How come the animals have to suffer and die?

Question

And the animals have been doing this even before the creation of man.

Answer 1

Since animals have never sinned, I really don't know why. When they suffer, it tends to be at the hands of sinning humans. Thank God for people that do care about the welfare of animals.

Answer 2

If you go with a literal 6-day creation timeline, then the animals were all alive and well when Adam and Eve were brought into the Garden of Eden. Nothing had "suffered", much less died, before the Fall of Man. All the creatures were only a few days old!

When Man was created, he was created as the "head", or effective ruler, of the physical world we know as Earth. Adam's decisions (in running the planet) would affect them all, since among all the creatures, only Adam (and by extension, Eve) had both Intellect and Free Will.

Adam chose to dump God's will, and impose his own. He did this knowing full well that his actions would bring death to the world. That he had been lied to by the serpent was no excuse...he had the whole story from God from the get-go.

It is entirely possible that Man, amongst the creatures, was not intended to die (prior to sin entering the world). We have no data on that, to know for sure. In that case, though, the death of animals would not be attributed to sin, but to an earthly "recycling" of biologic matter. Death could have been possible without the suffering and pain we now see and experience.

But again, we may never really know about what "could" have been. That sucks!

Answer 3

Every living creature suffers and dies. It will change after Jesus returns. There will be no more tears. The lamb will lay down with the lion. They will not eat each other nor will we eat them.
Remember, we lost paradise in the Garden of Eden.

Answer 4

Ummm... to MY understanding, before being cast out of the Garden of Eden, there was NO death on earth... not even animals eating other animals. If you can provide the verses that tell us that animals died before the "Fall of Man" ... please do so, and we can go on from there.


Have a blessed day.

Answer 5

According to Scriptures...There was no death in the world until man sinned.

The curse from sin affect the entire creation...

Answer 6

The same reason people suffer/die.

Answer 7

Yeah we should suffer and die instead! At least we deserve it! I mean come on! The world is over run by those damn humans! I hate humans.

Answer 8

Because if they didn't die, the world would be overrun with rabbits.

Answer 9

What? Who cares it has to happen. Earths cycle.