For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.  (Romans 1:20)

Recently my family’s first and only dog died.   As most dog owners know, he was a beloved member of our household.  Sadly, losing him has broken our hearts and reminded us of how painful and devastating death is—a pain we will always collectively share after the passing of my father.

Our dog’s name was Strider.  My sister, Jackie, and I named him after our favorite character from the epic novel, “Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien.  Like his namesake, Strider was a meek and loving protector.  My sister, Nikki, perhaps articulated his temperament best with her facebook post: “I don’t think there was ever a dog that was a greater grief companion.”  

To better illustrate Nikki’s sentiment: near the end of my father’s life, Strider guarded his bedside dutifully and comforted him with his youthful playfulness (a well-known trait of the Boxer breed).  After my father passed away, Strider became my mother’s chief source of comfort.  He was her bodyguard, her defender, her cuddler . . . truly her grief companion.   

Strider loved my mom and our family well.  If he could have, I know that he “would have gone with [us] to the end, into the very fires of Mordor.” – Strider to Frodo, Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (watch scene here)

There is something very unique and wonderful about the love of a dog.  The following videos provide a few examples of how remarkable that love is (must watch if you’re a dog lover – click on the description):

• A Love that takes care of us like a mother 
• A Love that comforts a dying friend  
• A Love that is tender towards children
• A Love that’s compassions are new every morning  
• A Love that guards over us   
• A Love that weeps over the death of a friend
• A Love that seeks to prevent us from harming ourselves  
• A Love that runs to us with hugs and kisses when we return home after being far off  
• A Love that brings us back to life  

Naturally, the loss of our dog’s love here on earth begs the questions: Will we ever get it back? “Is everything sad going to come untrue?” – Sam Gamgee to Gandalf, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.    Do all dogs really go to heaven?  

I’m convinced the answer is YES!  Here’s why . . . .

All of creation is a communication from God about God (Romans 1:20).  It’s His divine self-expression; revealing His nature, personality, and displaying His attributes (Psalm 19:1). There is no part of creation devoid of his presence (Psalm 139).   As C.S. Lewis stated:

“The world is crowded with Him.”  

Put simply: the world and all it contains is made of words.  “Magic words. Words spoken by the infinite, words so potent, spoken by One so potent that they have weight and mass and flavor. They are real.” – N.D. Wilson

 And the words call to us (Psalm 42:7).  They invite us in.

If we’re emotionally honest with ourselves, we all desire to be connected with the beauty that surrounds us in creation (i.e. sunsets, waves breaking on shore, snowcapped mountains, sizzling bacon, children’s laughter, the cuddles of our dog).  Yet, something about this desire is painfully incomplete.  “We cannot mingle with the splendours we see” – C.S. Lewis.   

There’s a reason: because of human sin our ability to be united with the beauty has been corrupted and cutoff.  We feel its invitation but we can’t go in.   Tolkien’s words are instructive on this dilemma:

“We all long for Eden, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature is still soaked with the sense of exile.”

Interestingly, as 18th century pastor George Whitefield observed, it appears all of nature is privy to our condition:   “Haven’t you ever noticed that when you come near the animals they growl at us, they bark at us, the birds screech at us and fly away? Do you know why? They know that we have a quarrel with their master.”

This is why we have the longing.  This is why we have the disconnectedness.  This is why our hearts break when we lose our dogs.  We have a visceral sense that something has gone wrong.

We know we were created for something more . . . .

Scripture teaches that all of the beauty and wonder that calls to us in creation was spoken into existence by the Word of God.  The Word revealed His beauty and made Himself known with His words (creation and everything in it).  

Applying this truth we see that each hyperlinked video above is not just a dog displaying a charming act of love . . . it’s a message:  a meaningful and intentional communication to help us better understand the love of God:

• He’s the Love that comforts us like a mother. (Isaiah 66:13).  
• He’s the Love whose compassions are new every morning.  (Lamentations 3:22-23) 
• He’s the Love that is tender towards children. (Matthew 19:14)
• He’s the Love that weeps over the death of a friend. (John 11:35)
• He’s the Love that runs out to us when we return home. (Luke 15:20)
• He’s the Love that brings us back to life. (John 11:25; 43-44)

Do you see it?  All of our dog’s personality and love points to Him.

The message of Christianity is – He’s the Beauty that we were created for and from which the love of our dog flows.  And we’ve only barely tasted it.   We’ve only been “touched by a finger of that right hand at which there are pleasures forevermore” –  Lewis

Here’s the wonder of the Gospel: the Word became flesh (Jesus) and dwelt among us in order to restore our connectedness to Him—the true Beauty we all long for (John 1:14).  To do so the Creator of all things had to be fully disconnected from the Beauty (on the cross) so that we could be reconnected to it. He had to be decreated so that we could be recreated.  Tolkien captures this allegorically in “The Riddle of Strider”

“From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.” – The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

The resurrection of Christ guarantees our reconnectedness. It secures for us a higher hope beyond this world:  To be back in our home country. To be fully united with the Beauty. To be in the presence of the King.  

And that’s why all dogs must go to heaven . . . because our King is there. He is where all the beauty came from.   In His presence we get it all back.

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Sam Gamgee’s question, “is everything sad going to come untrue” is at the core of the Christian hope.  Theologian Tim Keller writes: “The answer of Christianity to that question is – YES!  Everything sad is going to come untrue and it will somehow be greater for having once been broken and lost.”

“But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass.  A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. ” Sam Gamgee to Frodo,The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Watch it here)  

My hope and prayer for all of us is that we may rest in the truth that in the presence of God we will be fully united with the deepest desires of our hearts and reunited with the unique and wonderful love of our dogs.

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FOR A SEARCHING SOUL  

Atheism says that we live in a strictly material universe (i.e. this world is all there is; we’re nothing but physical matter). Taken to it’s logical end, atheism has spawned philosophical doctrines like Nihilism, which is the belief that life is meaningless. 

Francis Crick, an atheist nobel winning scientist, captured this atheist/materialist view in his book, The Astonishing Hypothesis. In it he writes:

“You,” your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules . . . “You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.” (p. 3)

To subscribe to this viewpoint is to conclude the following: we have no soul and we’re only a body. Therefore, all of our thoughts are just chemical responses happening in our brain. If we feel love, it’s only chemical.  Consequently, love does not matter.  It’s just a chemical response in our brain that has enabled us to survive.

But we know this is not so.  We know what our heart intuitively tells us is true: love matters.  Nobody lives as if love doesn’t matter. Nobody lives as if their thoughts, feelings, and memories are really just chemical responses.  Can you imagine a culture that lived this way? No love songs (no Beatles: “all you need is love”), no romantic comedies, no stories of sacrificial bravery, no pets to give and receive love, no dog rescue organizations, etc.   What a sad world that would be. 

In a solely material world we shouldn’t weep at the loss of our dogs.  “If this world is all there is how can you be mad at suffering? Suffering is natural and so are the causes of suffering.” – Tim Keller

Further, as C.S. Lewis explains, in a meaningless world,  we shouldn’t have discovered it: “If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.”  

I choose to believe life has meaning and love matters. What say you?

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For additional resources on this topic, see:

• Tim Keller: The Song of Creation; A Promise of Hope; The Meaning of Christmas
• Joe Rigney: The Things of Earth: Treasuring God by Enjoying His Gifts
• J.R.R. Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings trilogy; The Letter of J.R.R. Tolkien
• C.S. Lewis: The Weight of Glory