Because of Orelha

I am writing this because of Orelha.

Because what happened to him in Santa Catarina (Brazil) crossed a line that words struggle to reach.
Because a dog who lived for ten years cared for by a community — known, loved, protected — was brutally beaten and tortured by six teenagers, with a level of cruelty that no one seems able to process without feeling physically ill.

Because reading the details feels unbearable.
Because looking away feels wrong.

Orelha was not just a stray dog.
He was a presence. A familiar soul. A life woven quietly into the fabric of a neighborhood. And he was innocent.

There is no philosophical shortcut that makes this acceptable.
There is no spiritual explanation that excuses it.
This was evil: plain, raw, and human-made.

And the hardest question keeps surfacing:
Where was God?
Why does God allow something like this to happen to a being that cannot defend itself, cannot understand hatred, cannot choose cruelty?

I don’t believe God wanted this.
I don’t believe God watched with indifference.
I don’t believe cruelty reflects His heart.

What I do believe is that we live in a world that is deeply broken… a world where freedom, when detached from love, can become monstrous. And animals suffer not because they are forgotten by God, but because they are trapped in the consequences of human moral collapse.

Animals are the purest innocents among us.
They do not plot harm.
They do not corrupt.
They do not choose violence.

That is precisely why their suffering feels so unbearable, it violates something sacred inside us.

And yet, I hold onto this:
God sees what we cannot bear to see.
God feels what we cannot carry alone.

The Bible says that all creation groans, not as something disposable, but as something awaiting restoration. Animals are not outside that promise. They were part of the original harmony, and I cannot believe that a God who creates out of love creates only to abandon.

I don’t know exactly what happens in the final moments of an animal’s life but I trust that mercy is present where cruelty ends. That pain does not have the last word. That innocence is not lost into nothingness.

Orelha’s suffering does not define his story.
The violence done to him does not erase the goodness of his life, nor the love he gave and received.

What defines this moment now is us.

How we respond.
What we refuse to normalize.
What we choose to protect.

Our grief is not weakness.
Our rage is not misplaced.
Our inability to “just move on” is a sign that something inside us is still alive.

If this story breaks your heart, it means your heart still works.

And if there is any place where God is unmistakably present, it is in the tears, the outrage, the compassion, and the refusal to accept a world where cruelty goes unanswered.

Orelha mattered.
His life mattered.
And our response to his suffering matters too.