“The righteous care for the needs of their animals, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel.”
Proverbs 12:10 (NIV)
The English word righteous(ness)appears 76 times in the book of Proverbs, and if you read through those verses in 1 sitting you will discover that righteous(ness) is used in the context of living your life or behaving in such a way that aligns with God’s righteous Law. Righteous(ness) in Proverbs is about governing your life in such a way that your thoughts, words and deeds align with God’s Law, and therefore you are righteous (in right standing) with God.
This gem of a verse brings forward the concept that one of the ways you can identify whether or not an individual is aligning their life with God’s Law is by observing how they treat animals. If they care for the needs of the animals they own, they are demonstrating righteous behaviour, however if a person is known by the degrees of cruelty towards animals, they are likely wicked people who have no interest in aligning their lives with God’s Law.
No doubt animal rights activists would scoff at what I just wrote, for the vast majority of references to animals in the Law are about how to prepare and use them for sacrifice - “kind to animals give me a break” would likely be a mild response. However, a person living their lives completely concerned with glorifying God through their conduct understands that humans were created higher than the animals and have been placed in a position of care over the animals. Proverbs is not speaking here of treating a household pet better than most children in the world are treated, but rather caring for the needs of animals. However far the animal rights activists are from being concerned about being righteous with God, groups of people (whether they are Christians or not) who advocate for meeting the needs of animals reflect the glory of God and the order He placed in His Creation.
This general principle of caring for the needs of your animals is likely what our Lord was referring to in Matthew 12:11 when He asked the Pharisees the rhetorical question; “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out?”. There is no specific Law stating that this was required, but our Lord knew that this was the practice of the people of God and rightly so. The issue was that the Pharisees who would condemn Jesus for helping this man on the Sabbath, would consider themselves righteous for helping their animal on the Sabbath. There is no way that helping an animal is more righteous then helping a human in God’s eyes - the Pharisees have a skewed view of righteousness - and so do many of us when it comes to our attitudes and actions towards animals versus our attitudes and actions towards humans.
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