Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 190 | We're Too Obsessed with Our Pets

Episode Date: November 25, 2019

Today I talk about the way we obsess over our pets and how it is ultimately a symptom of godlessness.  Today's Sponsors: Quip is the best way to form good brushing habits. Quip delivers fresh brush heads, floss, and toothpaste refills to your door every three months so your routine is always right. You can get your first refill free at https://Getquip.com/ALLIE Exhausted. Every. Single. Day? Bolster Sleep is my favorite brand for my mattress and pillows. Bolster Sleep has high quality, hybrid mattresses and bedding along with cooling technology for the ultimate nights sleep. To get 15% off your entire purchase, use code ALLIE at: https://bolstersleep.com/#

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.

Hey guys. Welcome to Relain. Well, happy Monday. Did everyone have a great weekend? I hope so. And you're looking forward to Thanksgiving. Maybe you're not looking forward to Thanksgiving. Maybe you hate Thanksgiving.

Maybe you don't have a good relationship with your family. And if so, I am thinking about you this holiday because I do know the holidays. can be stressful, especially if you're going through a hard time. Maybe you lost someone that you love and these are the first holidays that you are going through and you are not looking forward to it. And I'm with you. I don't want to pretend like holidays are always this easy, fun thing for everyone because that's not always the case. There could be conflict. There could be sadness. There could be all kinds of things going on. But I want you to know that I'm thinking about you and that I really will be. I don't just say this in kind of like a trite way just to say I really will be praying for you.

I'll be praying for all the people that are dealing with any kind of conflict or chaos or sadness or loss or anything like that this Thanksgiving. I hope that all of you are looking forward to it. I hope that all of you are excited about it and all of you are going to enjoy it. But for any of you, even the one person out there who is not looking forward to it, I am thinking about you. And I'm sorry, know that it's over quickly. All of this stuff is difficult as it may be this year.

It's all over quickly. And then you've got a new year. And that's the beautiful thing about seasons, about. time that God has graciously given us is that when difficult things happen, there can be joy in the morning. There can be joy in the new season. There can be a renewal. And we should all be very thankful for that. I do hope that we can all find at least one thing that we are thankful for this Thanksgiving. Even if you don't have any physical things to be thankful for, we can all think the Lord for sending his son Jesus to die for us. So that's the ultimate, that's the ultimate thing

that we can be thankful for. Okay, that's not what we're going to talk about today. We are going to talk about a touchy subject. But, you know, that's what we do on this podcast. We talk about touchy subjects. We talk about things that make people mad. There's probably been at least one episode in the history of relatable that has made you angry at one point. And that's okay. That's what we do. We talk about the controversial stuff because not enough people talk about it, especially from a biblical perspective. There are too many people that are scared to talk about the controversial things. And so Christians end up making their decisions on what to think about these things by listening to celebrities that have no biblical worldview at all. And so we try to

tackle the stuff that I know that all of us are curious about and all of us are wondering what the Bible has to say about them. And today it's animals and the obsession that we have with dogs and pets and all of that. And if we are going to talk about what the Bible has to say about it, I am going to try my best to build a case biblically that it is not biblical, that biblically mighty Christians should not be overly obsessed with animals. And we will talk about what that looks like, why we have that obsession and how we should view animals from a biblical perspective. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe

is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort, we ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people

who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show

right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. I do want to give a little bit of a premise before we get into this because like I said, this is a touchy episode, but we talk about touchy topics

on relatable. that's part of why it's called relatable because I try to answer the questions that a lot of us have, but maybe are afraid to ask her we just don't even know how to address. That's why I take your guys's suggestions so much because I care about the things that you're thinking, the things that you're concerned about, the things that you see in the world, and you're like, I just don't know how to fit this into a biblical worldview. I try my best from God's perspective, from a biblical perspective to do that. Do I get it wrong?

Absolutely. Are there things that I don't know about a million, bajillion things that I don't know? we are learning together and we try our best to fit everything that's going on in the world that we have to make sense up into God's word or we let God's Word inform the things that we think. Now, there are going to be things in all of this, in the vast and the vast plethora of things that there are to talk about, there are going to be things that you disagree with me on. Like I said, I've probably said something or many things that you disagree on with me and that's okay. Every podcast that I love or commentator that I listen to has said at least one thing that I don't

like. Maybe I didn't like how they said it. Maybe I didn't like what they said. Maybe I vehemently disagree. I can think of people in my head right now that I love that I'm a huge fan of that I look to for insight and their perspective for wisdom, knowledge, all of that, who have said things that actually really offend me, that legitimately offend me and that I don't like. But that's okay. I have learned to sift through those things and to say, okay, I didn't like that they said that one thing. I didn't like that they, that they disagree with me there. They said something that I don't agree with, but that's okay. I take the insight where I can. Here's what we need to be careful about, especially with something like this. And the reason why I'm saying this is because I got this reaction when I

talked about this perspective on animals on Instagram the other day. We have to be careful that when someone says something that you disagree with to not characterize that disagreement as an attack on what you believe. It seems to me, like in this day and age, there is a glory of agnosticism. There is a glorification of not knowing. So people want other people to be content with moral relativism. They want other people to be content with saying, you know, I don't really know about this XYZ controversial subject. Whatever makes you happy. You do you. That's what we're supposed to think. Unless we're, of course, on the progressive side of the aisle, unless we're liberals, then we're allowed to be very outspoken and very dogmatic about what we believe. But if it's anything

outside of that, we're supposed to just pretend like we don't really know, like we don't really care, whatever makes people feel good, and that's fine. But when someone speaks up and says, actually absolute truth exists, actually God has something to say about that, actually God cares about this. And here's what the Bible says. Then all heck breaks loose. And we hear people saying that you're a bigot, you're self-righteous, you're a legalist, you are a Pharisee, you're trying to push your views on me. I get that a lot. People who come to my Instagram page, they take the time to listen to one of my five-minute IGTV videos and they say, why are you pushing your views on me? Well, okay, you came to my page. I have the right to say what I want to say.

You have the right to not listen. But it seems to me, so I get this a lot, not just in relation to this animal topic, which I have learned in the past few days is insanely controversial. I've learned that you will do better, sane, you will get less pushback saying it's totally fine to kick toddlers. the head whenever you want to, then saying, hey, humans are actually more important than animals, which is the case that we're going to make today. People will freak out. They will lose their minds. And what I've learned, not just in accordance to this, not just in relation to this, but just in general, is that there seems to be, especially it seems among teenagers, teens, teen girls who come to my page and say, like, I don't like what you have to say.

There's also this other mentality, this other layer of that that I see so often. in these comments from these young women coming to my page, you don't like what I have to say is it's not right that you're saying this. You don't have a right to say this. You're indoctrinating people. You shouldn't be allowed to say this. You shouldn't be allowed to force your views on people. To me, that is another level of intolerance that we're seeing from young people, that they have it backwards. They think that the First Amendment protects their right not to be offended rather than my right or anyone's right to free speech or religious exercise. There is definitely a mentality among young people that their feelings take priority above anything

else. Someone actually commented a young woman, teenager, by the looks of it, commented on my hearing testimony about abortion that I posted last week and started out her long diatribe by saying, I am honestly so offended by this speech. You should go back and listen to my speech. It's only offensive if you don't agree with what I have to say. There's nothing that is ad hominem about it. There are no personal attacks. There's really not an opinion in it either. It is really just, okay, here are the facts of what an abortion is. Here is the logic behind why abortion is wrong. And you, of course, can disagree with that. She starts out by saying that I am highly offended by the speech and then goes on to give her argument for why abortion is okay, which is that

embryos aren't human, that fetuses aren't human, which of course is completely nonsensical. So we cannot have conversations about controversial topics, which we should have conversations about controversial topics, but we're not going to be able to do that if society, if we are unable as individuals to resist hysteria when someone says something that we don't agree with. It's just not going to work. We're not going to be able to live in a free republic if we can't discuss issues without one side growing truly hysterical and so emotional to the point to where they're not making and logical or scientific sense anymore. We can't have conversations. We can't get anything done and that

leads to tyranny. Well, first it leads to anarchy and anarchy then leads to tyranny, which of course, we believe is the direction that the left is going. So when I talk about something, this is not an agnostic podcast. Okay? I'm just telling you right now. It's not an agnostic podcast. We don't believe in moral relativism on this podcast. We believe that there is absolute truth and every single episode that we do is in pursuit of that truth. Like I said, we get it wrong. we definitely get it wrong even though my effort and my aim is to bring everything back to god's word and to have god's word inform everything i do i make mistakes i am totally fallible and when i do get it wrong my hope is that i can be humble correct my wrongs correct my mistakes and take correction

and instruction from you guys but we have to be able to hear something that we disagree with or that we don't like without accusing the other side or accusing me in this case of attacking you or attacking your position. There are all kinds of people who listen to this podcast who reach out to me on a regular basis and say, I don't have the same view as you, but I appreciate your podcasts. I appreciate your reviews. I have atheists that listen to this podcast. I have liberals that listen to this podcast. I've got Catholics. I've got Catholics that listen to this podcast. I have Muslims, Jewish people that listen to this podcast. And I have had people from all of those groups reach out to me and say, I disagree with you on XYZ, but I like hearing your perspective. I appreciate you guys so much.

What I do not appreciate is when I say something and someone leaves a review that says, because you said what you believe as a Protestant or whatever, you're attacking Catholicism or because you said what you believe is a conservative, you're attacking progressivism, which, yes, I have attacked progressivism, not progressives, but progressivism. But you cannot just say just because someone is building a case that you don't like that they are attacking you. You can be offended by you all that you want to, but please allow yourself to, I do the same thing, open yourself up to valuable perspective, discard the things that you don't. But I actually had

someone leave a review the other day that said, I think I'm too sensitive for this podcast. That might be true. This is, like I said, it's not an agnostic podcast. It's not a morally relative podcast. It's not a podcast. It's going to, on most things, on the important things, say, oh, it doesn't matter. You do you think whatever you want to. On some things, yes, there's room for subjectivism. And I think Christians in good faith can discuss and debate almost all of the issues that we talk about. but we are in pursuit of truth. We believe absolute truth exists and we believe that God is the transcendent moral law giver from which we get morality and truth.

Okay, we're going to talk about animals. Let's go ahead and get into all of that. Since I have given you a large premise, because I know I have learned apparently that this is a very controversial topic, you can email me and tell me all you want about what you don't like about this episode. But I think, I think that you are going to appreciate at least some of the perspective that I give, or at least what God's word gives, because if we are Christians, that is where we land. So let me first say, I love animals. I do. I love animals. I love my pets.

I love other people's pets. I love your pets, probably, unless you have an iguana. I don't know. I might like your iguana. I don't know. I'm not sure I'm going to love your iguana, just to be honest. I love dogs. I love cats. I love bunnies. I love horses. I love dolphins. I like gorillas. I like elephants. I love I love elephants. I love animal videos. I love animal pictures. I love we rate dogs. I like doggo's doing things. I like all the Instagram dog accounts. I follow the kitten lady. I like all of that kind of stuff. Okay. I like stories about animals. I want to hear about your animal. I want you to send me pictures of your animal. I love animals. Okay. So let me just tell you that straight up. but I know and have always known the animals are not people.

And therefore, because they're not people, they are not as valuable as people are. We love our pets, but when our daughter was born, they were relegated to second fiddle. They still get plenty of care. They still get plenty of affection and attention. They kind of keep each other company. But they don't occupy our affection and time the way that we used to. And that's okay. That is how it is supposed to be.

That's a good thing. our love for them doesn't even come within light ears of our love for our daughter, and that is exactly how God means it to be. And yet culture seems to be headed in the opposite direction, and instead prioritizes animals not just the same as people, but even higher than people in some cases. And that's just, that's not just me saying this. A vice ran an article last year titled, why millennials are so obsessed with dogs. I mean, that's just true. We are obsessed with dogs. I mean, you can look at social media.

there's a dog park on every corner. Millennials are obsessed with dogs and we're getting married and having kids later and later. The article discusses how we have taken animal obsession to the next level. I mean, man's best friend has been around for a long time, but millennials, we just, we have turned up the notch of animal obsession. So the article says this. None of my friends in their late 20s talk openly about the hopes of having a baby. Rather, we flinch when we see a child walking around out in public on its hind legs. This is just terrible. It's a fluffy friend. We want, one that'll love us, not drain our minimum finances and not get in the way too much. Oh, that just, that alone just makes my blood boil, but we won't get into that right this

second. We'll get into that in a second. So anthropomorphism, the attribution of human characteristics to animals has become the new norm. Our dogs and cats are our so-called babies. There are two states, Illinois and Alaska. They are the first to consider the well-being of animals and custody battles. So that gives them rights as individual. individuals. That's what they're called individuals rather than property. Tony Ellison is a senior staff attorney at the Animal Legal Defense Fund, and he told the journal of the New Republic that recognizing animals as persons entitled to rights has graduated from, quote, a very fringe area of the law to very mainstream just in the last five years. Hasn't everything become crazy in the last five years? In her 2018 book, fellow creatures, there is a Harvard philosophy professor Christine Korskard, who says, the animals are just as important as people. Therefore, they are worthy of many of the same protections under the laws that we have. This theory has actually become a full-fledged reality for at least one animal, Sandra the orangutang who was given the status of a non-human person by Argentinian

Judge Alina Liberatory in 2015. That is true. You can look it up and she now resides in Florida. In 2013, the peer review journal Anthra Zeus published a study by Richard Topolsky, you guys have probably seen this question. It's been posed by Prager You plenty of times. He is a professor at Georgia Regents University. He asked about 500 respondents to question. If a bus were bearing down on a dog and a person and you could only save one, who would you save? A full 40% of respondents, 40% said that depending on how well they knew the person, they would save the dog. So if it was a stranger, they would definitely save the dog. I think it was, I don't know if it was their dog or a dog, but 40% percent.

percent of respondent said that depending on how well they knew the person, they would save the dog. That was 2013. So that was six years ago. My guess is that number would be a lot higher today. I would say that that number is well over half today. The animals have become the sinner of people's lives. Social media accounts galore. Some of them I named and follow myself are dedicated to videos of our pets. Google, if you Google the phrase, humans don't deserve dogs, you will find a dozen articles and YouTube videos explaining why our animals. why our pets are better than we are and more important than we are. We have seen laws in the United States reflect this in 2019. New York passed a law that criminalized the declawing of kittens, which I don't think we should declaw cats, but just let me finish. And legalized abortion through nine months. So the same year that they passed a law declawing kittens, they also passed a law legalizing abortion through nine months. In the same year, the United States or this year, the United States made animal cruelty. federal crime, yet failed to pass a bill to protect babies who survive abortions. We're not even talking about babies inside the womb. Let's first think of this from a practical perspective.

We'll talk about the moral and the biblical perspective. Let's look at this from a practical perspective before we get into the other part of the analysis of what I consider this degeneracy. If humans are considered as important or more important as humans to the point of granting a personhood, under the law to the point of referring to them or thinking of them as individuals, thereby granting them legal rights applicable to people, what is stopping someone from marrying their dog? And people will say, oh, that's a slippery slope, ha, ha, ha. But can you tell them, can you give me a logical basis for why if we consider animals people under the law,

why someone wouldn't be able to marry their dog? Certainly, you're not going to hear any arguments from the people who believe that there are really no sexual ethics at all. If humans are just animals, as animal rights activists say there are a lot of people who make that statement and vegans often say that too, what really is your logical argument for saying that people can't have a romantic relationship with their animal? Because there is also the argument from the same group that animals basically have all of the same abilities and capabilities and functions that humans do. They're just nicer than humans. If all of this is truly the case, what is going to logically or legally stop people from entering into?

unholy matrimony with their gerbil. That's what I want to know. I post this question to someone who was messaging me on Instagram. They were offended by me saying that people are more important than animals on Instagram, which I did last week. And they were saying that this is wrong. And the animals or people or animals rather. And I said, okay, why can't an animal and a person get married? Why can't they be in a romantic relationship? They didn't have a response to that. They said, that's just weird. That's not normal. Well, that's not actually an argument. There are lots of things that weren't normal 10 years ago. We weren't even talking about transgenderism two years ago.

And there are things that are considered normal now. So it's not normal. Really doesn't argue against the logic that inevitably seems to be coming together from considering animals as persons or as individuals. There's a kitten rescuer that I follow. She sells T-shirts that say love knows no species. And I know she doesn't mean it in a weird way, but it did strike me as soon as I saw it.

As strange, I thought, is this the new love is love? Actually, this is why love is love has always been such a stupid phrase. Love is not love. There are lots of different kinds of love that should not be considered love. This should be considered perversion. A 50-year-olds and a 10-year-olds who say that they're in love, that shouldn't be considered love. That should be considered wrong.

Love has a definition. And as we Christians believe, it is best defined by the embodiment of love, the creator of love, the arbiter of what love is and what love isn't, which is God himself. And we'll get into more of that in a second. So that's one practical outcome of elevating animals to the point of personhood. Another is how it affects humans. If animals are individuals and even legally people, hunting is considered murder. Is someone going to get the death penalty or go to life in prison for killing an animal for hunting an elk?

Moking cows would be considered an assault. Are we going to have to get consent from our animals to be able to scratch their belly? I mean, I wouldn't want someone to come up to me and scratch my belly because I'm a human being. If we consider them people, what's our legal relationship with them now? Honestly, a lot of animal rights activists would be totally fine with seeing eating animals or killing animals as assault and murder, but it has serious implications for how we live and what we eat. And these are serious negative implications because people around the world actually need meat to survive no matter what a vegan activist tells you. Also, we have to kill animals in order to feed certain animals like cats and

dogs. So my question is, how would all of that work out? There are a lot of questions that come with as personhood and individuality to animals. And on a practical level, regarding animals as people, is completely nonsensical. It doesn't make any sense. There are too many conundrums. There are too many contradictions. There is, there are too many problems with that. There is a reason why the species have been separate and why we care for them and while you're, why you're never going to listen to a podcast of a dog talking to you about whether or not we ascribe personhood to people, like, or to humans. There's a reason for that. There's a difference. Now, let's talk about this on a biblical level. The way we obsess over animals today is a symptom of godlessness. It's a symptom of

Godlessness. Let me explain. Christians know something that the secular world does not, that human beings and human beings alone, according to Genesis, are made in God's image. That means humans alone have a soul. That means humans alone live forever. That means always in all cases, a human is more valuable than an animal because they are an image bear of God. Even a person with physical disabilities, mental disabilities, or a human in a coma or a human seconds after conception has more inherent worth than the winningness racehorse in the world, strictly because they were made in the image of God. God gave Adam the responsibility of naming the animals, stewarding the earth. Animals were made by God for us, not the other way around.

So as Christians, we can discuss and debate the virtue of veganism. We can talk about how to best care for the earth and how to care for animals, which is something that we should be doing. We can talk about the just punishment for those who abuse animals, but we cannot make the mistake of elevating non-humans to the place of image bears. Jesus uses animals as a parallel to humans and multiple parables, or multiple parables to emphasize the higher value that people have than animals. Matthew 1211 through 12 says this.

He said to them, which one of you who has a sheep, if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out. of how much more value is a man than a sheep. Now, that's not the point of this. He's actually talking about the Sabbath and what we can do on the Sabbath, but he makes the point of how much more value is a man than sheep. This is the God of the universe, the God who created us, Jesus himself, saying this. In Matthew 626, he says, look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not of more value?

than they. Are you not human being of more value than they? Humans have more value to God than animals do. This is clear throughout the biblical narrative. God made us in his image. God's plan of redemption through Christ saves us, not animals. The fact that so many people, Christians included, get this wrong, shows how important it is to ensure that every aspect of our worldview is based on God, the giver of truth, the creator of the universe, the maker of order. It shows how important it is for us to make sure that we are getting our wisdom, our knowledge, and how we view every subject from the word of God. If there is one word that describes our current age, it is this, disordered. It is disordered. People's view of sex is disordered. People's view of sexuality is

disordered. People's view of gender is disorder. People's view of life in the womb is disordered. People's view of animals is disorder. People's view of the family and children is disordered. How the majority of people view the world today is disordered. It is chaos. It is backwards. It doesn't make any illogical sense. And everything, every single thing that we see wrong in our society today is a symptom of ignoring the fact that God created the world. The most cataclysmic, worldview you defining verse in the Bible is this. Genesis 1-1, God created the heavens and the earth. Because if God created the heavens in the earth, then he alone has the authority to say what is and what is it. He alone has the authority to assign value, to give roles to humans as a whole, to give roles

to men and women specifically, to animals, to plants, to the sky, to all of creation. He is also then the author of salvation, he is over all of it. All of it is his jurisdiction. He created all of it. He is in charge. He sustains all of it with the power of his word. Nothing exists without God's active permission. God is in charge of it all.

He defines and assigns and we are to fulfill and obey. When we're talking about the definition of marriage, we're talking about the definition of gender, the differences between men and women, how government should function, how human beings relate to one another, how we should treat children, the role of the family and of parents. We look to God because he created these things. Our over-obsession with animals is another symptom of a disordered worldview that is based not on the will of the God of Scripture, but of the feelings of the God of self.

Our fixation on pets, especially involuntary replacement of human relationships, is selfish. saving your dog over a human stranger is a self-serving choice. Not a compassionate one. The death of that stranger likely affects hundreds of people. So her husband, her children, her parents, her coworkers, her siblings, her church, her friends. The death of your dog affects you and maybe a few other people. While sad, it is sad. I will cry when my dog dies.

While that is sad, you'll be able to get another dog. her kids, that strangers' kids will not get their mom back. It is not a coincidence, in my opinion, that our infatuation over-intatuation with animals seems to have grown at the same time that this whole self-love epidemic has taken center stage. This big reason why we choose pets over people is because pets are easier, both physically and emotionally than people are. Anyone who says that they're not, has not had children.

Yes, they require a certain level of responsibility, a certain level of money, and care, of course, and it's okay to be responsible for them, but not nearly as much as a child or even a friend or a significant other. We don't have to worry about betrayal or rejection or judgment or being pressured to go out and we want to stay in. In exchange for just a tiny bit of effort and commitment on our end to our pets, they give us uninded loyalty, an indeed love, a friend to watch Netflix next to. We get the good end of the deal. We will never have to give up any bad habits for our dogs. We will never have to examine our vices for our cats.

We can be almost as self-centered as we want to be, and our pets will love us just the same. Why? Because they don't know how not to. They love the person who feeds them. They love the person who pets them. They're not interested in our personalities or our hobbies or our dreams or our deepest desires. They know us only instinctively. In this is both their charm, the reason why we love them and why they're so awesome,

but it's also their inherent inability to satisfy us like other humans do. Let me be clear about this. God does care for animals. Of course he does. We read in the passages in Matthew that God meets the needs of animals. He sees them and he hears them. Job 3841 says this. Who provides for the raven its prey when its young ones cry out to God for help and wander about for lack of food?

That is a rhetorical question, but the answer is God. He also has something to say about how we treat animals. Proverbs 1210 says, the righteous care for the needs of their animals, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel. The righteous care for the needs of their animals. We know that people who abuse animals are very likely to end up being murderers. There is something wrong and again, disordered if we view animals strictly as people, as people, well, yes, but as also if we view animals as, as things to be abused. abused and really just used or exploited. We can talk about better conditions for dairy and beef cows. Like, I'm open to having that conversation. That stuff actually does break my heart. We can talk about problems with factory farming. I do believe that cruelty goes on at these farms, that is reprehensible. I believe that God actually cares about that. Our kindness should absolutely include animals, but animals are still subjugated to our rule. It should be a compassionate rule, but it is a rule nonetheless. They are ours to use and to care for them because they are less

valuable than we are in God's eyes. Yes, we are permitted to eat them. There is certainly no biblical mandate against eating animals in the Bible. The Bible does not speak to the virtues of veganism. That's just not an argument that you're going to be able to make that our compassion for animals has to extend to not eating them. God is clear. Human beings are more important, more inherently valuable than animals are. And that needs to be reflected in our life. If we are putting off children strictly for animals, if we are denying obligations and responsibilities to people in exchange for animals, there's a problem for. There's a problem for that. Abortion should break our heart a lot more than animal cruelty. Our time would be better spent

at homeless shelters than animal shelters. And again, I'm not saying that you shouldn't volunteer at all. I'm not saying that you shouldn't spend any money or spend any time helping animals, but it should not replace, supersede, or come even close to the tangible, monetary, timeways, compassion, and help and service that you are giving to people that does not reflect God's heart. If God's heart is more for people than it is for animals, then our hearts should be too. That means the things that we care about, the things that we cry about, the things that we donate to, the time that we spent, the thoughts that we have, the responsibilities that we are given, we are obligated to our fellow man a lot more and a lot more seriously than we are to our animals.

I hope all of that made sense. Again, I know a little controversial and I'll probably get some pushback on that. Feel free to let me know. This is what I believe, to be a very clear and easy subject, honestly, for us to approach from a biblical perspective. I don't really, I don't really see how you can make a biblical argument to elevate animals to the same place as human beings. But I am, of course, open to your perspective. I've had conversations, got tongue-tied conversations about this with other people recently. And I am happy. I'm happy to converse with you. Thanks for listening. Love you guys. I will be back here on Wednesday, and then it's Thanksgiving. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest

issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives, and we don't offer false comfort, we ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular.

This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed,

you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.