A Dog With Soul
Stories
Vision Stories
True Accounts Of Visions, Angels, And Healing Miracles
Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, "As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you...." (vv. 8-10)
When I lived in Tanzania, one day I was in the parking lot of a game park. People were milling around. In the background, watching our every move, were baboons waiting for any scrap of food to be dropped.
One baboon apparently got tired of waiting. He scrambled on all fours across the parking lot and leaped onto the back of a Land Rover. Nobody was in the vehicle, the people having gone into the park office. With one hand, the baboon opened the rear door, got into the car, came back out a moment later with a box of cookies, and sprinted for the trees. I was impressed.
When we realize there are some animals who exhibit intelligence and other human-like behavior, the question naturally arises: Does an animal have a soul?
What is a soul?
A British officer in the Battle of Lake Erie, in 1812, lost an arm and a leg. He wrote to his fiancee back in England, telling her what he looked like and offering to release her from the engagement. She wrote back that so long as there was enough of him to contain a soul, they would marry.
A soul is that something about a person which is still that person no matter what else changes. In the Bible, the Hebrew and Greek words for "soul" are from the words meaning "to breathe," as though the soul is the very breath of life in a person. A soul also has a relationship with God, as in the creation story, where we are made in the image of God.
So, does an animal have a soul? If not a soul, there may at least be something spiritual. It is arrogant to think that God works only through human beings.
Consider a story from the life of nineteenth century naturalist John Muir. Born in Scotland, Muir grew up in Wisconsin, near Portage. He explored Alaska with a party of American Indians, and a member of the party owned a short, black and white dog. One evening, Muir went off on his own, climbing over a glacier, and the dog trailed after him. After hours of hiking, they came to a wide crevice. As night was falling, rather than spend hours going around the gaping hole, Muir cut steps into the sheer side of the glacier wall and descended to a slender ice bridge, leading the dog step-by-step. A slip would have sent both to their deaths.
At one point, the ice bridge was only four inches across. When they finally had gingerly crossed the bridge and climbed back to the top of the glacier, Muir reported (and his biographer Linnie Marsh Wolfe wrote) that the dog was jubilant.
The dog, named Stickeen, gave out "a gush of canine hallelujahs!" Delivered from peril, Stickeen literally howled with glee. Muir said, "... he shrieked and yelled as if saying, 'Saved! Saved! Saved!' "
This is more than the behavior of instinct!
Days later, when Muir would be leaving the others in the party, he sat with the brave little dog on a wharf, saying farewell. When Stickeen was taken by his owner, "crying and struggling" into the canoe, "John Muir stood on the wharf, gazing after the small dark figure of the dog leaning over the stern of the [canoe] moaning for the friend he would never see again."
Twenty years later, in 1899, Muir was on a ship sailing past that same shoreline. He was sailing with a party of sportsmen and explorers returning from the Arctic Circle. While they were throwing a party below deck, Muir quietly went up to the railing so he could look at the wharf where he had said farewell to the dog, Stickeen.
"There (he paid) silent tribute to the brave little mongrel dog who, over there on the back of a dim white glacier, had followed him across the icy abyss."1
To think that a person could be so deeply touched by the company of an animal, who would dare say that the spirit of God is not involved?
____________
1. Linnie Marsh Wolfe, The Life of John Muir, Son of the Wilderness (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1945), pp. 218, 219, 287.
When I lived in Tanzania, one day I was in the parking lot of a game park. People were milling around. In the background, watching our every move, were baboons waiting for any scrap of food to be dropped.
One baboon apparently got tired of waiting. He scrambled on all fours across the parking lot and leaped onto the back of a Land Rover. Nobody was in the vehicle, the people having gone into the park office. With one hand, the baboon opened the rear door, got into the car, came back out a moment later with a box of cookies, and sprinted for the trees. I was impressed.
When we realize there are some animals who exhibit intelligence and other human-like behavior, the question naturally arises: Does an animal have a soul?
What is a soul?
A British officer in the Battle of Lake Erie, in 1812, lost an arm and a leg. He wrote to his fiancee back in England, telling her what he looked like and offering to release her from the engagement. She wrote back that so long as there was enough of him to contain a soul, they would marry.
A soul is that something about a person which is still that person no matter what else changes. In the Bible, the Hebrew and Greek words for "soul" are from the words meaning "to breathe," as though the soul is the very breath of life in a person. A soul also has a relationship with God, as in the creation story, where we are made in the image of God.
So, does an animal have a soul? If not a soul, there may at least be something spiritual. It is arrogant to think that God works only through human beings.
Consider a story from the life of nineteenth century naturalist John Muir. Born in Scotland, Muir grew up in Wisconsin, near Portage. He explored Alaska with a party of American Indians, and a member of the party owned a short, black and white dog. One evening, Muir went off on his own, climbing over a glacier, and the dog trailed after him. After hours of hiking, they came to a wide crevice. As night was falling, rather than spend hours going around the gaping hole, Muir cut steps into the sheer side of the glacier wall and descended to a slender ice bridge, leading the dog step-by-step. A slip would have sent both to their deaths.
At one point, the ice bridge was only four inches across. When they finally had gingerly crossed the bridge and climbed back to the top of the glacier, Muir reported (and his biographer Linnie Marsh Wolfe wrote) that the dog was jubilant.
The dog, named Stickeen, gave out "a gush of canine hallelujahs!" Delivered from peril, Stickeen literally howled with glee. Muir said, "... he shrieked and yelled as if saying, 'Saved! Saved! Saved!' "
This is more than the behavior of instinct!
Days later, when Muir would be leaving the others in the party, he sat with the brave little dog on a wharf, saying farewell. When Stickeen was taken by his owner, "crying and struggling" into the canoe, "John Muir stood on the wharf, gazing after the small dark figure of the dog leaning over the stern of the [canoe] moaning for the friend he would never see again."
Twenty years later, in 1899, Muir was on a ship sailing past that same shoreline. He was sailing with a party of sportsmen and explorers returning from the Arctic Circle. While they were throwing a party below deck, Muir quietly went up to the railing so he could look at the wharf where he had said farewell to the dog, Stickeen.
"There (he paid) silent tribute to the brave little mongrel dog who, over there on the back of a dim white glacier, had followed him across the icy abyss."1
To think that a person could be so deeply touched by the company of an animal, who would dare say that the spirit of God is not involved?
____________
1. Linnie Marsh Wolfe, The Life of John Muir, Son of the Wilderness (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1945), pp. 218, 219, 287.
