Dogs are not children
I recently turned 70, and it’s prompted quite a reflection. When I was a young man, just 20 years old, my generation was committed to being radical and rebellious. Our vision was to turn the world upside down, which, for us, meant rejecting traditional paths like marriage and having children. We thought we were breaking free.
But now, at 70, I look at the world today, and I realize something profound. If I were 20 years old today, and I truly wanted to be radical, rebellious, and live a countercultural life – to genuinely turn the world upside down in the sense of doing good, God’s will for our lives – it would mean embracing those very things my generation rejected. It would mean getting married in my twenties, not my thirties, and having three, four, five, six, even seven children if that’s what God blessed me with. That, my friends, would be truly radical and rebellious in our current cultural climate.
Today, we need to confront some unsettling realities about how we’re living, particularly the way we treat our children and our pets. We’re living in a time when we have people treating babies as dogs and, conversely, dogs as babies. And I can tell you, that is not a good thing.
The Modern Delusion: Pets as Children, Children as Disposable
This contrast has left me both depressed and excited at the same time. Depressed by the trends, but excited by the opportunity for us to respond prophetically. I was struck by some reading about the alarming lack of birth rates all over the world. This immediately brought to mind a dystopian novel from 1992 by P.D. James, titled The Children of Men.
In James’s chilling vision of the United Kingdom in 1995, the last naturally born baby enters the world, marking the beginning of a mass infertility crisis. From that point on, no one can conceive naturally, and all artificial means fail. Humanity is living out its last generation. But here’s the remarkable detail P.D. James observed: people, driven by a natural instinct to reproduce and care for something beyond themselves, began dressing up their puppies and kittens in children’s clothes, pushing them in strollers through streets and parks. This, she suggested, was how people expressed that deep-seated need in a world devoid of children.
I believe that same force is powerfully evident in our world today, especially as we reject having children, often through abortion. One of the most stark and frankly, unbelievable, signs of our times comes from a Newsweek headline: for the first time ever, South Korea sold more pet strollers than baby strollers. Can you imagine such a thing? I honestly didn’t even know what a pet stroller was until I looked it up. While I might not see them often, they’re becoming increasingly common, especially in parts of the world where having children has been widely rejected.
South Korea, for example, has one of the lowest birth rates globally, plummeting to .72 when you need 2.1 for a stable population. This means their economy faces collapse within decades, with half their population projected to vanish within 50 years. Many other nations face a similar fate.
My generation, the baby boomers, grew up under the delusion of a “population problem”—that there were too many people in the world. That was a delusion. Today, young people are living under their own profound delusions. Proverbs 14:12 warns us: “There’s a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death”. Every generation concocts its own ideas about what is life-giving and fulfilling, but these turn out to be empty wells, broken cisterns. They lead to vanity, emptiness, and brokenness.
One of the clearest signs of the current delusions for Gen Z, I believe, is this tragic inversion: they now treat dogs as babies and babies as dogs. It’s a sad, harsh reality. My generation, I admit, promoted delaying or abandoning marriage, and began viewing children as a bother rather than a blessing. We haven’t left a great inheritance. Gen Z has taken our delusions and, as I like to say, “put them on steroids”. Now, it’s common to see dogs being strolled around, treated as children, while the very concept of abortion treats human beings as if they are animals that can simply be disposed of, like a cat, dog, cow, or pig. This, in my estimation, is the central crisis of our times.
The Biblical Blueprint: God’s Design for Fulfillment
So, what can we learn from these observations? Number one, we must look to what the Bible says is the truth, not the delusion. The truth is that God has designed human life to be fulfilled in pouring ourselves out into the lives of others. Self-seeking people end up empty. But those who pour themselves out into others find themselves filled up in the process. That’s how God designed us.
When it comes to marriage and family, we read in Genesis 1:28: “And God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it'”. When the Bible says “God blessed them,” it means God created a path for them to be happy. This isn’t superficial happiness, like a birthday party. It’s a deeper happiness, pointing toward a lasting sense of joy and fulfillment in life. God designed life to be fulfilling through the fundamental things of marriage and having children, in addition to the labor we produce. Every generation, sadly, twists these basic, life-giving ideas into delusions that ultimately lead to death and emptiness. Genesis 1:28 reveals the path to ultimate and lasting fulfillment, breaking the lie of whatever delusions we’re living under.
The Harsh Reality of Abortion: Denying Humanity
Beyond the delusion of treating our pets as children, we also live in a time where we treat babies as animals that can be disposed of. This is the stark reality behind abortion. Abortion fundamentally denies the humanity of the child and treats it as something you can discard, much like cutting your hair or fingernails.
However, there’s another crucial reality about abortion: our human nature will not allow us to reduce it to something as simple as a haircut. Our whole body registers a reaction against it, even if we intellectually rationalize it. And while our bodies might find other ways to express that natural instinct to care for children (like treating dogs as babies when we don’t have children), our bodies react profoundly the other way when we treat babies as dogs.
All the science and research on the mental health consequences following abortion strongly suggest what the Bible implies: we are not able to treat our babies as animals that can be disposed of and simply get away with it. The indications of what happens to couples involved in abortion are alarming. They face a much higher risk for anxiety disorders, depression, alcohol use and abuse, marijuana use and abuse, and even suicide behaviors. When all the studies are compiled, the risk factors are quite concerning. You’re at a 34% higher risk of suffering all kinds of anxiety disorders.
Couples who have experienced abortion often describe how their mental and even physical health began to react against their decision. They made a choice they thought would benefit their lives—their careers, their reputations—but in the end, it led to death and delusion. Many suffer from anxiety disorders, often internalizing it as divine punishment if other things go wrong in their lives. Another significant risk is depression; 37% of men and women report increased levels of depression following an abortion. Often, people try to medicate this anxiety and depression through alcohol and marijuana. Some even try to have another baby, believing they can replace the one they lost, as if a human being can be replaced. Ultimately, as these consequences catch up, it can lead to suicidal ideation or even suicide itself. These are the tragic outcomes when we treat human beings as animals and dispose of them, rather than recognizing them as eternal human beings.
The Deception of Career Idolatry and Success Showers
This brings us to a fundamental question, as Francis Schaeffer framed it: “How should we then live?”. How do we, as Christians, respond in a fallen and broken world to these moral crises and delusions?
My generation, in our twenties, often wrestled with balancing career and work with marriage and family. Psalm 127 was profoundly helpful to me during that time. Verse two says: “It is vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, for he gives to his beloved sleep”. This passage is a clear rebuke to anyone who makes their career an idol. The idea that if I just work harder, longer, put in more hours, I can climb the corporate ladder and achieve self-fulfillment through success is a delusion.
Today, believe it or not, we now have “success showers”. People who have achieved a certain level of career success by setting aside things like marriage and children are now turning bridal and baby showers into celebrations of career achievement. They’ve jettisoned the traditional paths that promise fulfillment and created a new one: career success. I believe this, too, will prove to be quite empty over the long term and will not stand the test of time. We won’t find ultimate fulfillment in career success. This is a rebuke to the hardworking person—father, mother, or anyone—who seeks fulfillment solely in endless, anxious toil and a lack of sleep.
Reclaiming True Riches: The Heritage of Children (Psalm 127)
But Psalm 127 doesn’t stop there. It then presents the other side: “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a great reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them; he shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate”.
This passage, particularly directed toward young men, is a powerful reminder that work isn’t everything. In fact, family is probably far more important and fulfilling for us as men, husbands, and fathers than our culture would ever encourage. So, if you truly want to be a radical, countercultural person, Psalm 127 offers a fantastic way to balance work and family. It encourages us not to make work an idol that produces nothing in the end, and certainly not to ignore the fundamental things that bring fulfillment: pouring yourself into the life of another person—your wife, your spouse—and pouring yourself into your children and family. In the end, these actions raise our stature in the community and grant us greater influence when we live a balanced life of work and family.
A Call to Countercultural Living: Responding to Crisis
As Christians today, I strongly encourage us to be prophetic and countercultural. We must not buy into this idea that we should be treating animals as children, or dogs as children, or babies as animals. Instead, we must be bold.
To me, one of the best ways to do that is to join with PassionLife. We are working globally—in China, India, Cuba, Nicaragua, Zambia, and many other places—to help the Church live out this balanced life, doing the work God has called us to do: rescuing the innocent and challenging the next generation of young men and women to trust that the Lord knows what He’s doing when He calls us to trust in Him and walk in His way. I genuinely believe PassionLife is one of the greatest things you could partner with in the world today.
PassionLife’s Global Mission: Rescuing the Vulnerable
If you’re not currently part of a world missions program, if you’re not praying for something, or if you’re not financially committed to such work, then I urge you to think about joining PassionLife. Visit our website, track our journeys, get text updates, and consider becoming a modest monthly donor—$30, $50, or $100 a month. Invest in something hard and exciting.
Right now, we’re doing incredible work in Cuba. As I speak, someone is on their way there, meeting with doctors, taking two brand new ultrasound machines to the island. These units cost us about $6,000 each to purchase, prepare, transport, and train doctors on their use. We’ve also just bought 12 more for Africa. They’re also taking 3,000 fetal models, packed in boxes, to distribute among churches across Cuba. Our goal is to equip everyone in Cuba to become a rescuer to women and couples facing unplanned pregnancies, to help this generation of the Church make a life-saving difference across the entire country, just as we strive to do in the United States.
If you want to witness something truly exciting, look at what God is doing in Cuba. He’s using PassionLife, and people like you and me, to go there and teach people that God says human life has intrinsic value, equal value, exceptional value, and eternal value. This truth motivates us to reach out to mothers and couples contemplating abortion due to difficult circumstances. Instead, we show them they can trust in God as their great provider, the one who provides daily bread, bringing the Church alongside to help them as neighbors loving neighbors.
The results are astounding: babies are born, marriages are strengthened, men and women gain a vision for what it means to be a husband, wife, mother, and father, and good things begin to happen throughout the entire community. We first started coming to Cuba in 2016 because, at that time, the data indicated Cuba had the highest abortion rate of any country in the world. Our goal was to spark Christ-centered, church-driven, indigenously-led pregnancy help movements across the island. And that is exactly what happened! The Cuban church responded in massive ways.
We’ve been thrilled to walk through communities and see these women we had heard about, now rescued, with their babies in their arms, beautiful smiles on their faces, and actually coming to church with their babies. The community around them is witnessing this transformation. With very few resources, the Cuban church rose up and figured out how to serve pregnant women and teach other Christians in their communities how to do the same. If we had been told we would see one pregnancy center open every year for the next ten years, we would have been ecstatic. But in the last year or year and a half, the Lord has multiplied it to more than ten new centers.
When PassionLife first came to Cuba, it was number one in abortion per capita globally. Today, Cuba has dropped to number four. That is an amazing improvement, a breakthrough worth celebrating!. Your partnership in the gospel doesn’t just send us to Cuba; it sends us all over the world, challenging the darkest strongholds of abortion on our planet. Because of your support, PassionLife can crisscross the globe, offering life-saving and life-changing help.
Partnering for Life: Your Role in the Gospel
PassionLife’s work in Cuba is ongoing, and we continue to produce fetal models—another 25,000 to 50,000 this year—that are used globally. These models help people talk to their neighbors, saying, “I’m troubled, I don’t know what to do, I think I’m going to have an abortion.” And the response is, “No, here’s what your baby looks like. Let me help you find God’s provision”. We want to equip hundreds of thousands of people worldwide to view babies with their inherent value—that they are not animals to be disposed of. We aim to reject the trends of our time that elevate the value of animals, particularly how dogs are being treated as children in strollers, while devaluing human life.
I encourage you to visit passionlife.org, sign up for text updates to receive the latest from Cuba, and soon, from Mark’s trip to India, where the gospel of life is penetrating. You can also sign up as a modest monthly donor. On our website, you’ll find a wealth of resources, including “The Four Questions” which you can download for free. These ten simple pages summarize several of my books, providing everything you need to know to respond well to the moral crisis of abortion today, and truly answer Francis Schaeffer’s question: “How should we then live?”.
Conclusion: Declaring the Truth in a Broken World
So, sign up, stay in touch, study, contribute, and become a vital part of the great work of the gospel in our time. Let us declare with conviction: Dogs are not children, and children are not dogs. This generation will discover, perhaps painfully, that rejecting marriage and children leads to an unfulfilled and empty life. Treating your dogs as babies and treating babies as dogs is, ultimately, the way of death.
Just as a compass points north, guiding a lost traveler, God’s Word points us to true north in these confusing times. It shows us the path to genuine fulfillment and purpose, rescuing us from the deceptive allure of societal delusions that promise life but deliver only emptiness.
This article is adapted from the episode transcript.