According to the Bible, God intended the entire human race to follow a vegetarian diet (Genesis 1:29). Paradise is vegetarian. Rashi (Rabbi Solomon von Isaac, 1030-1105), the famous Jewish Bible commentator, taught that "God did not permit Adam and his wife to kill a creature and to eat its flesh. Only every green herb shall they all eat together." Ibn Ezra and other Jewish biblical commentators agree.

According to the Talmud, "Adam and many generations that followed him were strict flesh-abstainers; flesh-foods were rejected as repulsive for human consumption." Although man was made in God's image and given dominion over all creation (Genesis 1:26-28), these verses do not justify humans killing animals and devouring them, because God immediately proclaims He created the plants for human consumption. (Genesis 1:29)

In a letter to Pope John Paul II, challenging him on the issue of animal experimentation, Dr. Michael Fox of the Humane Society argued that the word "dominion" is derived from the original Hebrew word "rahe" which refers to compassionate stewardship, instead of power and control. Parents have dominion over their children; they do not have a license to kill, torment or abuse them. The Talmud (Shabbat 119; Sanhedrin 7) interprets "dominion" to mean animals may be used for labor.

Man was made in God's image (Genesis 1:26) and told to be vegetarian (Genesis 1:29). "And God saw all that He had made and saw that it was very good." (Genesis 1:31) Complete and perfect harmony. Everything in the beginning was the way God wanted it. Vegetarianism was part of God's initial plan for the world.

"It appears that the first intention of the Maker was to have men live on a strictly vegetarian diet," writes Rabbi Simon Glazer, in his 1971 Guide to Judaism. "The very earliest periods of Jewish history are marked with humanitarian conduct towards the lower animal kingdom...It is clearly established that the ancient Hebrews knew, and perhaps were the first among men to know, that animals feel and suffer pain."

After the Flood, God revised His commandment against flesh-eating. Human beings, since eating of the forbidden fruit, seemed incapable of obedience on this issue. One Jewish writer comments, "Only after man had proven unfit for the high moral standard given at the beginning, was meat made a part of the humans' diet."

A Jewish legend says Moses was found to be righteous by God through his shepherding. While Moses was tending his sheep of Jethro in the Midian wilderness, a young kid ran away from the flock. Moses ran after it until he found the kid drinking by a pool of water. Moses approached the kid and said, "I did not know that you ran away because you were thirsty; now, you must be tired." So Moses placed the animal on his shoulders and carried him back to the flock. God said, "Because thou has shown mercy in leading the flock, thou will surely tend My flock, Israel."


In their book, The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism, Dennis Prager and Rabbi Telushkin explain: "Keeping kosher is Judaism's compromise with its ideal vegetarianism. Ideally, according to Judaism, man would confine his eating to fruits and vegetables and not kill animals for food."


In his excellent A Guide to the Misled, Rabbi Shmuel Golding explains the orthodox Jewish position concerning animal sacrifices: "When G-d gave our ancestors permission to make sacrifices to Him, it was a concession, just as when He allowed us to have a king (I Samuel 8), but He gave us a whole set of rules and regulations concerning sacrifice that, when followed, would be superior to and distinct from the sacrificial system of the heathens."

Some biblical passages denounce animal sacrifice (Isaiah 1:11,15; Amos 5:21-25). Other passages state that animal sacrifices, not necessarily incurring God's wrath, are unnecessary (I Kings 15:22; Jeremiah 7:21-22; Hosea 6:6; Hosea 8:13; Micah 6:6-8; Psalm 50:1-14; Psalm 40:6; Proverbs 21:3; Ecclesiastes 5:1).

Sometimes Christians cite Isaiah 1:11, where God says, "I am full of the burnt offerings..." They say the word "full" implies God accepted the sacrifices. However, in Isaiah 43:23-24, God says: "You have not honored Me with your sacrifices...rather you have burdened Me with your sins, you have wearied Me with your iniquities." This suggests, as Moses Maimonides taught and Rabbi Shmuel Golding confirms above, that "the sacrifices were a concession to barbarism."


Jesus taught his disciples to pray for the coming of God's kingdom (Matthew 6:9-10), the kingdom of peace, in which the entire world is restored to a vegetarian paradise (Genesis 1:29; Isaiah 11:6-9). Recalling Psalm 37:11, he blessed the meek, saying they would inherit the earth. (Matthew 5:5) The kingdom of God belongs to the gentle and kind (Matthew 5:7-9) Christians are to "Be merciful, just as your Father is also merciful." (Luke 6:36) Those who take up the sword must perish by the sword. (Matthew 26:52)

Jesus repeatedly spoke of God's tender care for the nonhuman creation (Matthew 6:26-30, 10:29-31; Luke 12:6-7, 24-28). Jesus taught that God desires "mercy and not sacrifice." (Matthew 9:10-13, 12:6-7; Mark 2:15-17; Luke 5:29-32) The epistle to the Hebrews 10:5-10 suggests that Jesus did not come to abolish the Law and the prophets (which Paul regarded as "so much garbage"), but only the institution of animal sacrifice, as does Jesus' cleansing the Temple of those who were buying and selling animals for sacrifice and his overturning the tables of the moneychangers in the Temple. (Matthew 21:12-14; Mark 11:15-17; Luke 19:45-46; John 2:14-17)


Jesus not only repeatedly upheld Mosaic Law (Matthew 5:17-19; Mark 10:17-22; Luke 16:17), he justified his healing on the Sabbath by referring to commandments calling for the humane treatment of animals.

When teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath, Jesus healed a woman who had been ill for eighteen years. He justified his healing work on the Sabbath by referring to biblical passages calling for the humane treatment of animals as well as their rest on the Sabbath. "So ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham...be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath?" Jesus asked. (Luke 13:10-16)

On another occasion, Jesus again referred to Torah teaching on "tsa'ar ba'alei chayim" or compassion for animals to justify healing on the Sabbath. "Which of you, having a donkey or an ox that has fallen into a pit, will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?" (Luke 14:1-5)


Jesus compared saving sinners who had gone astray from God's kingdom to rescuing lost sheep. He recalled a Jewish legend about Moses' compassion as a shepherd for his flock.

"For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost. What do you think? Who among you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it?

"And when he has found it," Jesus continued, "he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!'

"I say to you, likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance...there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." (Matthew 18:11-13; Luke 15:3-7,10)


Jesus insisted upon the moral standards given by God in the beginning (Matthew 5:31-32, 19:3-9; Mark 10:2-12; Luke 16:18), and this did not go unnoticed by early church fathers such as St. Jerome.

From history, too, we learn that the earliest Christians were vegetarians as well as pacifists. For example, Clemens Prudentius, the first Christian hymn writer, in one of his hymns exhorts his fellow Christians not to pollute their hands and hearts by the slaughter of innocent cows and sheep, and points to the variety of nourishing and pleasant foods obtainable without blood-shedding.

Some of the most distinguished figures in the history of Christianity have been vegetarian. A partial list includes: St. James, St. Matthew, Clemens Prudentius, Origen, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, St. Basil, St. Jerome, St. John Chrysostom, St. Benedict, Aegidius, Boniface, St. Richard of Wyche, St. Columba, St. Filipo Neri, John Wray, Thomas Tryon, John Wesley, Joshua Evans, William Metcalfe, General William Booth, Ellen White, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, and Reverend V.A. Holmes-Gore.

Reverend Marc Wessels of the International Network for Religion and Animals (INRA) writes:

"The most important teaching which Jesus shared was the need for people to love God with their whole self and to love their neighbor as they loved themselves. Jesus expanded the concept of neighbor to include those who were normally excluded, and it is therefore not too farfetched for us to consider the animals as our neighbors.

"To think about animals as our brothers and sisters is not a new or radical idea. By extending the idea of neighbor, the love of neighbor includes love of, compassion for, and advocacy of animals. There are many historical examples of Christians who thought along those lines, besides the familiar illustration of St. Francis. An abbreviated listing of some of those individuals worthy of study and emulation includes Saint Blaise, Saint Comgall, Saint Cuthbert, Saint Gerasimus, Saint Giles, and Saint Jerome, to name but a few."

According to contemporary Benedictine monk, Brother David Steindl-Rast:

"...the survival of our planet depends on our sense of belonging---to all other humans, to dolphins caught in dragnets, to pigs and chickens and calves raised in animal concentration camps, to redwoods and rainforests, to kelp beds in our oceans, and to the ozone layer."

In a sermon preached in York Minster, September 28, 1986, John Austin Baker, the Bishop of Salisbury, England, attacked the overcrowded confinement methods of raising and killing animals for food ("factory farming"), choosing as his example, the treatment of chickens:

"Is there any credit balance for the battery hen, denied almost all natural functioning, all normal environment, lapsing steadily into deformity and disease, for the whole of her existence?" he asked. "It is in the battery shed and the broiler house, not in the wild, that we find the true parallel to Auschwitz. Auschwitz is a purely human invention."

Rick Dunkerly of Christ Lutheran Church says:

"The Bible-believing Christian, should, of all people, be on the frontline in the struggle for animal welfare and rights. We who are Christians should be treating the animal creation now as it will be treated then, at Christ's second coming. It will not now be perfect, but it must be substantial, otherwise we have missed our calling, and we grieve the One we call 'Lord,' who was born in a stable surrounded by animals simply because He chose it that way."

Rose Evans, editor and publisher of Harmony: Voices for a Just Future, a "consistent-ethic" periodical on the religious Left, says there are more Christian vegetarians than Jewish vegetarians. Yet some people still react to the idea of Christian vegetarianism as though it were an oxymoron.

"Every year," says Reverend Andrew Linzey, author of Christianity and the Rights of Animals, "I receive hundreds of anguished letters from Christians who are so distressed by the insensitivity to animals shown by mainstream churches that they have left them or are on the verge of doing so...The time is long overdue to take the issue of animal rights to the churches...

"I derive hope from the Gospel preaching that the same God who draws us to such affinity and intimacy with suffering creatures declared that reality on a Cross in Calvary. Unless all Christian preaching has been utterly mistaken, the God who becomes incarnate and crucified is the one who has taken the side of the oppressed and the suffering of the world--however the churches may actually behave."

Actually I believe this resonse fits here as well, as a lot of the problems with the environment result from our consumptive consumerism habits. We want bigger better, faster, buy too much and discard of perfectly good things to justify buying the latest version, using up the earths resources irresponsibly and arrogantly. Remember, after 9/11 we were told by our President the best thing we could to help was go shopping!

I agree.... its impossible to love God while trashing creation. If you let me live in your house and I destroy the place, wheres the love in that?

Congratulations, Neuro!

Hey! Good job! I was wondering how it went, and I'm glad to hear you are happy with your performance! Congratulations on a job well done--I know God will use this in new ways for you to serve others as you serve Him! Enjoy the moment!

Cheers and blessings!

Neuro, that's good news! Somehow, I think God won't mind if you feel a teensy-weensy bit of pride. Your hard work, all in His name, is paying off.

Enjoy that muffellata. You deserve it.

Squeaky, Carl, et al., thanks for your prayers!

The exam went well yesterday. I was more surprised by what wasn't on the test than what was. I didn’t struggle with it and felt pretty comfortable at the end. I think there were only a couple of questions that stumped me, several that I wasn’t too sure about, but felt I knew most of them. There were 200 questions on the exam, and I think 70% is a passing score, so I would have had to have answered more than 60 questions incorrectly to fail. That’s not beyond the realm of possibility, but I don’t feel that way. I wasn’t the first person out of the exam room, but I wasn’t too far behind him (which is not necessarily a good indicator).

I won’t know if I passed or not for another 8 weeks. I spent the rest of the afternoon gathering up a stack of books that my darling wife has tolerated laying in various places around the house and putting them back on the shelf, and then consigning nearly a foot of study notes to the recycle bin (I have electronic copies of most of them). I haven’t worked this hard for so long on something since the neuroscience nursing certification exam in ’95.

My wife and I prayed before I left yesterday to remind myself that I’m doing this for God’s glory and not mine, but it’s hard not to feel proud – and very relieved!

im sorry that was ment for a diff blog feel free to respond anyway

Maybe it is too late. We are so entangled with this culture that has taught us from the beginning our livelihood depends on spending and planning to spend in the future so that we can not see the evil that is the cornerstone of our economy, GREED. You would be hard-pressed to find a leader of a church speaking of living everyday as your last or if someone wants your shirt give him your pants as well. Our money is not ours but is granted to us by the grace of God just like everyday we are on this planet. He can take it away. I think that might be the only solution. If we were indebted to no one the mortgage crisis would be an opportunity for the church to show God’s love to those in need and the truth about the evils of credit and greed but we are in crisis like the rest of our greedy culture. As we split hairs over the true evils that occurred on that black Friday let us take a step back and look at our own lives and the will of our country and see a group of people so fat with luxury we tell the man on the corner no he can not have a dollar or change or my shirt or my pants or my time of day but in our self righteousness we tell this man to get a job and join in on the greed or get out of my way(even though the only place that would hire him is McDonalds or some other place that would never give him benefits or advancement opportunities). Of course many homeless are mentally challenged because Americans are too greedy to give enough money to have housing and care for people with disabilities. If we do not spread our wealth it will be taken from us.

Haha... Nice.

Hey, loyalty has its benefits.

I don't like the new uniforms as much. They came up with a US flag-based design. I don't think it works so well on a uniform. But I haven't been to a game for a while, so I don't know what they look like on the ice.

I'm actually more of a college hockey fan than an NHL fan. The college game is a lot of fun, and the tickets are much cheaper. We became fans when we were living in Bowling Green, Ohio. Bowling Green State University had a really good team during the 1980s when we were there. They aren't so good now.

Stewardship is very important, but stewardship of the environment shouldn't trump stewardship of resources (i.e. economics), which is why a both/and approach to "Creation care" is appropriate. If the economy suffers in such a way that is destructive, that's sacrificing one ethic for the benefit of another. Unless there is a net trade-off that is a win-win for both, it's not mutually beneficial.

There are instances where destroying a sector of the economy because of its immorality for the sake of the environment may be sufficient, but only when there is sufficient replacement of what was destroyed. Like cutting trees, you must replant them. Cutting jobs out of a sector of the economy that is bad for the ecosystem means recreating jobs that are GOOD for the ecosystem.

I can't wait for the solutions that we will discover over the next few decades!

We have (thank God!!) moved away significantly from that paradigm in the most recent elections.

Gee whiz, we might have to pay a TAX! How God awful. It's socialism, I'm tellin' ya! The commies have arrived!

all six of you

How true. For so long, caring for the "environment" has been looked on as an either environment or else jobs and economy issue. Kevin's and Hammerud's comments above seem to be cut from that old paradigm. We're now moving to a "both/and" paradigm, in which we're beginning to recognize that what's good for the environment is also good for the economy.

Unfortunately, too much political rhetoric is still stuck in the old paradigm (suggestion: use of the term "environmental extremist" isn't very helpful). Hopefully that will change soon.

Peace

Now THAT one is funny!

"Reasonable steps to improve the environment" are fine as long as they don't cost anything? I alway thought the "people will lose jobs" argument is a smoke screen. Should we not make illicit drugs illegal because all the dope dealers will lose their jobs? Is it too much to ask that people retrain for jobs that provide more benefit to society?

I remember from Econ 101 that there are costs associated with production that are external, that is the folks who make and consume the products don't pay them. Someone pays for destruction of the environment. It's just a question of who and how: higher prices that include the cost of cleaning up one's own mess, government regulation to force such, superfund style government action, or loss of natural resouces, illness, and death from the loss of clean water, air, and ecosystems.

Hopefully, adding the emphasis to these passages will simply point out to us Bible readers points that we have long overlooked. Sounds like a good way to love God and our neighbors to me.

Peace to all.

I'd like a Holy Spirit Bible, with all the references to the Holy Spirit in invisible ink.

No rest for the weary!