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...

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...