aren't people more important than animals?

Our regular contributor Dean Ohlman of RBC Ministries and The Wonder of Creation posed the following question at SustainLane's Creation Care community as part of his series "Questions Evangelicals Ask About the Environment," with a rousing response:

Isn’t it more important to care for people than to care for creation?  (or “Aren’t people more important than animals?”)

For Christians there is no question that people are more valuable to God than animals.  Jesus clearly states this in His Sermon on the Mount: “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not much more valuable than they?” (Matt. 6:26).  This question, however, is often asked in an attempt to make creation care appear to be non-biblical.  Proper earth stewardship rarely involves choices between the needs of people and the needs of the remainder of the creation.  This is because the health and life of people and animals both depend upon a sound ecosystem.  We have learned, for instance, that animal extinctions are often the first signs of a distressed environment—an environment that will ultimately become unhealthy even for people (like dead coal-mine canaries signaled miners about the presence of odorless, but lethal, methane gas). 

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Billy Graham on caring for animals

Just as we're answering the question whether Christians are supposed to have other priorities than caring for animals, I was very happy to learn (via Denise LaChance and Our Hen House) that Billy Graham recently answered a similar question at The Christian Post.  The legendary evangelist and much-respected Reverend Graham's guest column from May 17th is titled "Is God Interested in Animal Care?"  

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a sense of guilt ...

Following up on yesterday's post, Croatian artist Lidija Ivanek (whose imaginative work we've featured previously) writes a very honest and encouraging note about her own wrestling with the question whether caring for animals is a worthy calling for Christians ...

When I was growing up, I always wanted to be near animals.  But that was often impossible.  My family lived in a flat, and my father, well ... he didn't like the smell, the fur, the dust, etc.  Then I became a veterinarian, but it seemed that all around me, all the time, there were people who didn't approve of my love for animals, or my care for them in a gentle and loving way. 

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faq #2, but don't we have other priorities as christians?

"Is caring for animals a valid Christian concern?" was the first in our recently begun frequently asked questions series.  Another question which seems to come up almost as quickly, especially when just beginning to wonder how caring for animals fits into the rest of our walk and community of faith, is something along the lines of, "But don't we have other priorities as Christians?"

Even as we come to understand and believe that animals are loved by their Creator, and that He cares about how we treat them, it still seems hard to know exactly where to place this issue on the scale of spiritual significance, and what lengths we should go to in responding to it. 

I felt the same way less than four years ago, as I was beginning to find myself more and more drawn to animals, and affected by the glimpses I caught of their suffering.  It made to sense that I was supposed to love and care for my own pets, and give myself freedom to invest in a cause like pet rescue and adoption.  But I honestly struggled to know, especially sitting in seminary classes surrounded by fellow students preparing for some form of ministry, to what extent I could ask or expect other Christians to be concerned with animal causes. 

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