Eating Mercifully: Why I became a Vegetarian

[This is a back-dated post with a link created for friends and family to read, and this post has nothing to do with governemnt...I repeat, this is not a post having anything to do with politics or economics! And today's date is August 5, 2009.]

We’re all on a journey of discovery of God’s will for our lives. Sometimes that journey brings surprising turns, but just so long as you are walking in the light that God has shown you, you can rest assured that you are on the right path despite the unexpected routes you end up on. So let me testify to where God has taken me recently. Please don’t view this as an attempt to “convince” you to agree with ME. Inevitably with an announcement like this, the question will come, “why did you decide to do that?” So, here’s my answer. If you weren’t going to ask that question, then forgive my unsolicited answer, and do not feel pressured to read this. Also, forgive me for leaving out scripture references; I’m just writing this stream of consciousness.

The focus of our journey should always be Jesus. The best life will be lived with eyes fixed upon him, because he is the author and finisher of our faith. As I have been pondering the character of our God, particularly as revealed in the person of Jesus, I have more deeply and clearly understood the truth that God is love.

God even cares for the animal kingdom, as Jesus says that his father in heaven takes care of the birds of the air.

And this brings me to the subject of the latest turn in my walk with God. It has everything to do with the animal kingdom. In Genesis, before the fall, God gave mankind “dominion” over the earth (not other people, just the earth) including the animal kingdom. This responsibility, given to Adam in the Garden of Eden was not to be one of violent lordship, but we were to be caretakers of the creation. In certain respects, as God was to us, so we were to be to the creation. And so we ask, what is God like? God is love. And thus we should care lovingly for the creation.

Before the flood, this meant that mankind would cultivate and eat fruits, grains, legumes, and vegetables. But there was no death in the Garden of Eden, so animals were not killed for food. Likewise, after the Fall until the time of Noah, the Bible tells us that we ate fruits, grains, legumes and “green plants,” but not meat until the time of Noah. God said that his people would eat only plant-based foods for the first 2000 years of human history, up until the time of Noah. Also, we are told in the Bible that at the New Earth (after the Great Resurrection, when we live together with our new, eternal bodies) we will eat fruit from the trees in the New Jerusalem, and we will tend our own gardens. Again, there will be no death, as this will be Eden restored, so we will not be killing animals and eating them.

It seems that God’s ideal diet for mankind—based upon how it was in perfection in Eden and how it will be in perfection in the New Earth, and even the post-Fall world until the flood—is that we not eat animals. And it makes sense in light of the character of God. God is love, and we are to reflect that character toward his created beings, including the animals. Thus, it is not his ideal that we kill and eat animals. I’ve decided to conform to that ideal in my own life in this area.

One might ask, why then, did Jesus eat meat? Certainly, after Noah and through the New Testament, God permitted us to eat clean meats (no pork or shellfish). How then can you conclude that eating meat is anything less than God’s ideal if he permitted it from Noah right through the book of Acts?

Well, in the scriptures, there are times where God accommodates where man is at, rather than pushing man toward His ideal immediately. He leads us one step at a time into a knowledge of him, rather than dragging us kicking and screaming too fast for us to handle. I like the analogy of light as knowledge: if you’ve been living in a dark cave, immediately stepping out into the noontime sun is not a pleasant or revealing experience—it’s blinding and horrible, and you would run back into the cave. So, God doesn’t overwhelm us with his truth. Are these just my opinions about how God works, or do we have biblical evidence of God’s progressive (rather than immediate) revelation to us? Well, consider polygamy in the ancient times of the Old Testament and slavery even into the New Testament. They were permitted for a time, and God didn’t address it, perhaps because we weren’t ready. No Christian would argue that slavery is acceptable, even though God never directly dealt with it in the bible. So, this is one possible explanation of why God didn’t push the issue on meat during the Bible times, despite the fact that vegetarianism is a logical conclusion based on the principles of God’s character and what things were like and will be like in perfection.

Another explanation of why Jesus, for example, didn’t push mankind toward his ideal of ceasing the killing and eating of animals is because it was so ingrained in the culture, that to suggest otherwise would have been absurd. Jesus would have been laughed out of Galilee and Judea to suggest such a thing in his day. So, to retain credibility, he accommodated us and met us where we were at. This is a similar explanation as to why he didn’t critique the institution of slavery.

However, the BEST explanation to why meat-eating was permitted by Jesus has everything to do with why meat-eating was introduced to Noah in the first place! And that is that human life is superior to that of animals, and in a context where agricultural products are hard to come by, it would be detrimental to our health to NOT eat meat. Thus, to “save human life” by acquiring the necessary nutrients through death in the animal kingdom is acceptable. It is not ideal, but it is accepted, because human life is superior to animal life. Noah and his family HAD to eat meat to survive. The world after the flood and even into Jesus day did not have a sufficient variety of plants to eat to get the nutrients needed for life, so it was actually entirely moral for mankind to kill and eat animals in order to preserve human life…during that time.

However, from this line of thinking, it then makes sense to cease killing the animals for food when one lives in an economic context of plenty, where it is quite simple to access the necessary nutrients from the plant kingdom alone. Death no longer needs to take place in order to sustain human life.

To switch gears slightly (but keeping the focus on the character of God), perhaps the most objectionable thing about the status quo of diet in America is not the eating of meat, but how the animals are treated during their lives. In the “factory farming” of today, it is absolutely appalling what the “life” of an animal consists of. It is a torturous existence a million miles from the lifestyle that animals were intended to live. They have no room to move, and they are fed grains and animal byproducts rather than grass. They are shot up with antibiotics and hormones. They are horribly mistreated. There is no longer the husbandry that there once was in the romantic American agricultural sector—it has become a freak-show that would make a good horror movie. (Actually there is a movie about this in theatres, my mom tells me.) It was actually the torture of animals in the factory farms that led me to re-think my diet and led me to question why I considered it acceptable to hire somebody to treat an animal this way for me so that I can have a cheap price and a good taste. I had a hard time imagining Jesus treating animals that way. He talked about shepherds that loved their sheep so much that they’d go searching for just 1 lost one. He talked about how God cares for the birds of the air. God gave a donkey words to speak in protest in the Old Testament when its master was beating it. Jesus affirms the practice of temporarily loosening one of the 10 Commandments (the Sabbath) in order to save the life of a sheep that has fallen in to a pit. And so I was confronted with the stark contradiction between the character of my God, and my own lifestyle. And this central focus on the loving character of God and our responsibility to lovingly care for the creation led naturally to the conclusion to cease the killing of animals, altogether.

I’ve been watching Planet Earth recently, and I am struck by how much violence there is in the amoral animal kingdom. Surely, this is not what God had in mind. A tribe of monkeys go ambush, attack, kill, and EAT another tribe of monkeys so that they can control their territory (boy, we act like animals sometimes, don’t we). The theme of MOST of the Planet Earth episodes is survival in a dog-eat-dog hunting and killing existence. Is this violent way really God’s ideal? Or, when the earth is restored to perfection, will we see, as the Bible tells us, lions that eat grass like oxen, and children playing by cobras? I can’t wait for shalom to return. We won’t be killing animals anymore, and they won’t be killing each other. Hmm…isn’t the Christian way all about bringing heavenly realities into the present world, bring redemption and restoration? Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on this earth, just as it is in heaven. So, to participate in the great shalom project of God, I think I’ll live like we’ll be living for eternity, and stop killing animals. If I were to kill an animal (other than out of mercy or to save human life), I know that I would sense that this is not God’s ideal. So I think I’ll stop hiring others to do the violent dirty-work for me. Instead, I’ll try to lovingly care for the animal kingdom as we were intended to do in the Garden of Eden.

One last point of biblical reference, which is quite compelling. In the New Testament book of Acts, the Jerusalem Council concluded that Gentiles, like the Jews, ought also to abstain from eating blood. In other words, it was decided that the prohibition against eating blood was NOT merely a Jewish ordinance, but was also for Gentiles. This makes it more compelling for me to cease eating meat, because most of our meats are not dealt with in a properly “kosher” manner, and still have blood in them. According to the New Testament, we should not eat the kind of meat that is common in American grocery stores. That was surprising to learn.

But most importantly, it’s about love. I have been convicted that violence toward animals for reasons other than protecting human life is something that I should not engage in. The goal is to more and more know and live the loving character of God in everything we do. So that’s the latest turn in my journey.

One might wonder: if this is so right, why did it take me so many years as a Christian to figure it out? I think it has a lot to do with how advocates the “animal rights” community have tried to make their case. They’ve argued for so-called animal “rights” for years. Politically and legally speaking, that is problematic and actually quite ridiculous, so I paid them no attention. Animals do not have a right to life, liberty and property as human beings do. So I could never get past this flawed presentation of the issue to get at the heart of how I personally, as a Christian, should treat animals. This isn’t a political issue or a rights issue; it’s a spiritual, character-of-God, love issue. That’s what I didn’t understand until now.

So there’s my story. Cami didn't help write this, but she read it and is on board; she was ahead of the curve on this, already eating very little meat, herself. I hope this hasn't been offensive to you. I am not judge or arbiter of your decisions, and so I don’t look down on those who eat meat, but rather I respect your journey wherever it takes you just as I hope you do mine. If my story speaks any truth to you, I’d love to talk more about it. If you think it’s ridiculous, it’s not my aim to argue and convince. If you have any questions or critiques that you think I’d benefit from hearing or that you are just curious about yourself, I’d love to hear them. Oh, and one last thing: we're not vegan; we'll keep eating some dairy and eggs, but we'll take pains to make sure that the animals are not raised in the "factory farm" style, but in a natural way (i.e. eating organic and "free range").