Smiting the Pooch
And other lighthearted tales of divine omnibenevolence
This post is by Contributor Timothy Wood.
I’m not here to get deep into the weeds of some super sophisticated theory. It’s pretty easy to get tied in knots and turned around in all that. Things don't always have to be complicated. Theology can work similarly. I’m not a theologian. I live on a one-lane dead-end road between a forest and a cow field. Maybe that’s “street smarts”, but it’s barely even a road, much less a street. Here in Real America™, we like to keep things digestible. You don’t need to dumb it down, but it’s hard to tell if someone really knows what they’re talking about if they can’t explain it in a way that’s relatable. Thus we start with the core of the argument today in the simplest terms possible:
God kills dogs.
There you have it. If you believe in the God of the Bible, that dude definitely kills dogs. We domesticated dogs over 18,000 years ago. They’re a bit of a staple of human civilization, and the Middle East was no exception. If you find yourself thinking “That’s several thousand years before the creation of the universe,” then this story is not for you. Go find a productive and happy place in society that doesn’t involve teaching science to children.
You can try to fight it, but the Bible is a big production and some animals were harmed in the making of this film. Take Sodom and Gomorrah. One of the guys who wanted to rape the angels had a dog. It probably wasn’t a yorkie, but I’d like to imagine it was. It survived the heavenly drone strike and then died of starvation and loneliness. It never wanted to rape an angel. Hump its leg a little, maybe, but not rape. Perhaps you think Sodom deserved destruction because folks were licking each other’s balls. But the dogs were just licking their own balls. If not, you can’t blame them when peanut butter ends up in places it doesn’t belong.
But God didn’t care. He smote them. They were smitten. So if you want to have some kind of in-depth discussion about the Abrahamic deity, this is a base point we both have to agree on. Wake up one morning, sniffing some butts, peeing on things because someone else might have peed on them, barking at the darkness because you have poor night vision. Then bam. Suddenly God smites the living shit out of you for no reason. And it’s not like God only went after bad dogs, either. He wasn’t sparing the righteous dogs while striking down only the canine ISIS members. They were just minding their own business. How rude.
The walls of Jericho were supposed to be so wide you could race NASCAR on top. If there weren’t at least a few dozen dogs in there when Joshua “fit the battle” with his weapons of brass destruction, it would be a true miracle. And don’t even get me started on how many puppers must have drowned in a global flood. In a strange turn of events, nobody with a dog had figured out what a boat was.
At least the golden retrievers in Nineveh got a lucky break. Some vagrant named Jonah showed up reeking of puke and sea mammals and shouting in the streets that the end is nigh. Naturally, the people took him seriously, right up to the king, and changed their entire society overnight in repentance. Those were the days. But I’ll tell you one thing, the local dogs were very relieved. They have a keen nose and can smell brimstone from a mile away.
God’s opinion on dogs shouldn’t be all that surprising. Jesus killed a tree in Mark 11 because he was feeling peckish. It’s a cool flex and gangster as hell, but it doesn’t really stick to the “all loving” branding. It wasn’t even the tree’s fault. Mark 11:13 says it wasn’t the right season for the tree to have fruit. So maybe there’s something up with the guy who is pissed about not finding a free snack in the winter. God also starts a beef in First Samuel because Saul (no relation to the guy from Tarsus) refuses to kill everything that breathes in a conquered city. Nursing babies and donkeys got special mention for death. Who got snubbed? Dogs. You know the city had to have dogs in it, and you know damn well that if they’re going to kill infants suckling from the teet and little lambs (yes, it specifies), they’re gonna kill the dogs too.
Jesus drops his personal diss track in Matthew 7:6:
Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces.
It’s too late, Jay. We already gave dogs the most precious thing we have, our hearts. You never woke me up in the middle of the night just in case the deer outside happens to be a vicious beast. You healed a few blind people, sure, but you know how many blind people dogs have helped? Basically all of them. Who do we get to sniff our drugs when Charlie Sheen isn’t around? Dogs. We have dogs trained to sniff out bombs, seizures, panic attacks, and even cancer. They will jump through literal hoops to make us happy. Free people of the world, join me now in a prayer. Together we will close our eyes and move our hands in a circular motion while reciting the holy words: “Who’s a good boy? Who’s a good boy?”
I’m a big believer in personal freedom. You should be able to find meaning in whatever way fits your life, as long as you’re not infringing on the freedom of others. Maybe you find meaning in a guy who kills dogs. That’s your right, but you do have to come to terms with the dog thing. I mean, shit, at least Michael Vick said he was sorry.
If you worship a god that kills dogs, then we can make peace with that together. Your god is kind of a dick, but you shouldn’t feel that bad. After all, lots of gods are dicks. Zeus turned into a swan and raped a lady… as a swan. The Aztec sun god, Huitzilopochtli, demanded regular human sacrifice just to keep the days coming. And, let’s be honest, Allah ain’t exactly a barrel of laughs, unless roasting infidels with hellfire while endlessly replenishing their skin is your idea of comedy (Quran 4:56).
In the grand scheme of things, if you’re a Christian or Jewish literalist, you really only have two options. The first is that God kills dogs and you’re cool with that. You swerve into the animals when you’re driving at night and not away. The second is that maybe there’s some stuff in that book that’s sort of bad. It’s not the end of the world. The big guy just misread the room a few times. We might even have what you could call an independent moral compass by which we judge the morality of ancient texts.
Whatever works for you.
I’mma go pet my dog while you think it over.
See also: “The Wizards of Bullshit”
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Jonah 4:10-11
In the last two verses of Jonah, God explaining to the prophet he sent that sometimes mercy wins the day and fire prophecies being fulfilled aren’t as important as people AND their animals.
And the LORD said, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night.
And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”