A friend gave me a smile the other day by reminding me that a dog says,
You pet me, you feed me, you shelter me, you love me, You must be God.
But,
A cat says: You pet me, you feed me, you shelter me, you love me, I must be God.
Later googled the quote to see if I could find out where it came from and found a lot of references including books and seminars that use these imagined differences between cats and dogs to describe how similar approaches to God show up in us.
The thought reminds me too of some of the conversations I had last week while recording Discover the Word programs with Haddon and Alice. We are working through the Sermon on the Mount together and seeing once again how all of the things Jesus says there about i.e. salt, light, anger, lust, divorce, and the taking of oaths are not meant to provide “the last word” on the subject, but rather to bring us back to the foundational attitudes that begin with “blessed are the poor in spirit”…(i.e. those who recognize their poverty of spirit and need of the grace of God.)
We’ve seen together over and over how all of the elements of the Sermon on the Mount that follow “the beatitudes” (5:1-12) can help to bring “the Pharisee in us” to our knees… so as to see our need of “Christ in us”… who gives us a hungering and thirsting for better relationships with our God and others.
So while I fear that Dog and Cat Theology could be taken as an unintended insult to cat lovers, I hope this morning that it can be taken as a smile… and a reminder of how important it is to come back again and again to an awareness that all of the provisions of God whether they be food, clothing, or moral knowledge—are not meant to turn us into little gods… but into grateful worshipers.