Kevin Alan Wells

An adorable person who likes me the first moment we meet? Doesn’t care what I look like? Never interrupts when I talk; always lets me have my way; and waits everyday for me to come home!? It’s a relationship dream come true!—and a big reason why there is so much attraction to cats and dogs.

Americans keep 74.8 million dogs and 88.3 million cats as pets. We spent 41 billion dollars last year on these animals. That’s more money than the gross domestic product of most countries. There is a very real danger to this prioritization. I started to realize it when my dog died in 2006. Suddenly, no one was happy to see me when I got home. The house was dark and lifeless. I went to the park we used to walk together, but now I walked alone. I sat alone. And I felt alone. One day in that park, I realized I wasn’t the only one there by myself; I was just the only one there not walking behind a dog. No one in the park walked beside another human.

The easy affection that animals offer poses a perilous risk of replacing human relationships in our lives. Unlike with pets, relationships with humans are hard. There’s a danger of heartbreak in every friendship. That’s why God gave us the chemicals that produce loneliness. Loneliness is an emotion God uses to drive us out of our safety zones into public to interact with other humans. When we interact well, we show other humans God’s love, and hopefully we develop a few healthy relationships in the process.

Many of us, however, circumvent this system by soothing our loneliness with the affection of a pet. The attention and energy that we would spend on human relationships we exhaust on animal companionships. Instead of allowing the loneliness to lead us into loving humans, we give our love to animals.

But the Christian cannot accept this, for as Christians, we do not love merely for love’s sake. We love for God’s sake. We love our brothers and sisters of the church to show the world that we are Christ’s disciples (Jn 13.34-35), that we know and love God (1 Jn 4.7-8), and that he abides in us (1 Jn 4.12). We love our husbands to illustrate the church’s love of Christ (Eph 5.22-24). We love our wives to illustrate Christ’s love of the church (Eph 5.25-32). We love the world because we are their light, and we want God to be praised among them (Mt 5.16). We love our enemies because we want to be children of our Father in heaven (Mt 5.44-45). We love in order to imitate God, for God is love (Eph 5.1; 1 Jn 4.8). We love because he first loved us (1 Jn 4.19). And if that is not enough, we love each other because we are commanded to do so (Jn 15.12).

Pouring our time, attention, and energy into loving humans has spiritual and eternal effects. But other than immediately and safely satisfying an emotion, what does exhausting our love on an animal achieve?

Pets can be wonderful additions to our lives, and the kindness we show to these creatures honors our role as godly rulers of this earth. But remember, the far more important purpose for our lives here as Christians is to love humans.

Sources: Business Week, and The Humane Society of the U.S. Photo by monkeycat!