My Dog Will Be Resurrected Too

I have been thinking about the appointed Old Testament lessons for this second week in the Advent season. In one the prophet Isaiah describes what shall happen when the promised Christ or Messiah comes as a shoot from the apparently dead stump of the family of Jesse, David's father. Using poetic language he writes,

"The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den" (Isaiah 11:6-7). 

Frankly, those images have always disturbed me. They make no sense to me. As much as I like the idea of security and safety for humans and all other creatures, this image of a new creation where bears, wolves, leopards and lions eat grass and straw just blows my mind. How can a bear be a bear and a lion be a lion by turning into a herbivore? They're not built that way. Their whole bodily systems demand other kinds of food. Is the prophet, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, telling me that the entire food chain will be destroyed? It does not make sense to me, based upon what I see around me in the current way the natural world operates.

Is my problem of interpretation unique? And am I pushing language too far, trying to make poetry become literal prose? Perhaps I should simply accept the prophet's language as his inspired image of tranquility and peace in all of God's creation.

My problem is, in fact, not unique at all. C.S. Lewis struggled with the idea of cutting live animals open to study them. In an essay on vivisection he wrote that performing operations on live animals for scientific experiments, particularly when done on the higher animals who have consciousness, i.e. dogs, was completely unjustified.  In his small book "The Problem of Pain" he explored the theology behind his views. He insisted that higher animals are sentient and the idea of animals preying on other animals, especially where their prey is sentient, is contrary to the Creator's original plan for natural things. In that he agrees with Isaiah's vision that in the renewed creation such animals will no longer choose one another for food. They will be content to live of off lower forms of life that are not sentient, incapable of suffering and pain. One can see how he envisioned this future by reading about how he treats sentient and talking animals in his fantasy series, "The Chronicles of Narnia".

Several such animals have been part of our family's life. We name them, take photos of them and live with them for many years. Currently Wee-Z Zacchaeus So-cute  (his full name), a Pekingese-Poodle crossbreed, is a very intimate part of our life. I am inclined to believe that he and Pepper, a Schnauzer-Poodle mix who lived with us for over 18 years before passing away, will be resurrected with us in eternity. I base this conclusion upon the promise that our Lord will one day put all things right and things would not be proper and right without our beloved animals (Romans 8:16-25). They know us and talk with us. We communicate, laugh, play, travel, sleep—and suffer with them and they with us. Eternity will not be eternity without them. And yet I note that dogs, like their ancestral wolves, are apparently natural predators who prefer to eat meat.

Obviously this discussion could get us deep into another related one about scientific experiments with DNA marketing, cross-breeding, cloning, etc., but I'm not going there today. I'm simply wondering what Isaiah was revealing about the wonder that awaits us in the new creation.