As humans made in God’s image, how does God want us to view animals?
According to Karen Swallow Prior of Liberty University, it is important for humans to not overvalue and undervalue the lives of animals.
It’s important for humans to understand the place of animals in the world and respect them for what God has made them to be.
“If we distort the nature of animals by giving them human attributes, then we do not love animals for what they actually are. I am a great animal lover, but nothing annoys me more than a romantic or sentimental animal lover who knows nothing about animals, who loves some sort of fantasy of an animal.”
It’s important for humans to understand the place of animals in the world and respect them for what God has made them to be.
“If you’re around animals and spend time with them, you know their strengths and limitations, you understand their nature. The purest kind of love that we have for an animal or another person is to love who they really are and not what we project onto them.”
As humans, we tend to interact with animals on one of two extremes. We either elevate animals to equal standing with humans, or we demean them by treating them as machines.
“Animals are animals, they are not made in God’s image. The Bible is clear about their place in the order of creation, but since the modern age of enlightenment , we have tended as the human race to treat animals more like machines, more like things for us to dominate and exploit and not the living creatures that they are.”
According to Karen, you can tell a lot about a society or culture based on how they treat the animals in their midst.
“The way we treat animals is very much a reflection of our current worldview, in ancient times animals were part of the family, they were kept in houses and huts because life depended on the health and welfare of animals, and then in the modern age animals became basically machines.”
