compassion and restraint

Michael Bruner, a fellow missionary kid and an evangelical pastor and professor in the Presbyterian tradition, gave the following talk at the announcement of the Religious Proclamation for Animal Compassion in Washington D.C. last November ... 

California is burning, Mexico is drowning, and sub-Saharan Africa is dying of thirst. In the wider context of these disasters, how we treat animals seems to be a disproportionately small concern.  But why is California burning, and Mexico drowning, and Africa parched?  We talk about this country's addiction to oil.  It is nothing compared to our addiction to meat.  A recent U.N. report published earlier this year found that the methane produced from the flatulence of cows causes more damage to the atmosphere than all the exhaust from trains, planes, and automobiles combined (try quoting that in your headlines tomorrow).  Turns out, how we treat animals is a lynchpin to so many other pressing issues of the day, particularly when it comes to the environment.  Quite literally, animals are the environment, so their fate is our own, and if we can't muster enough character and compassion to look after their welfare, we, too, will go the way of the kiwi, and soon the polar bear, and perhaps already the honeybee.

When posterity looks back at this point in history, they'll say one thing: that instead of simply carrying on with business as usual, we radically re-altered our priorities and reassessed our relationship to the planet.  I'm confident they'll say this because, if we simply carry on with business as usual, there will be no posterity.  Which means that right now, in this room, we have a chance, not simply to change the course of history, but to actually keep it going.

I was born and raised in the outback of the Philippines to missionary parents, right on the edge of a jungle and near a farm, which means I grew up in very close proximity to animals of all kinds: our own pets (dogs, cats, and birds); the farm animals (cows, goats, pigs, chickens, and horses); and the wild native animals (snakes, bayawaks, monkeys, and birds of every kind).  I had a very holistic view of animals and from a young age felt quite an affinity to them ... well, to some of them, at least.  I grew up, in other words, understanding that they were, quite simply, an indispensable part of the fabric of life.  And now here I am, some thirty years later, essentially making the same claim.  But now, according to the stereotype, as an Evangelical Christian I'm supposed to care about animals primarily for how they taste, and not, as I did when I was child, for who they are.  But who says?  Certainly not Scripture.  Certainly not Jesus.  And certainly not this Proclamation.

As a minister in the mainline evangelical tradition, I have a very compelling reason to treat animals with compassion: because they are a part of God's creation, and dominion is not domination.  The center of Christ's commands is, in fact, a radical call to compassion.  Indeed, to love.  But there is no place here for tawdry theological sentimentalism.  Leave my dog or cat to its own devices and it will kill for meat.  But an animal takes only what it needs, and that is the difference between them and us.  We don't stop at need.  We want and want and want, and as a result, we're killing our planet out of sheer greed.  So at the end of the day, this Proclamation, this entire initiative really, is fundamentally about two things: compassion and restraint, which are really opposite sides of the same coin.

So what is the verdict?  Are we going to continue to drown ourselves in gluttony and greed at the expense of animals and their suffering and, as a result, forfeit not only their future but the future of our children?  Or will we, in a bold, difficult, even audacious move, restrain our appetites and, for one exalted moment, stay the knife?

May God bless the work before us.

Many thanks to Michael for allowing me to re-post the transcript here, and to Sue Grisham of EpiscoVeg for pointing me to it.  Michael has been blogging about the upcoming Prop 2 farm animal welfare ballot at Cruelty to Compassion: A Modest Measure, which I'll be taking a closer look at next week.