This is for Chuck who has dealt with bereaved students after their Sunday Schiil teachers have told them that the souls of pet dogs and cats don't go to heaven.

I don't know where Sunday School teachers get the idea that human beings have souls that go to heaven and animals don't. The idea isn't found in the Bible and sounds a lot more like Platonic philosophy to me. The Bible hardly ever mentions souls and many of the assumptions modern Christians have come from Plato and Aristotle, who were greatly admired by Christian writers from Origin to Aquinas.

I did some checking and found only one statement in the Bible that seems to bear on the question.

Ecclesiastes 3:19 reads: "Humans and animals come to the same end--humans die, animals die. We all breathe the same air. So there's really no advantage in being human. None."

I can add that the Hebrew word for breath "ruah" is the same as the word for "spirit." Another acceptable way to translate this passage would be: "...we all share the same spirit."

I have to admit, I'm taking this out of its context to use it like this. Ecclesiastes is trying to take human beings down a peg or two, not to raise animals up. Still, I like the fact that the only passage to say anything at all about this doesn't go along with the wisdom oft quoted by the pious-but-heartless.

The other passage that I usually look to when a child has a question like this is 1 John 4:7-8 which says: "My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn't know the first thing about God, because God is love--so you can't know him if you don't love."

I'll tell a child that their pet loved them. Since love comes from God, their pet must be with God. And I'm not being insincere to make them feel good, I really mean it.

Several of my seminary professors would probably throw fits if they caught me using these passages like this, but I don't really care. Given the choice between a logically consistent but hard-hearted doctrinal statement and an intellectially loosey-goosey belief that feels right I often go for the feeling.

That's something I think theologians sometimes forget. Knowing God is not just an intellectual proposition. The intellectual side of it is very important to be sure but if that's all you have, it causes some serious problems. You come up with theological statements and inflexible doctrines that are cruel and absurd.

The Bible was written by poets who beautifully conveye the heart and soul of the truth they were expressing. Doctrines tend to be that poetry as rewritten by lawyers. It just ain't the same.