The event last Friday at Hearts on Fire was quite ambitiously named "I don't wanna gain the whole world but lose my soul", but I never got to find out what a soul is even after the event is over.
I never really got involved in the event this time, other than pumping my brain dry of ideas during a meeting at Somerset 313, which happens to be becoming our favourite meeting location for the Region B think tank. My mind was really on other irrelevant but "soulful" things.
For all my life as a christian, and I have been a christian for a really long time, I have been told that animals, ALL animals, do not have a soul. Only humans, we GREAT humans, have souls. Well, I understand the whole theory behind this, that humans are more superior than animals, created in God's image, therefore it is unthinkable that animals have the only immortal thing that humans possess - souls.
But that is really a difficult theory to accept. I will not go into how it is difficult to assert if we were created in God's image or if God was created in our image (because that is really too darn dangerous), but I will have to say there is nowhere in the bible that ever mentioned the non-existence of souls in animals. All we have are references and interpretations. So it is safe to say that no one actually knows for sure that animals have no souls.
Before I even go on to explain why, I think it is only fair that I define what soul is. Alright, this is no formal definition, but this is just how I define soul and what I will use for this write-up. Basically to me, a soul is really who I am. My character, my emotions, my memories, my identity. It is what defines me as me.
I came to this definition only because I watched the movie "Wall-E". And the last scene showed how Wall-E, though fixed from his damages after saving the plant, lost all his memory and identity and emotions. And on the spot, I'm sure most people would say he had lost his "soul". The body is an empty vessel which does not last, if not for the soul that it contains. As C.S Lewis so aptly put it, "You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."
And animals, they have character, they have emotions, they have memories, they have identity. I have interacted with many animals (okay, cats) and I know it straight away when I look into their eyes that it isn't just an empty vessel that I was looking into. Animals have souls, and when we go to heaven, we will be seeing animals there as well. Cats, lots of cats for sure. And if you need a bible verse, here you go:
From Isaiah's description of "New Heavens and a New Earth" in Isaiah 65:25, "The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but dust will be the serpent’s food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, says the LORD."
So that's animals in heaven for you.
But maybe animals have "lesser" souls, souls that are inferior to us humans. Well, that is an acceptable theory, considering how God specifically made humans in his image. However, the skeptical me just can't shake off the whole idea of how stubborn and self-centered we are. Don't we just love to put ourselves in the center of everything? But I'm going out of point.
Nevertheless, if there is any one difference between the human soul and the animal soul, it is that the human soul needs saving, and the animal soul doesn't. Jesus came to save the human race only because the human race needed saving, only because the sins are only sins by human standards.
And perhaps, I shall close with this story I got off the internet:
An elderly widow's beloved little dog died after fifteen faithful years. Distraught, she went to her pastor.
"Parson," she said, tears streaming down her cheeks, "the vicar said animals have no souls. My darling little dog Fluffy has died. Does that mean I won’t see her again in heaven?"
"Madam," said the old priest, "God, in his great love and wisdom has created heaven to be a place of perfect happiness. I am sure that if you need your little dog to complete your happiness, you will find her there."
