May 12, 2007
Blogs are pretty specific for the most part. They end up revealing certain themes over time or chronicling an individual’s personal journey. Some have an agenda, some don’t.
I find it interesting the people who end up at my blog through Internet searches. It reveals the weakness and sheer vastness of general web searching I guess — I’m sure the majority of these folks weren’t looking for my opinions. However, just in the past week these searches led to me (parentheses are mine):
Seal hunt (thanks for being interested in what’s happening with this)
Church, culturally irrelevant
Words to Sunday morning Christians (needing some scathing words?!)
She-devil lighter (hmm?)
Chicken herd theology blog (thank you!)
Sunday AM church procedures (there’s a broad topic)
How to make morning buns
Chickenherdtheology (again, thank you!)
jesus was a commoner (lower case theirs not mine)
Heaven without daughter (I’ve prayed for you often since you stopped by. God give you peace and hope)
Chicken’s broken neck
Human sacrifice altar (making plans?)
Regardless of what you were really looking for, thanks for taking the time to stop by.
May 4, 2007
(*credit to the folks at the pulp for the semi-plagarized title)
I choked down a burger the other day. I don’t typically (have to choke it down that is). I grew up in the middle of North America. Beef was always what was for dinner. Frankly, I liked it. And I still do.
However, increasingly as I’ve explored what a Biblical worldview might really be (as opposed to a North-American-Church Person worldview), deciding what’s for dinner has become a little more complicated. My parents visited my home once and cooked shrimp fettucini. They brought the shrimp with them from Canada so I asked if the shrimp was a Canadian product. It was at the exact time of the Canadian seal hunt when fishermen club baby seals to death for their furs. It’s a brutal death. The slaughter occurs in front of the young seals’ mothers. And it’s so fishermen have a few extra bucks in the off season and we can have a “dead seal skin” clothing option. I don’t want any part of supporting that. But the dinner smelled really great and I wanted to appease my family members who thought I was being silly so I ate it. And, therein lies my dilemna.
I like the taste of meat. And, it’s what I’ve been raised on: meat, potatoes and some other “colorful” vegetable with a slice of bread. Everyday. With everyone at the table. But I don’t think it’s what God originally intended nor will it be the ultimate reality of the Kingdom. Carnivorism arose when the curse reverberated through the galaxy. The lamb was laying down with the wolf in utter dozing contentment until Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. In the moment of the curse, for the first time ever, the lamb experienced fear and the wolf discovered a new craving.
We can argue Biblically that God required animal sacrifices and that he created laws for how people should prepare meat for consumption. We can argue that Peter’s vision of the meat picnic laid out on a blanket in a vision was God’s obvious blessing to eat away. But, I cannot be convinced that God approves of gestation crates and feed lots and abused milker cows and battery cages. I can’t be convinced that animals were created as little chunks of meat for humanity — that it doesn’t matter how they are treated while they’re alive if they’re just being raised to become food.
And there is my problem. I don’t like eating meat if the food product is the result of, and promotes, blatant abuse of living creatures who ultimately belong to the God who created them (the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof). As the recently revolutionized world famous chef Wolfgang Puck says, “The veal calf may end up as wiener schnitzel, but… [I] want it to have a happy life first.“
The bookends of the Biblical narrative appear to me to be vegetarian. In the middle of God’s story with us we have permission to eat meat. But we still carry the responsibility of caring for creation (animals included) in a way that honors the One from whom life is given.
May 2, 2007
Christians have been blamed recently, and maybe for a long time, of not caring for the earth. In truth, we’ve done a lot to earn the blame — call it the “I have more power than you and the earth is going to be incinerated anyway” mentality. We read the passages in Genesis that communicate a clear hierarchy in the created order; we see that God put us at the top of that order (under Him); He gives us the charge to have dominion over it. We interpret that as “subject everything to yourselves.” And we never look back. God’s (self) righteous little thugs. It’s more of an evolutionary world view when you consider it — survival of the fittest equals do whatever you want to other species of life and whoever comes out on top wins.
Speaking as an evangelical (it’s a loaded word, but one hopefully we can reclaim as a being a good thing), some of us who claim to follow Christ are beginning to look back and understand our role on the planet a whole lot differently — maybe even Biblically.
People have gone ’round and ’round about what it means for humanity to be created in the image of God. Souls? Reason? Self-awareness? I find none of these completely convincing. As I read the Biblical account of creation, it seems to me the only thing different about how God created humanity is that he charged us with the responsibility of caring for the rest of created order. We’re on top of the hierarchical order because we are responsible for the well-being of the rest. The image of God part? He charged us to act on his behalf: Here’s the signet ring from the king himself, what you do bears his mark.
Do we force creation to bow before us because we bear the ring and we have the power, or do we extend a kind hand because of the one who owns it?
An environmentalist or animal rights supporter needn’t be a Christian. One needn’t believe the words of the Bible nor proclaim a belief in God to feel it’s important to clean up pollution or eat eggs from free range chickens. But, the disassociation does not work equally in reverse. Biblical Christianity must include environmentalism and support the humane treatment of animals. Can Christians really *not* engage in responsible practices in these areas and still claim a desire to honor God in how we live?
