They have no original sin, yet they age, get sick, and die, just like humans. But humans deserve to age and die, because they ate some fruit. Animals don’t have an original sin, so their problems must have been intentionally created by God. Animals must have been created defective. Worst of all, they have no Messiah, so they have no hope of ever escaping their mortal fate.
Now let’s fastforward a couple thousand years. Some horny angels have come to earth and botched things up for everyone. So, God decides to clean house. The troublemaking angels dematerialize and go back to heaven, while God floods the earth, killing almost all of the humans and animals. Once again, the animals find themselves caught up and punished for something that they were not involved in. And, if that’s not bad enough, as soon as Noah gets out of the ark, what does he do with these precious and rare animals? I mean, think about this for a second. The entire world population of animals has dwindled to two of each type, and seven of some special ones. Noah has just spent the last century carefully preparing and caring for them. So, he finally gets out into the squeaky clean earth, and what does he do? That’s right. He butchers a few of them.
Moving forward to the Exodus, we find that Pharaoh and God are involved in a bit of a spitting match. God decides to teach Pharaoh a lesson, so he sends him a bunch of problems. Have you ever stopped to think how many of the plagues affected the animals? Obviously, plague five was devastating to them, because it killed all of the Egyptians livestock, and, of course, plague ten was bad because it killed all firstborn, including the already-dead livestock. But plague two (frogs), three (lice), four (flies), and eight (locusts) made use of members of the animal kingdom to make humans uncomfortable. I don’t expect the lice or the locusts to garner much sympathy, but think of the wee frogs. Even the first plague, turning all water to blood, would have affected animals at least as much as humans. The fish, particularly, would have suffered.
While we’re on the subject of using animal overpopulation to get back at humans, what about the billions of quail that were heaped upon the camp of Israel? Not only were the birds crushingly overpopulated, but they soon died, raising a hell of a stink.
After the flood, God gave all animals to Noah to use as food. He also allowed humans to use animals as slaves, beasts of burden. To top it all off, a bunch of animals got insulted as “unclean”. Of course, being considered unclean exempted them from sacrifice duty, and prevented them from being used as food, so I don’t imagine they minded.
Finally, my mind turns back to my dog and his good fortune for not being God’s dog. There is probably no animal that gets treated by the Bible as poorly as dogs. They are mentioned 25 times in the scriptures, and invariably, they get insulted. They are associated with sinners, they lick up the blood of sinners, they hang out with bad people, they symbolize greed and lack of restraint, and they are used as a euphemism for vicious men and men who mutilate flesh.
So, there you have it folks. If you thought that you have it rough as a human, just be thankful you’re not a dog!
