, that they will never be content without animals. We at FreedFromPets are showing a better way.