People are made in the image of God and have a soul that will live somewhere forever. Pets are not made in the image of God and when they die, well, no one wants to say for sure because of all the pet lovers out there but let’s just say they’re not the same as people. People matter more than animals. This is the clear teaching of Scripture and we shouldn’t blush or hesitate when we say it.

Living in a reasonably large city like Indianapolis I can see the signs are everywhere. In fact, once you notice it, it becomes hard to unsee—dogs are the new kids. We take our kids to play on a playground and with a small handful of other families and watch countless individuals and couples walking their dogs. We see Starbucks offering treats for dogs, but not having anything special for children. Then there’s the dog parks. I had never really heard of a “dog park” before moving to Indy. In my first few years here, I drove by my first dog park and thought it was a little odd. That was about six years ago. Now they are popping up everywhere. 

People today go so far as to call themselves “dog parents,” and some of them get real offended if you tell them being a dog parent is not the same thing as being a real parent. Recently elected DNC vice-chair David Hogg once said the quiet part out loud, or at least louder than most people are willing to say it. In a series of tweets from September 2022, Hogg stated, 

Kids are the new boats 

Pets are the new kids

Plants are the new pets

Let me explain…

Like yes kids are nice but most people can’t afford them so it’s nice to have friends with one but not have one yourself. Pets are the affordable version of kids today for Millennials and Gen Z and plants are now the more affordable plants. 

Like the number of people I know who literally throw big actual birthday parties for their dogs that they have friends invited and everything is awesome but also very telling of our changing view of having children and our economic condition.

Like me? I’m never planning on having kids. I would much rather own a Porsche and have a Portuguese water dog and golden doodle. Long term it’s cheaper, better for The environment and will never tell you that it hates you or ask you to pay for college.

I disagree with almost everything that Hogg wrote, with one exception. Dog birthday parties are indeed very telling of our changing view of having children.

Why does this matter?

God loves people, and even after the fall He sees new human life as a beautiful thing. God’s first command to humanity was to fill the earth (Genesis 1:28). God made people, and He liked them so much that His first command was for them to make more people. After the disaster of the fall, things got so bad that God wiped humans off the face of the earth, but He didn’t give up on people. In fact, He reiterated this first command to Noah and his children – “Make more people and fill up the earth” (Genesis 9:1-2). As we continue through Scripture, we see God blessing Israel by multiplying them (Exodus 1:7, 20) and promising to do so even more if they continued to obey Him (Deuteronomy 6:3; 7:13, 8:1). The Pentateuch sets up the foundation for the rest of the Bible, and when we get to the end of the Pentateuch we find that God really loves people.

Satan, on the other hand, hates people. He hates God, and therefore He hates people made in the image of God. Throughout the book of Genesis, and throughout the Bible, Satan is the one who seeks to destroy the seed, the offspring. This is in part because he is trying to stop Christ from coming, the ultimate Seed of the woman who will crush his head (Genesis 3:15). But I think it is also because he hates God, and so he hates those made to look like God. Call me a tin foil hat if you must, but I believe that beneath the desire to not have children and to instead replace them with dogs is a Satanic impulse that wants to see fewer and fewer people. I’m not saying that every dog parent is a Satanist, but rather that the spirit of our age, which sees puppies as preferable to people, is being driven by the prince of the power of the air, who we know is at work in the sons of disobedience (Ephesians 2:2).

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