When God made Adam He placed him in the Garden of Eden and
brought all the animals to him. Adam
named them and had the benefit of their company. But that wasn’t enough. God saw that Adam,
even with all the animals of the Garden, was alone.
We live in an age where society practically worships
animals. We glibly say, “Dogs are
people, too” or “Cats are people, too”.
That is attributing to them a far higher rank than God gave them. Even in the unfallen state of creation there
was a gap between man and beast. I have
a dog and two cats. I am very fond of
them. On my desk is a picture of my dog,
Molly, and it is in a frame that says, “I love my dog”. I do, of course, love my dog. You can read all about her in my book The Gospel According to Molly and in my
twice weekly blog about her found on my website. But as much as I love her, she is still a
dog.
After Adam’s sin God tells us in Romans that man began to
turn affection for the animals He had created into a foolish religious
system. Man began to worship the creature
more than the Creator. They made images
of all manner of beasts. Even the
Israelites fell into that sin and made a golden calf while in the wilderness. “There,” Aaron said, “is your god.” In our society today there are many who take
that statement quite literally. In their
thinking man is corrupt and animals are perfect. Man should be, in their theology, subject to
the needs of animals. This is paganism
pure and simple.
God’s comment to Adam was that the creatures were to be
subject to him. When we reverse God’s
truth on this point we lose our spiritual perspective of truth. God created order and that order begins with
Him. He then passed authority to man
over His creation. To put animals above
man is to usurp God’s authority in the first place. That is the theology that Satan, in the form
of the serpent, used to bring about man’s fall.
Eve believed that the creature, the serpent, was right and not God. We must not join Eve in letting God’s order
get out of order. It is not creation that we are to worship, but with all
creation we are to give true worship to God.
Let us sing with David this song of worship from Psalm 8.
You made man to have dominion over the works of Thy hands;
You have put all things under his feet: sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of
the field;
The fowl of the air and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever
passes through the paths of the seas. O
LORD our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth!
You can
contact me and find inspiring Christian books at my website: www.davidccraig.net
You may also
find some of my selected daily devotions at http://blog.febc.org/
You may also
enjoy my new Gospel dog blog, The Gospel According to Molly
and my new Alzheimer’s blog, “Taking Care of Joe: An Alzheimer’s Blog” found on
my website.
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