Can We Talk About Me Now?

My most recent blog noted that the American meat habit cannot be sustained at the global level.

We can eat a lot of meat. Provided the rest of the world does not.

Well, let's face it. Our car and gas consumption don't work too well on a global scale either. But that doesn't stop us.

Strangely (or not so strangely) enough, the fact that China and other formerly quiescent nations are starting to behave like Americans just makes the global climate problem all the more alarming.

We who are alive today are observers of a great new experiment in which the world starts to act more American. It's not pretty.

And yet... Americans continue to live pretty much as we have.

We know we have a problem. And yet. Our habits don't change.

But this is not a blog on climate change. I'm just noting that we Americans have a long and cherished habit of ignoring the global implications of our own behavior.

So arguments for a vegetarian lifestyle based upon pleas for us to start consuming energy at a more Ethiopian pace... aren't going to fly.

Sadly, Americans don't care enough about animal or global welfare.

So let's talk personal welfare.

Needless to say, when Chistians discuss personal welfare and vegetarianism in the same sentence, an old Bible hero has a habit of popping up. Daniel.

It's a fact that my wife picked pretty much all the names of our children, but I gave my youngest son's his middle name: Daniel.

I've always loved Daniel. He's the poster boy of many wonderful things, the very least of which is the vegetarian lifestyle.

So as I wandered through the park on that sunny Sunday morning, Daniel certainly figured in my internal (and heated) debate.

Daniel 1:11-15 (abridged)
Daniel then said to the guard... “Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see.” So he agreed to this and tested them for ten days.
At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food. So the guard took away their choice food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables instead.

Now let's agree up front that Daniel was (apparently) not opposed to eating meat per se so much as he was concerned to not eat defiled foods — such as meat sacrificed to idols.

So it's not like Daniel was a fan of Bambi or a charter member of PETA.

But whatever his motives, the outcome is what it is. What proved true for Daniel is known to be true for everyone.

The vegetarian lifestyle is better for your health.

Plain and simple.

And to top it off, I've noticed that salads cost less than steak.

So we can let Rome (and our globe) burn...

But might we perhaps consider giving up meat for our own sake?

Ah... The American answer is, more often than not, No. We're the fattest souls on the globe, and we want to stay that way.

And me? What about me?

Well, I'm not overweight.
Not a candidate for heart disease.
I'm skinny.
And I can afford all the meat I want.

So if I don't care about the chickens, cows and pigs....
If I don't care about the globe...
If I'm not concerned for my health...
If I've got money to burn...
What's to keep me from my juicy steak? (Because I do still want it.)

But then I revisited the notion that God had an opinion on the matter.

That's when my Sunday morning stroll got serious.

To be continued...

Do Not Try This On Your Own Planet

So far in this series on vegetarianism I've thrown out two assertions:
1) It's not right to treat animals as less than animals.
2) Treating animals well doesn't give us the right to eat them either.

However I'm not fool enough to think that these arguments alone will convince a lot of people to change their ways. I myself managed to skate by those two thoughts for more than a decade.

I liked my meat too much to give up a cherished habit that easily.

But those two thoughts didn't come alone. They were just appetizers.

The full course had a lot of meat to it. (Hardy har har...)

Yes, the reasons to take this leap kept piling on into my head this past Sunday while I walked about a park on that sunny morning.

I was preparing to again ignore pleas for the welfare of the animals...

...but then I was assaulted by a plea for the welfare of mankind.

There is a certain category of beliefs that drives me nuts: the beliefs that would produce disastrous results if everyone lived by them.

For example, consider immunizations.

I've known a few people who declined to give their kids polio shots. Their reasoning was, "The shots have a 1 in 2,000 chance of doing XYZ harm to my child. And besides, nobody has polio anymore."

I find that kind of thinking very irritating. It's the free-rider problem.

The reason, the very reason, nobody around here has polio is because we've all been subjecting our children to these shots.

When polio has been wiped from the planet, we can stop. Until that day, people who don't inoculate their kids are free-riding on the backs of those who do. If everyone took the free-riding route, polio would return to every continent within a generation.

Or how about this one: family planning.

I have known couples who decided to have piles of kids. And that's fine. What troubles me is when someone who has made that decision argues that we all should have "all the children God gives us."

Meaning... no birth control.

There's a gentle rebuke to this assertion, which is to simply point out that if all humanity took this view, we'd destroy ourselves and the entire planet pretty quickly. Large families worked when infant, child and adult mortality rates were much higher.

But if we all had 10 kids and none died? The global population would first soar... and then crash. Starvation, disease and war would soon provide practical solutions to our insanity.

So, No. No, no, and No. A few stragglers can certainly practice and preach the "as many children as God gives you" insanity with very little harm done.

Widespread adoption of this lifestyle? It would destroy the planet. Period.

Where am I going? Let's return to the meat industry. And guess what?

It only works if just the Americans practice American eating habits.

If we attempted to replicate the American diet across the globe, the consequences would be no less dire than if every American and every European decided to have 10 kids. And didn't give them polio shots.

A diet that includes lots of meat would lead to global Armageddon.

If everyone did it.

Why? The details can be found elsewhere, but in short it's because it takes more than ten pounds of corn to produce one pound of beef.

Much of the globe has enough problems as it is, keeping starvation at bay. And that's with people eating stuff like corn, wheat and rice.

Imagine what kind of land and water resources would be required to give everyone the American burger. In quantity.

Let's talk about turning the entire Amazon forest (all of Brazil and more) and turning it into farmland. And that.... that would not be enough to give the world the McDonald's habit.

Insanity.

So as I walked through the park a few days ago, I was reminded (though I didn't want to hear it) that I myself was practicing what I hate to hear other people preach: a habit that cannot be safely practiced by anything more than a spoiled and wealthy minority of the global population.

So no, I don't think history will look that kindly on our current American diet of meat or the industry that caters to it.

I didn't want to hear that.

But I did.

And the thoughts didn't stop there.

To be continued...

Hogs Get Slaughtered (As Do The Pigs)

I knew it would take me several whacks on this blog to do justice to my recent thoughts on the vegetarian question.

However I didn't anticipate how many "coincidences" would nudge me along, inciting me to hurry up and jot my thoughts down.

Yesterday I posted my first reflection on the topic, using the horrors of the slave trade as an opening analogy.

It must be acknowledged that this is an extreme starting point for any discussion, but I think it's a good one in that it invites an objection.

"Cows aren't people. They're stupid animals. If we raise them nicely and kill them humanely before we eat them, is it really that bad?"

This question had been rattling about in my head already yesterday, but this evening a headline link on the local community website motivated me to start the next installment.

The article was titled, The Cruelest Thing I Saw On A Hog Farm, and the timing was a bit eerie. We're not a farming community and I've never seen anything to do with farms and animal rights on that website before. Be that as it may...

Links like these go stale fast, so here's a quick summary. In short the author described seeing "[r]ow upon row of large hogs... lined up in stalls just bigger than their bodies. Literally hundreds of 250 lb animals were shoulder-to-shoulder in crates too narrow for them to even turn around in."

You'd think that was the cruelest thing she saw, but she went on to point out that, in so many words, life is complicated. Left to their own devices, hog lives are nasty, brutish, and shorter. So to speak. Hogs fight viciously with each other in the wild, etc. etc. So keeping them in tight stalls prevents injuries and keeps them healthier.

The cruelest thing for the author? The reminder that one in ten piglets don't make it, despite the best efforts of the farmers. Runts are, well, runts. They don't survive. Her closing comment was, "The cruelest thing I saw on that hog farm was at the hands of Mother Nature, not a farmer, as some alarmist propaganda may have you believe."

This is a differently worded version of the same basic objection I offered at the start of this blog. But it doesn't work.

Why doesn't it work? Let's revisit the slave trade scenario again.

Life in Africa was pretty rough for the humans who lived there 200 years ago. It could be argued that life as a slave in America was at least in some cases preferable to the alternative tribal life on offer. Perhaps kinder slave owners can be seen in hindsight as benefactors?

Well, without a doubt some people who owned slaves treated them well. But the people we applaud today are the ones who worked toward setting all slaves free. We wince today, trying to imagine how slavery could ever have seemed an acceptable part of civilized life.

So... No. It's not acceptable today to look back on the slave trade as a humane alternative to rugged life in Northern Africa. Poor children can be found throughout the world today. But in this day and age, gentle souls bring them home, adopt them and make them their own children. Only criminals bring them back as slaves.

Giving people a higher standard of living does not by itself justify using them for our own ends.

Giving animals a higher standard of living does not by itself justify using them for our own ends.

Both arguments run by the same logic. They stand or fall together.

Let me say that again.

Both arguments run by the same logic. They stand or fall together.

My point?

Any attempt to justify the meat industry on the basis of keeping the animals healthy until we eat them is a pretty poor line of reasoning.

Human enslavement as a practice has been weighed in the balance of history and found wanting.

What about the meat industry? Well, I have two thoughts on that.

To be continued...

Closing Disclaimer

I am NOT equating cattle farming with slave trade. The evils of human slavery far, far outweigh anything that we do or do not do for animals. If I thought these evils were even remotely commensurate in measure, it wouldn't have taken me forty years to come to this point.

The Slave Trade And Cattle Farming

I took a long walk just before yesterday's church service, and on that walk I found myself once again reflecting upon an unpleasant truth.

And I came to a decision I've been avoiding for more than a decade.

It starts off with a "Greatest Hit" story that many Christians know. I'll keep the story short here. Longer versions are available elsewhere.

John Newton was a sailor and slave trader back in the 1700s who came to Christian faith after the ship he was sailing on nearly sank. We know his name today because he later penned the most famous hymn of all time: Amazing Grace. A life turned around.

So far so good? Yeah Go Rah!

But the story isn't that simple. The truth is that Newton continued to ply his trade in human flesh for another ten years after his conversion experience. What's worse, it seems that his decision to leave the slave trade was driven by health reasons and not by a guilty conscience.

In short, John Newton's timeline is a mixed bag.

1748: makes his first decision to follow Jesus Christ
1754: retires from active slave trading after having a stroke
1788: publishes an anti-slavery tract that helped end slavery

Newton's story ends well enough, but getting there takes forty years.

That's not very fast. When I heard John Newton's story as a child, I was always under the impression that he "got saved and got out."

Not so.

It took took literally decades for Newton to reach the point where he wrote "a confession, which ... comes too late ... It will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me, that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders."

But what does this have to do with cattle farming? Bear with me...

The slave trade and cattle farming have a few things in common. Both businesses trade in flesh. And both involve practices we prefer not to look too deeply into.

Most people in John Newton's day were happy to remain ignorant about what happened on slave ships and to slaves in general.

This was easier to do if the slaves were considered less than human.

How well does that assumption fly today? Not very well.

Yet today, how many of us can honestly say that we've visited a slaughter house. Watched animals killed by the thousands. How many of us really want to know what, end to end, goes into the preparation of the meat we eat?

Or is that a topic which we in turn prefer to remain ignorant of?

Let's face this topic head-on. When we take animals out of their natural state and put them through factory meat-production lives, haven't we in a sense denied them something even animals deserve?

If we cram 10,000 chickens into a small room where they cannot even walk... would it not be fair to say that we have treated these animals as less than animals?

But I'm pretty sure that's how a Tyson Chicken factory works.

It is is a much greater evil to treat humans as less than human.

I agree.

But it's also quite wrong to treat animals as less than animals.

Maybe we meat-eaters need a John Newton moment.

Even if it takes us forty years to get there.

To be continued...

His Proudest Moment

"It was my proudest moment..."

We've all heard variations on these words. It's a common phrase.

It occurred to me the other day, however, that I've never seen those words applied to Jesus. What was Jesus' proudest moment? I'd never thought about it before. Hmmmm.

Good Friday came to mind quickly. Was it his dying on the cross? Who can overstate how much Jesus accomplished on Good Friday?

But then I began to think about what defines our own proudest moments. It seems fair to say that they involve days or moments when by means of skill, hard work and perhaps a bit of luck we rise above our ordinary level of achievement in some sphere of life.

These criteria don't work so well with Jesus. He always did everything right, and it never had anything to do with luck. Good Friday was just like any other day for Jesus on that score. Meaning... Jesus did everything flawlessly on the uneventful days too. He didn't rise to the occasion on Good Friday. He was simply ready for the occasion on Good Friday.

So that got me thinking more.

So. Was every day the same to Jesus, so to speak? Would he rank them differently? Give some days a better grade than others? Feel better about some miracles than others? Hmmm.

The more thought I gave to this question, the fewer answers I had. I have no idea how Jesus "ranked" his experiences.

But here's my hunch. In some senses, I wonder if it's a bit like me playing simpler versions of Duet. (Duet's been my mindless distraction game of late, as noted in another recent blog.)

When I play the easiest version of Duet, I have no proud moments. I succeed. But I don't get worked up about it.

As I go to higher levels, it's more of the same thing... I continue to succeed, but I don't care about it.

It's only when I succeed at the stages I struggle with that I have my happy moments.

I wonder how it was for Jesus. He "succeeded" at every level. He was perfectly able to do the little things right. The bigger things. The amazing things. He was able to do them all. Perfectly.

I wonder if perhaps Jesus felt the same about all of them. Giving a smile to the beggar. Sight to the blind. Life to the world.

Jesus may not have had a proudest moment. At the risk of taking this reflection too far, I suppose if he did have such a thing, it would be when he felt the Father's pleasure was greatest. If Jesus had one goal, it was to honor, serve, and obey his heavenly father.

So inextricably, if there even could be such a thing as Jesus' proudest moment, he would have let God the Father pick it.

Does/did God the Father have an opinion on this matter? Who am I to say. but I have a hunch God was simply endlessly proud of his son, and not for any one thing.

When Jesus looks back at the entirety of his life here on earth, he can rightly say that he made God the Father proud. All the time.

Now that's something to be proud of.

To be continued...

A Sort Of Homecoming

I retell here a simple story that moves me and bears repeating.

It involves a man named Henry Morrison who returned to the states back in the early 1900s after having served for more than 40 years as a missionary in Africa.

Henry and his wife were greatly encouraged as their ship approached American soil, because they saw that a great and cheering crowd had gathered at the dock to welcome them home.

Or so they thought.

After the boat docked, the Morrisons soon realized that the crowd of people were there to greet not the missionaries but rather President Teddy Roosevelt, who was returning from a 3-week African hunting safari.

The missionaries found their way off the boat alone and hailed a cab to take them to the one-bedroom apartment waiting for them. Not a soul had been there to welcome these faithful missionaries home.

This greatly troubled Henry for a number of days, and at his wife's urging he eventually retired to their bedroom and poured out his soul in prayer to the Lord about the matter.

He returned from the room a bit later with peace restored to his face. His wife asked him what had happened, and this was his reply.

"The Lord settled it for me. I told Him how bitter I was that the President received this tremendous homecoming, but no one even met us as we returned home. When I finished, it seemed as though the Lord put His hand on my shoulder and simply said, 'But Henry, you are not home yet!'"

A sustaining peace awaits us if we accept this reminder.

Lord, I'm tired. This life has worn me out. When will it all make sense?

You are not home yet!

Lord, I feel rejected. Does anybody really love me?

You are not home yet!

Lord, I don't understand. Why did you let it happen? Why?

You are not home yet!

I let these words roll around in my mouth like fine wine.

You are not home yet!

When we finally do arrive... when we can truly say we are home...

We will indeed discover that the fight was worth it.

That we are and always have been loved.

And all our questions will be put to rest.

It Depends...

The old internet joke gets quoted in our house from time to time.

I read it on the internet. So it's true.

Maybe not, though I did read that on the internet...

[An exercise in recursion thinking, but we digress...]

But how about this one? I read it in the Bible. So it's true.

How do we as Christians react to that statement?

Well, for those who take the Bible to be a collection of holy scriptures, this statement must be taken more seriously.

There's an old evangelical favorite that pops up pretty fast in conversations surrounding the trustworthiness of scriptures.

2 Timothy 3:16-17
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

I cannot count how many times I've heard a Christian quote this verse as proof that the Bible is true and trustworthy, from end to end.

Anyone who has read a few of my blogs will have noted that I put a lot of stock in scriptures, too. For example, my last blog ended with this:

Psalm 37:4
Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Yes, Psalm 37 is an "old favorite." If 2 Timothy assures us we can trust the Bible, Psalm 37 assures we can trust God. It gives us lots of "comfort verses" — verses that reassure us that things will turn out well for us in the end.

I've been reading Psalm 37 a lot recently, so it's popped up several times in my recent blogs. Here's another passage I used:

Psalm 37:10-11
A little while, and the wicked will be no more;
   though you look for them, they will not be found.
But the meek will inherit the land
   and enjoy peace and prosperity.

Here's another chunk of Psalm 37 that I quoted in yet another blog!

Psalm 37: (excerpted)
Take delight in the Lord,
   and he will give you the desires of your heart.
The blameless spend their days under the Lord’s care,
   and their inheritance will endure for ever.
In times of disaster they will not wither;
   in days of famine they will enjoy plenty.
Turn from evil and do good;
   then you will dwell in the land forever.
For the Lord loves the just
   and will not forsake his faithful ones.
The righteous will inherit the land
   and dwell in it for ever.

Then there's this one, from one final blog, and we'll stop there...

Psalm 37:20-22
Surely God does not reject one who is blameless
or strengthen the hands of evildoers.
He will yet fill your mouth with laughter
and your lips with shouts of joy.
Your enemies will be clothed in shame,
and the tents of the wicked will be no more.

These are passages of scriptures. I read them in the Bible.

Are they true? Trustworthy? As Christians we say, "Yes!"

But here's the catch.

That last passage... Psalm 37:20-22.... it's not really from Psalm 37.

It's from the book of Job. In truth, it's really Job 8:20-22.

And the guy who speaks the words quoted? His name is Bildad.

[The recursion joke arises again... the blog where I previously quoted this passage from Job is.... this blog. But again, we digress.]

Bildad is one of Job's three useless "friends." One of Job's three tormenting accusers. When God shows up at the end of Job, he has some pretty strong words for Bildad and his two unhelpful friends.

Job 42:7-9
After the Lord had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, "I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has. So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly. You have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has." So Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite did what the Lord told them; and the Lord accepted Job’s prayer.

Yes, I just finished the book of Job and I kept having this recurring thought: "Job keeps questioning the received wisdom. His three useless friends keep quoting the received wisdom. And the received wisdom is precisely this: Psalm 37."

Let's say that again. Job's three friends spouted a lot of Psalm 37 stuff. The righteous thrive. The wicked perish. Get with the program, Job...

But Job was questioning Psalm 37. Pretty pointedly.

Job 21:27-30
"I know full well what you are thinking,
the schemes by which you would wrong me.
You say, ‘Where now is the house of the great,
the tents where the wicked lived?’
Have you never questioned those who travel?
Have you paid no regard to their accounts—
that the wicked are spared from the day of calamity,
that they are delivered from the day of wrath?"

Job is saying to the other three, "Look around you, bozos. The wicked are doing fine. It's me who's hurting! And I'm innocent."

Who's right? God sets the record straight for Job's companions. It is Job who has spoken rightly about God. His companions, in contrast, have dishonored God with falsehoods worthy of punishment.

So let's return to the question.

I read it in the Bible. Is it true?

The answer to that question might depend upon a few things.

Where you read it. When you applied it. How and why you did so.

We do God no favors when we cram unhelpful verses down unwilling throats at the wrong time, in the wrong way for the wrong reasons.

A friend of mine struggling with cancer was on one occasion assured that her cancer was the direct consequence of sin in her life. Ouch.

Most of us are not usually that callous and awful in our presumption, ignorance and arrogance.

But I have a feeling that when we stand before God's judgment seat, we too will discover to our dismay that there were times in our lives when we played the role of Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar.

I, for one, hope to keep those moments few and far between.

iPhone Dots And Duet: A Desultory Ditty

So I finally broke down and got a smart phone. So far I've kept most of the eye candy off of it, but I do have two games now: Dots and Duet.

Both games are quite addicting, but I think I'm on the recovery path. Here's how it played out. (Pardon the pun.)

I sat down to pray this morning in my regular place, but made the mistake of checking email on the iPhone. And saw Dots.

And decided to play "just one game."

Drive: (Keep Playing Until You Win.)

A number of games later, I had begun my own personal psychoanalysis.

I was starting and restarting the game. Repeatedly.

Why? Because my experience has been that only a good starting position will get you an awesome final score.

(Then again, maybe I don't understand the game very well.)

I want an awesome final score. So I'd restart dozens of times until I got a good opener. That made the game a bit more fun.

Until I started to feel like a despairing gambler staring with glazed eyes at a well-lit one-armed bandit. This got me thinking about life.

Delusion: (If I Can Restart, That's Better!)

Most people are not born at the top. If babies were cognizant at birth and had the choice, perhaps they'd play life like I'm playing Dots.

African sub-sahara. Restart.

Alcoholic and abusive parents. Restart.

Inner-city single mom. Restart.

But in God's sovereignty, it doesn't work that way. Good? Bad?

Despair: (Is There Nothing More?)

Interestingly, Dots affords me (and the rest of the 99%) a chance to experience the despair of inherited wealth first-hand.

I read a book once, titled "Navigating the Dark Side of Wealth: A Life Guide for Inheritors". I didn't need to. I'm not in the 1%. However it fell into my possession for free (which is a big deal for us 99%-ers...)

So I read it. It's a very good book. In it, the author points out something I had never really thought about before. It goes like this:

American society is well-structured for those who are seeking to become wealthy, but it has no guidance for you once you get there.

It was worded better than that, but that's the gist of it.

Dots helps us 99%-ers because we have the luxury of hitting restart until we get a winning game. And if Dots were rejigged a bit, it'd give us a winning game right from the start, every time.

And as soon as you realize that you're always winning? Despair.

What's the point of this stupid game? It's just a bunch of dots.

Welcome to the dark side of wealth, my friends.

I know. We all sing the same chorus: "Punish me that way, God."

But reality is brutal. Once we have dots, wealth and everything else... we discover they were not enough. Is this all there is?

Degradation: (This Game Is Taking Me Down...)

So that's the morning story on Dots. But last night I was playing Duet. (Just one game, you understand.)

Duet is unlike Dots in that Duet leaves no room for excuses. Win or lose, the results are directly attributable to your own actions.

Duet is to earned wealth as Dots is to inherited wealth. For the first few days, Duet was fun. It felt good to strive, improve and overcome.

But last night a gnawing feeling arose in me: "This is pointless." Dots and Duet had taken me to the same place by different routes.

Speaking for myself, No matter which game I play, I end up feeling like a slug. Like my soul needs a bath.

I was supposed to be praying this morning. Half an hour later, I have only this to say: "There went 30 minutes of my life I'll never get back."

Last night I could have been praying or reading a good book. Half an hour later? "There went 30 minutes of my life I'll never get back."

There is always a place for little mindless Diversions and Distractions.

The problem is, here in America we treat Dessert like it's Dinner.

Deliverance: (Returning to a Life of Prayer)

What am I trying to say? I guess it's this. Video games and other forms of entertainment consume whole lives here in America, leaving slugs on sofas to mark what never happened.

Prayer, on the other hand, rarely consumes whole lives. But when it does... oh my! Life in close communion with God is rich and fulfilling beyond what words can express.

Ironically, that's most of us want. But our choices take us far astray.

How sad that in search of excitement this morning I turned down my best option (prayer) and chose instead the shortcut to despair.

Tomorrow, I hope to choose more wisely.

Denouement...

No deep conclusions here. Just a reminder to myself to not let Dots, Duet or other Distractions get in the way of my Devotions.

Psalm 37:4
Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.