Persecution, Prop 8

I probably should be embarrassed to admit that I prayed very hard for my dog considering there are so many people suffering in the world. I rather shy away from the use of the word "miracle" but she certainly looked like she was on her deathbed. The vet said she had multiple organ failure and she seemed to be in a coma for about a week. But dying itself seemed to come hard - this was back in September.

I really prefer never to put an animal down but neither do I want an animal to suffer. My husband and I had finally made up our mind that if she didn't pass away over that particular September weekend, we would take her to the vet to have her euthanized.

That weekend, since she couldn't walk, we scooped her up using two blankets as slings and carried her outside, took her to all her favorite places. And eventually she was able to put weight on her front legs, so I walked her around with a sling supporting her back legs. I fed her people food - whatever she would eat, around the clock, and would you believe she recovered well enough to go hunting for mice? She had a lovely, lovely 4 weeks of life after that, including the day before she died.

Then just when I started to think I had hallucinated the condition she was in previously, she took a turn for the worse. I sang "Jesus Loves Me" to her and she passed away in my arms, as peacefully as any child of God going to sleep for the night.

I often think that everything I know for sure about God, I've learned from animals. There is a faithfulness and a lack of guile, and a forgiveness of even the foot that kicks them, that points the way to how we ought to be ourselves. As one prayer goes, "Lord, help me to be half the person my dog thinks I am."

I know that traditional theology doesn't allow for animals to have souls but then why did Balaam's ass speak to him about being just to animals? Why does God make a point of telling humanity "thou shalt not muzzle the ox treading out the corn" or not "seething a calf in its mother's milk?"

Why, in the future vision of the earth, do the lamb and the lion lie down together, if not to point out that even the animals have suffered in a pre-redemption earth?

Animals were given to us for more than food and meat since there is no evidence to indicate that was their original purpose in the Garden of Eden.

I miss her a lot. I am not through crying yet. I really hope my animal friends are all waiting to meet me when it's my turn to go.

My other dog had her surgery and now the challenge is to keep her from moving much for the next two months while her leg heals. She'll have the staples removed last week but she's already been removing them herself with her teeth.

Well, I tried to go to the site you referenced as having a discussion about the Prop 8 thing and couldn't find the conversation you were referring to, but I gather you're asking about gay marriage and Christians feeling persecuted because of that?

I was raised to believe that persecution was the natural state of the Christian - the best state - the state that refines. So I suppose based on that, for Christians who believe that homosexual marriage is wrong on a secular level of government, maybe they ought to be rejoicing and being exceedingly glad that they are being persecuted by homosexual marriage?

As far as me personally, I would find it hard to make the leap to feeling persecuted as a Christian by a state allowing same-sex marriage. The state's business is different in my eyes than the business of Christians. If Christians believe homosexuality is wrong and condemns souls to hell, then by all means, if they feel so called, they ought to make that point - in churches, to their homosexual friends - out of a spirit of caring for the mortality of the other person's soul.

Protest on an individual level, in other words. One soul at a time as God has seen fit to make souls cross paths to be guided.

As far as goodness and niceness being equated with Christianity, in the Matthew 5 version of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says just the opposite: For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?

He says that even the publicans/sinners do good. That is the reason for turning the other cheek, and that is the very foundation of nonresistance and pacifism - to do more than just "niceness" requires. Niceness, kindness, compassion, charity, love and forgiveness are not only qualities possessed by Christians. I know more compassionate atheists than I know Christians. Could just be the circles in which I hang though. I'm not saying there aren't compassionate Christians.

I find it hard to get worked up about abortion on the grounds that it is murdering a person when there are Christians who think it is not only a-okay to go to war and kill people who are actually born, but that it is God's will to do so. I mean, I happen to believe that a fetus is a person but I also believe that an enemy is a person. Maybe when - as in when-hell-freezes-over-when - states abolish not only abortion but also state-sponsored killings in the form of wars, I'll get excited about homosexual marriage. Until then, I just can't get terribly interested in it.