Vegetarian Postscript: The Medical Verdict

So as I noted in a prior series of blogs, I became a vegetarian in late May of this year.

It's a long series of blogs, but if one were to read all of them (a task that few, statistically speaking, have ever endeavored to do) it would quickly become clear that my decision was not at all driven by concerns surrounding personal health.

This is interesting, because when I tell people of my decision, the nearly universal response is to assume that I did so for personal health reasons. (Why else would one become a vegetarian??)

And yet here is the even more curious twist: despite the fact that most people assume my decision was health-driven, a substantial minority of them go on to express doubts that vegetarianism is "better for you." The reasoning is basic and blunt. It basically goes like this: "God made us this way, and we all need that protein."

Both opinions are quite wide of the mark.
A) I did not go vegetarian to improve my health. I was already healthy.
B) Going vegetarian properly does improve your health. Even mine.

Yes, the above chart is my own. In the day and age of keeping your health records a secret, I see nothing I need to hide in the above. It shows how my lipid panels changed between the readings taken two years ago and the readings taken this past Monday.

If you're like me, you don't read these numbers every day, so here's a quick medical rundown of what they mean. Compare my numbers to the below explanations...

As for triglycerides? "The American Heart Association (AHA) recommends that a triglyceride level of 100 mg/dL (1.1 mmol/L) or lower is considered "optimal."

My triglycerides did rise, however they are still in "optimal" range.

I didn't start this journey out for health reasons, but my doctor was certainly happy with the latest results. Whereas my cholesterol readings were borderline "OK" before, they are now fantastic.

Plain and simple.

Two Debts Of Gratitude To India

About five years ago I found myself working closely with two Indians, one a Christian and the other a Hindu. I no longer work with either of these friends, but I'll never forget them.

They each gave me a gift.

Fasting

The Christian (we'll call him Jeevan) fasted regularly. Every Friday, in fact. Jeevan informed me that everyone in his home church does that. Fasting is part of life's rhythm for them.

Here in America it's hard to find people who fast regularly. I had fasted on a few occasions, but it had never occurred to me to make a habit of it. That's just something Americans don't do.

After observing Jeevan, however, I decided that this American wanted to give that habit a try. I never looked back. Weekly fasts are now deeply etched into my life's rhythm.

Fasting brings many benefits. In some future blog perhaps I'll get into those perks, but here I'll simply acknowledge my debt of gratitude to Jeevan and to India.

Vegetarianism

Yes, the Hindu (we'll call him Amit) was a practicing vegetarian.

As a Christian I felt rather relieved that my faith did not require me to practice vegetarianism. So I didn't.

But Amit's habit was not lost on me nor forgotten. As the ensuing years passed, I never lost sight of the reverence that some Hindus give to animals. Obviously I don't believe in reincarnation or have any confusion over the holiness of cows and monkeys.

But a respect for animal life... that is something many Hindus have, and it's something many Christians have lost. I felt that loss.

But meat tastes good (!) so for years I continued to postpone making a change in my diet. In recent weeks, however, I finally did face my thoughts head on. I decided to become a vegetarian. And when I did, Amit was not far from my thoughts.

Two friends brought Indian customs to American soil.

Their practices were foreign to me at first. Now I call them my own.

Thank you, Jeevan and Amit. Thank you, India.

Yes, Virginia, Heaven Is For Animals Too

In Alice in Wonderland the Queen proudly notes that she has believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. My brain is not that flexible, so vegetarianism spares me a fair bit of ongoing discomfort.

What do I mean by this? I chose two for-instance examples.

I covered the first in my prior blog post.

Time for the fat lady to sing. Last thought.

Children everywhere love their animals, so every parent who's had a pet in the house eventually gets the question.

"Will <name your pet> go to heaven?"

Many children (and adults like myself) want to see their pets again.

The promises of God give Christians a wondrous hope. But does this hope apply to people only? Or does it apply to animals too?

Most of us don't have a clue, so we get a bit ham-fisted in our reply.

Do we need to be so unsure? Does the Bible have nothing to say on the matter? Most serious Christians I know are pretty ambivalent.

I am more confident in the assurances I give my children. Here's why.

Let's turn to the book of Jonah. It ends with Jonah quite angry with God because God didn't utterly destroy the ancient city of Nineveh.

God, in turn, is angry with Jonah.

Jonah 4:10-11
Then the Lord said, “You feel sorry about the plant, though you did nothing to put it there. It came quickly and died quickly. But Nineveh has more than 120,000 people living in spiritual darkness, not to mention all the animals.

First and foremost, God cares about the people within Nineveh.

But the sphere of God's care doesn't end there.

God also cares about all of the animals within Nineveh.

Now some can argue that this passage of scripture has nothing specific to say about what future awaits animals after their death.

Fair enough, but think about it. If God loves these animals, doesn't it make sense that he might not have a "second death" in mind for them?

But for those who remain unconvinced, weightier evidence exists.

A few blogs back we considered "(Plan B)" — Genesis 9:1-3.

It will now serve us well to now carefully consider the verse that directly follow this passage. God had a bit more to say on the topic...

Genesis 9:4-5
...But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting...

So animals will be held to account??

For what? Killing humans? For killing other animals? Something else?

The passage is vague on the details. But one thing is clear.

Animals will be held accountable for their deeds. When?

I repeat. When?

I think the answer is perfectly clear. After their lives are over.

Ironically, even for humans the afterlife was not a widely held concept when this text was written.

By the time of Christ, however, the order of events was known.

Hebrews 9:27
Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment...

So that's when humans will face their maker. It doesn't make sense to assume anything different for the animals, since God referred (with similar words and in the same section of text) to the accounting both would face.

So animals, like us, will one day see their life in review. That doesn't make much sense if there is no afterlife whatsoever awaiting animals. What sort of life it might be is beyond me to guess at. But doesn't the possibility of judgement imply also the possibility of reward?

I think it does.

But anyone (myself included) who hopes to see their pets again in the afterlife has to consider an unpleasant scenario. It's this...

If dogs can be in heaven, so can pigs. And cows.

Along with chickens and hamsters...

And while we may be excited to see our dogs and hamsters again, conversation with the pigs and cows we ate could prove awkward.

I'm just saying...

Now that's the kind of incongruity that causes my brain discomfort.

The Queen may enjoy six impossible things before breakfast, but if enjoying bacon for breakfast ups my incongruity count by just one?

Maybe you can just pass me the cereal.

I have, of course, spoken a bit tongue in cheek. Whatever awaits us in the afterlife will need to include a lot of mercy for much greater wrongs than the bacon we ate for breakfast.

But here again, I retreat (confidently) to a simple logic noted at the end of an earlier blog on this topic.

If I am awaiting a better world...
and that world includes Fuzzy the hamster...
and Old Yeller the dog...
and Charlotte the pig...
and Bossy the cow...

Perhaps now is a good time to arrange my eating habits accordingly?

OK, on that thought, one last verse for the road...

Romans 8:19
For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.

Yes, we humans look forward to the end of all death and suffering.

Can the animals we eat be blamed for keenly sharing our sentiments?

Not to be continued any time soon....

Promise kept: this link is from several months later.

Of Hamsters and Men

We continue the tale of my transition from carnivore to herbivore...

Two comments capture the feelings that followed this decision.

The short one first. Kronk astutely notes, "It's all coming together."

But some people prefer G. K. Chesterton to animated Disney characters. In his book Orthodoxy Chesterton described his Christian conversion experience as one where two seemingly incompatible "machines" came together. Miraculously, they came together well.

...The spike of dogma fitted exactly into the hole in the world — it had evidently been meant to go there — and then the strange thing began to happen. When once these two parts of the two machines had come together, one after another, all the other parts fitted and fell in with an eerie exactitude. I could hear bolt after bolt over all the machinery falling into place with a kind of click of relief. Having got one part right, all the other parts were repeating that rectitude, as clock after clock strikes noon. Instinct after instinct was answered by doctrine after doctrine. Or, to vary the metaphor, I was like one who had advanced into a hostile country to take one high fortress. And when that fort had fallen the whole country surrendered and turned solid behind me. The whole land was lit up, as it were, back to the first fields of my childhood."

Kronk said it more succinctly, but Chesterton said it better.

After I threw in the towel and decided to give in to the idea of going vegetarian, incongruity after incongruity fell down before me.

Sources of guilt fled. Paradoxes unraveled. Decisions made sense.

Examples? There are many, but most can be anticipated from things I've already written in recent days. (Don't repeat yourself, Pilgrim!)

But two (I promise, just two) thoughts remain that I want to get down.

I'll break them up into two blog post, this then being the first of two.

Don't delegate unconscionable tasks to others.

This principle has helped me navigate some tough topics and grey areas in life. Consider torture, for instance.

We all know the old question. "Is it OK to torture one person in order to find out the location of a hidden bomb and thereby save a city?"

I used to answer this question with a reluctant Yes. It's a very unsavory job, but if it must be done, so be it. For the good of many...

A few years ago I abandoned this line of reasoning after realizing that I could not and would not do the dirty work myself.

And if that is the case, how can I ask someone else to do it for me?

It's another topic for another day to discuss why I myself can or cannot torture a terrorist "for a good cause." My point here is simply that if that is my conviction, I can't ask others to do it for me, either.

So I'm opposed to torture. Period.

All that to say... There are some jobs that are unpleasant.

And then there are jobs that disturb your soul.

I could collect garbage for a living. No problem. It's just a smelly job.

Killing animals for a living would trouble my soul, however.

Fact is, I have a very hard time killing animals. The practical matter of putting a dying hamster out of its misery has proven difficult enough. We paid a vet to do it for us last year. Spent $80 to give the hamster a more peaceful exit.

So I find it hard to kill a dying hamster. What about a healthy one?

And oh-by-the-way?

A hamster weighs half a pound and has rocks pebbles for brains.

Yet for years someone out there has been killing and cutting up much larger and smarter animals. Healthy ones. All day long. For me.

Perhaps it doesn't bother them. But some assassins don't mind killing people, either. The conscience I am responsible for is my own.

For decades I've been complicit in this uncomfortable arrangement.

But today I am free of it. And that feels good.

To be continued....

Worthy Is The Lamb! (Not The Loaf...)

This blog continues from where I left off....

This momentous (for me) move toward a vegetarian lifestyle certainly got my brain riled up. Things I never thought twice about before suddenly presented themselves for reconsideration.

One notion blew my mind for the sheer fact that it had been there in front of me about a thousand times — literally. And I never saw it.

It's called the Lord's Supper. The bread and the wine. I've probably taken the Lord's Supper a thousand times in my life. Maybe more.

But here's the thing I never noticed before. When Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper, he was presiding over a Passover meal. That means that meat was on the menu that night. Lamb, to be specific.

This occasion presented Jesus with a perfect opportunity to make (for his frequently confused disciples) a tangible statement about a very important symbolic truth.

After Jesus' resurrection, St. Paul will later (1 Corinthians 5) recognize Christ as "our Passover lamb" — and that is what he is.

John the Baptist testified to this same reality when Jesus began his ministry — when Jesus first approached John at the Jordan river.

John 1:29
The next day John saw Jesus coming towards him and said, ‘Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

So the pivotal moment has arrived. Jesus is about to institute the Lord's Supper. The Pascal Lamb is presiding over a Passover meal.

And...

And...

He grabs for the bread instead.

Go figure?

Now it must of course be said that Jesus is also the bread of heaven. The bread of life. Absolutely. He said so himself. This is also true.

But John the Baptist didn't call Jesus the Loaf of God.

The Apostle Paul didn't call Jesus our Pascal Loaf.

No one on earth has got this matter confused. What about in heaven?

Nope. Not there either. In Revelation Jesus is not wandering around heaven as a resurrected loaf of bread. Not even symbolically.

In heaven too Jesus is revealed to be the resurrected Lamb of God.

To quote just one of many references, let's savor this one:

Revelation 5:15
“Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
    to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
   and honor and glory and praise!”

Jesus is described as a lamb about twenty-five times in Revelation.

On the night of the Lord's Supper, there was lamb meat on the table.

Why on earth, then, did Jesus reach for the bread?

Well, meat is more expensive. Did Jesus chose cheaper ingredients so as to make the Lord's Supper more affordable to all?

Perhaps. But a tiny bite of meat once a week doesn't cost much, and is this really the moment to be stretching the food budget?

In any case, Jesus chose the bread, and it wasn't because the lamb was too far down the table. We ought to think about why he did that.

The book of Hebrews spends no small amount of time arguing that the sacrifices in the temple are no longer necessary. Jesus was the last, perfect, sacrifice. No further animal sacrifice is necessary, ever again.

For me this thought invites a follow-up question. Is it possible that Jesus intended to be the last sacrifice not merely for the sake of mankind, but also for the sake of the animals?

Hard to say. Scriptures do not answer this specific question. However I cannot help but wonder if Jesus intended for us to eventually work out the fact that we're free now to stop killing animals. Prior to his death, that simply wasn't an option for believers.

If that thought was on Jesus' mind, it's perfectly clear why he reached for the bread. After Good Friday, we'll never need meat again.

If that thought was not on Jesus' mind, we're left with a bit of mystery as to why he didn't reach for the lamb sitting there on the table.

As I said, these are just wondering questions. I don't have answers.

But I will address an obvious objection. Someone may ask, "If that's what Jesus wanted, don't you think he would have mentioned it?"

There is an easy reply to that. The Bible does not explicitly address every topic that should be of interest to God-fearing Christians.

Preserving rain-forests and managing water resources should concern us all, but the Bible is understandably silent on these topics.

What's worse, the Bible is sometimes tantalizingly vague even on highly charged moral issues that were relevant both then and now.

For example, Jesus did explicitly condemn slavery. We know he didn't like it, though, because we know who Jesus is.

Many Christians believe Jesus was a pacifist, but he didn't condemn the centurion for his line of work. He only commended his faith.

So Christians worked out some values and beliefs only in hindsight — and sometimes (e.g., pacifism) without unanimity among believers.

So, Yes, Paul certainly made it clear that meat is still permissible (1 Corinthians 8) — but on the other hand he gave instructions to slave-owners that did not include setting their slaves free.

Working out the true convictions of New Testament personalities can be tricky at times, because they focused like lasers on the highest priority: building the Church.

It's clear enough from the book of Philemon that St. Paul was definitely looking forward to a day when slavery would be no more, but that was not the highest item on his agenda each day.

Likewise, we do see Jesus eating fish in one post-resurrection appearance. But Jesus wanted to meet Peter, and Peter wasn't at the local falafel joint. He was fishing.

Would Jesus have preferred a different menu that day? Perhaps. But in any case it's clear that Jesus too had bigger fish to fry. He needed to reinstate Peter and remind him of his calling to build the church.

...Specifically, to stop catching fish. And start feeding sheep.

I'm playing with words, to be sure. It's food for thought all the same.

To be continued...

Little Encouragements Along The Way

So this blog series began two Sundays ago with me taking a stroll in the sun before church began.

I began the stroll a meat-eater and finished it a vegetarian.

But let's face it. I'm only eight days into this experiment. Time will tell if I have the resolve to hold to the decision.

So it was encouraging to get what I took to be a nod of approval from the Lord in His sanctuary.

The service began, as always, with a few hymns. One of them turned out to be Amazing Grace. I can't recall when we last sang it in church. Six months ago? A year? Well ain't that just a co-inky dinky?

But it gets better.

The sermon was titled, Ruling With Christ in Heaven and on Earth — which doesn't exactly immediately make you think of vegetarianism unless it's already on your mind. However the pastor spoke about our calling as Christians to care for the earth, and read these verses aloud:

Genesis 1:26-28
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

    So God created mankind in his own image,
    in the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Sound familiar? They did to me. They were the very verses I had just been noodling over in the park a few minutes earlier.

And then the coup de grâce...

During the service a PowerPoint image went up on screen with details on an upcoming church barbecue. It included a picture of a grill loaded with chicken, hot dogs and burgers, all looking quite tasty.

I'm trying (and failing) to recall the last time I saw cooked meat up on screen during a church service.

Ah, well. One thing is clear. If if I hold fast to this decision, it won't be on account of the support I get from fellow churchgoers, friends or family. They're all enjoying the meat.

Now to be fair, I should note that after I shared my decision with my oldest son, he didn't disparage me. Not a bit. He simply asked, "When we have our Father's Day barbecue, can I have your steak?"

Ah, well. But a very encouraging thought struck me later.

To be continued...

Lord, Make Me A Vegetarian! But Not Yet...

So, as noted in my prior blog, I realized finally that where I want to eventually go is a place where meat is no longer on the menu.

And it's rather obvious, isn't it? When things here on Earth are finally made right, creatures won't be eating each other. Duh.

As soon as this stunning no-brainer ran through my head, I realized how blindingly obvious the point is. In the Garden of Eden, we were eating greens. And the animals trusted us.

Animals are scared to death of us now, and rightly so. We eat them.

But a tantalizing scripture passage anticipates a fully redeemed world.

Isaiah 11:6-10
The wolf will live with the lamb,
    the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
    and a little child will lead them.
The cow will feed with the bear,
    their young will lie down together,
    and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
    and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
They will neither harm nor destroy
    on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord
    as the waters cover the sea.

Gee, sounds nice! When does it happen? Funny you should ask. This passage falls smack-dab in the middle of a messianic passage referring to Jesus. Jesus is the one who will usher this day in.

Well, friends, Jesus has already visited us once, and this vision is still only a vision. Will it become reality when Jesus returns again?

Revelation 21:1-5 (abridged)
Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away... And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

At this point, I began to feel a bit Augustinian. He's St. Augustine now, but as a youth he was a happy rebel enjoying wine, women and song — with a strong emphasis on the 'women' part.

When Augustine began to feel the call of God on his life, he cried out, "Lord, make me chaste! But not yet."

My cry echoed his. Lord, make me a vegetarian! But not yet.

Anyone with enough time on their hands to read all my recent blogs might mistake me for a rabid rabbit hugger or something. Far from it. I love the taste of bacon. I'm sorry to say good-bye to steaks.

But if Eden is what I miss...
If Isaiah's vision is what I wish for....
If I'm looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth...
If I yearn for the day when death will be no more...

Shouldn't I be keen to participate less in the death industry today?

What's stopping me from taking that first step? Not much. Two things.

1) The fact that I have a taste for meat, and
2) The fact that everyone else around me does too.

And as I walked along the path on that sunny Sunday morning, I realized that these were not very compelling reasons to wait.

My thoughts returned to John Newton. No wonder it took him so bloody long to shed his affection for the slave trade. It was his way of life. His source of income. And everyone around him was engaged in the same game. No friends saying, "Stop!"

It's hard to go against the flow. All the more so when it's pleasant.

Thankfully other pioneers have made the transition somewhat easier for me. Vegetarian diets and recipes are not hard to find these days. I'm not exactly in the vanguard.

But now that the decision is made, I'm an eager recruit.

Hopefully for good.

To be continued...

The Noose Tightens

This blog continues on the heels of...

So. We're four blogs posts in, and I still haven't gotten to the reason I'm going to give vegetarianism a try. I'll do so here.

In the prior blogs I covered a number of good reasons to give up meat. I've had all of these thoughts run through my head before, however, and I ignored them all for a decade or two. What changed?

This. As I was strolling along on that sunny Sunday morning a week ago, a jumble of thoughts came together in my mind in a new formation, and for me the game was suddenly over. I was beat.

A bit of background info... I'd been watching some nature shows with my young daughter in recent weeks, and they really got me thinking.

One special was on elephants. Elephants are so advanced in their thinking that they stop to investigate (with keen interest!) the bones of elephants that they discover.

Elephants will ignore a large hippo skull, but when researchers placed elephant tusks and skulls in their path, they examine them carefully.

Elephants care about their dead. Even elephants they never knew.

Wow.

Another special covered dolphins. These critters are bloody smart too. One with a fishing hook stuck on its fin was caught on camera in Kona, Hawaii. It approached a human diver seeking help. The diver helpfully removed the hook, and the dolphin took off free.

Wow.

Then there was the special we saw on wolves, which were recently reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park.

It's not a pretty sight to watch wolves hunt, but after the wolves were eradicated from Yellowstone, the mega-fauna at Yellowstone were eating everything down to scrub. With nothing to stop them.

So they brought the wolves back to Yellowstone. The wolves proceeded to save the park by eating their way through a lot of meat.

Wolves are an important part of the Yellowstone ecology. But that doesn't make it any easier to watch them do their work. Thankfully, the camera pans back (a lot) right after their prey hits the ground.

So as I strolled through the park that Sunday morning, recent images and questions ran through my head in a jumbled mess.

What separates us from the animals? And what's the difference between wolves eating elk and me eating a steak?

The more I noodled these questions, the more I felt I was being crowded into a tighter and tighter corral. What makes us different?

Well, one of the major differences between us and the animals is that we take care of them. In lots of ways. We have screwed up this planet plenty, to be sure — but it's also true that we are unlike any other animal on it in that we're aware of our role here. We're in charge, and it's up to us to destroy this planet. Or restore it.

Elephants and dolphins don't face this dilemma.

That's a sobering thought. But then another idea sidled up to the first.

We're also the only animal on the planet that can and does willfully change diet for the sake of other animals and plants.

Yes. The wolf lives or dies on meat. So far as I know, wolves don't go vegetarian. Certainly not voluntarily, at any rate. But we can. We don't have to. But we can.

What's more, we won't screw up the environment if we abstain from meat. In fact, as noted earlier the environment would greatly improve if we did.

Compare that to what happened in Yellowstone when we got rid of the wolves. This broken world runs more smoothly if the predators eat meat.

Except for us predators.

Yes, we're the only animal on earth that faces this dilemma.

And then the scripture verses started to pile on.

Genesis 1:26-31 (Plan A)
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

    So God created mankind in his own image,
    in the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.
God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

So in the beginning we humans had a specific job and a specific diet. We were to care for the earth. Rule over all animals. And eat greens.

Now this is, of course, hardly earth-shattering news to anyone who reads their Bible carefully.

But as well all know, things went downhill pretty quickly. It got so bad that God felt it necessary, in the days of Noah, to wipe the slate clean. Begin again. That's when the rules changed.

Genesis 9:1-3 (Plan B)
Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.

So the game changed after the flood waters receded. God himself changed the rules! And the new rules are? Animals will now fear humans. And we're free now to eat them.

So God said it's OK to eat meat. Isn't that the final word? All good? Well, yes. We have permission to eat meat. This much is true.

But then a question hit me like a huge sledgehammer.

When the Earth is fully restored, Pilgrim, what will it be like?

The answer is certainly not the days of Noah.

It will be a lot more like the Garden of Eden.

To be continued...

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...