Is there anything better than a dog?
The name of this dog is Phoenix. She is named after our hometown of Phoenixville and the now defunct Phoenix Pale Ale. If you look up the words, “love” or “adoration” in any worthy dictionary you will find a picture of her. She lives for human touch and she will shower you with affection until you never want to be kissed again.
Phoenix had one litter of eight puppies; of course we kept one. His name is Strider (yes, from LOTR) but everyone calls him “Fluff” because he was a very fluffy puppy. He is the size of a small horse and as graceful as a drunk elephant. He has no concept of personal space and is convinced he is a lapdog. He is very cloying and needy. This can be exasperating, but it is hard to be mad at someone who misses you when you’re asleep. I should have named him Happy. He seems like a dopey gameshow host; I swear the dog smiles.
Dogs are the only thing I have met in this world that actually have the godlike capacity to love you more than they love themselves. They are the embodiment of the famous Love passage that we read at weddings: dogs are patient and kind, they do not envy or boast, dogs do not remember a wrong suffered.
Our third dog is an ancient German Shepherd. Her name is Riley. I am afraid the warranty on her has definitely expired. She is senile and she is mostly deaf. She barks at everything and nothing. The hip dysplasia, so common to the breed, seems to have finally crippled her. We will need to put her down soon. I will hold her in my arms while the vet administers a massive dose of barbiturates. I will feel her heart slow, then stop as her eyes go blank. Then I will go out and sit in my truck and cry. We have had to do this too many times over the years. It feels like a moral obligation for me to hold them, as if I were comforting a confused child with a deceptive embrace. I hate it, but the love of a good dog for years cannot be free.
Do dogs go to Heaven? This is not a childish question. It is merely a childlike question; they tend to be the right ones to ask. Children are good for tying theologians and philosophers in knots. The question haunts us not because of our ignorance of dogs, but because of our ignorance of Heaven.
The popular notion of Heaven is a mess. It is as if we took a big chunk of Plato, a little bit of Milton, a few cups of vague spiritualty and a little bit of Hollywood, then mixed it all in a blender and poured it over our thirsty imaginations. What do we end up with? Some floating ethereal realm where we become translucent and adrift, and for some reason we may have harps. There is little or nothing left of the physical. No passion, no taste, no touching, no humor, no running, no jumping, no tacos. And, obviously, no dogs. If this is Heaven I do not wish to go. But thankfully it is not.
We speak of Heaven as a distant wispy place that some of us hope to go to someday. But the Bible speaks of Heaven as if it were all around us, waiting to break through into our space; sometimes it does. I think the reality we inhabit is far weirder, and wonderful, than what any science fiction writer, or even a quantum physicist could dream up. Heaven is a physical and spiritual realm that will one day invade this land and retake it. it will be a day when “the sky is rolled back like a scroll”. Earth will be remade. Heaven and Earth will blend together. “Here” will be “there” as there becomes here, and the dwelling place of God shall finally be with his people, and his dogs. Until then he is in the process of remaking us, one person at a time. I disapprove of his schedule, but he has never asked my advice.
His goal is to change us into the image of his Son. He will keep working on us until we begin to see each other the way he does, and the way a dog sees us. Dogs worship us for a reason. They hear the echo of Eden in our voice. They smell the creator on our skin. When we are petting them they feel the hand of God. He has given me dogs as a reminder, and as a rebuke. A reminder of what we have lost, of what we once were, and of what we will yet be. A rebuke to stimulate me to work every day to be more like Christ, so that one day I may actually become as wonderful as my dogs think I am.
So do all dogs go to Heaven? If my grandchildren ask me I will tell them the truth, that it is even better than that, Heaven is coming for all dogs.
“The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them… they shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the Earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.” Isaiah 11
“If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.” Will Rogers