@SecularOutpost Sincere questions to Christians who own pets: when your pet dies, what religious practices, if any, do you observe? Do you pray for the deceased animal, for the humans who cared for the pet, etc.?
https://twitter.com/SecularOutpost/status/12563799191577559041. Not all pets are alike. As a boy I had hamsters and turtles, but that's quite different from a dog. I'm too much of a mammal to feel emotional affinity with turtles or reptiles. In addition, hamsters lack the intelligence to be very responsive.
By contrast, dogs are bred from social animals, so they form a psychological bond with humans that cats don't. In addition, dogs generally have the IQ for meaningful rapport–although wolves are generally smarter than dogs.
2. As a boy I had a dog I was very fond of. Although I toyed with getting another dog, I never did, in part due to convenience and in part because it was the right dog at the time and the right place. That was an ideal combination I couldn't duplicate, so that's a nostalgic part of life which is unrepeatable. If I have an ideal experience, I don't feel the need to duplicate it. It's enough to have one ideal kind of experience and make the most of that.
3. I didn't replace my dog in part because I didn't think it would be fair to my dog to share me with someone else. I was all she had.
4. I missed my dog after she died. I had her euthanized after she had a stroke. It was a snap decision. With the benefit of hindsight I would have taken her home for a few days for a proper farewell. Held her in my lap. Stroked her face. Then taken her back to the clinic to be euthanized.
5. My grandmother predeceased my dog. Even though my grandmother was incomparably more important and even though I adored my grandmother, I initially missed my dog more than my grandmother.
That's in part because I saw my dog every day, whereas my grandmother moved out of town. In addition, it was a resilient time of life. And I was sure I'd be reunited with my grandmother.
6. My attitude at the time reflected social, emotional, spiritual, and psychological immaturity. With the passage of time you can miss people more than shortly after they died. You have more time to reflect on the loss. Death has a cumulative effect and a retrospective effect. The significance of death can loom larger in hindsight.
7. It's funny that Scripture has so little to say about certain things, like family reunion or the death of children. Scripture doesn't promise reunion with Christian pets. By the same token, it doesn't forbid it. I had a few nice dreams about my late dog.
8. There was a time when I prayed for reunion with my dog. I stopped doing that after her death was overtaken by the death of close relatives. It would dishonor the separation to pray for her when there were far more significant losses to pray about. I prioritize the dearly departed I pray for. I'm grateful for the dog I had, and would be grateful to have her back, but that's far behind other things. It'll take care of itself one way or other. It doesn't preoccupy my hopes. Death is a sifting process to find out what we should really cherish, long for, and look forward to.
9. I've discussed retroactive prayer on several occasions. For instance:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2008/08/praying-for-future.html
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2009/04/praying-for-past.html
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2010/03/gods-time-travelers.html
10. If I think one or more of my relatives died in the faith, I can pray about them in the sense of praying for reunion with them when I die. Pray that they are waiting at the end of my journey to greet me.
11. If I'm unsure that one of my relatives died in the faith, I can still pray for them after they died, not in sense of postmortem salvation, but in the sense that I can pray for the victim of mine cave-in. By the time I hear about the mine cave-in, they're probably dead or alive. I'm not asking for God to bring them back to life. I'm asking that they survived the accident.
Even though it's a past event, it's not too late to pray since God isn't bound by the timing of my prayer–so long as the outcome is unknown.
12. In the case of animals, it's possible that every animal has a temporary existence. There's no afterlife for any animal.
Or it's possible that God makes exceptions for Christian pets. Since animals aren't sinners, since animals aren't damned, to pray that God will restore a Christian pet to life in the world to come carries no implication of postmortem forgiveness.
13. There's a conceptual distinction between:
i) The dead praying for us
ii) Praying to the dead
iii) Praying for the dead
Apropos (i), it's possible that dead Christian relatives pray for us. But we have no evidence that's the case, and it would be presumptuous to ask them to pray for us. Just pray to God/Jesus.
Apropos (ii), there are different scenarios, but one example might be telling a dead Christian relative that you look forward to seeing them against. You hope for reunion.
It's verbalizing a wish about them, directed at them. It doesn't presume that they can actually hear you. It's analogous to talking to someone in a coma, or someone with senile dementia, or brain cancer, or autism, or a sleeping child. You don't know how much of anything gets through to them. That's up to God.
Apropos (iii), that's traditional in the context of prayers to change the situation of the dead after they die. Purgatory, postmortem salvation. For theological reasons, I reject that. But I do think retractive prayer is logical in some situations.
