a small step for factory farming ...
Last week I posted a talk by pastor and professor Michael Bruner on extending compassion and restraint to the animals we consume. Michael has also blogged on why Prop 2 is such an important measure at Cruelty to Compassion: A Modest Measure, and here is some of what he had to say:
The conviction that underlies the effort to pass Proposition 2 is simple: no animals should be prevented from engaging in even the most basic movement. It's that simple. This is a mainstream, modest, simple call to reduce the suffering of millions of farm animals who live destitute and degrading lives every day in California. We Californians are better than that. We humans are better than that. And the factory farms know it. And that's why they're mad. ("First They Ignore You ...")
In the work of animal welfare, it is far too easy to get overwhelmed by the sickening reality of animal abuse and the horrific conditions of factory farms ... We must nevertheless hold up, in the midst of the reality of this desperate situation, a vision for what things can - and with God's help, will - be. God has rarely made a practice of swooping in to stop suffering. Many of us wish otherwise, but that's not how it works (freedom invariably begets suffering, which is the price we pay in a broken world). That will all change, of course, when "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven," but until that day, WE are God's hands and eyes and feet and heart, and WE are the ones whom God entrusts to carry out his will that all suffering might end, in spite of, or perhaps because of, our freedom to do so. ("Shhhh ...")
My two year-old knows better. She knows not to step on a Rolly Polly bug when we got out walking the cul-de-sac. She knows she shouldn't hit our dog just because. She knows it's not nice to torture butterflies. She would also know, if we cared to show her, that it's not nice to tether young calves by the neck to a chain and stick them in a cage just big enough to stand up or lie down ... in their own feces... their entire life. ...
Even if this Proposition passes, it doesn't mean the end of all farm animal cruelty. But it does mean the end of the worst of it. And a little less cruel is a whole lot better. ("Something There is that Doesn't Like a Wall")
It used to be that farms in this country were owned by farmers whose well-being depended on the well-being of the animals they raised for food, and farming wasn't so much a business as a way of life. ... Farms weren't merely places where animals died, in other words. They were also places where animals lived.
Today's factory farms are nothing of the sort. ("Prisons and Plowshares")
As the battle over Proposition 2 intensifies, there will be many stories of collapsing industries and sky-rocketing prices that are purportedly caused by Prop 2's passage. These stories will prove to be nothing but fictions of doom. Such were the dire predictions surrounding similar propositions in other states. None of them came true.
So, Californians - two-thirds of whom support Prop 2 according to the most recent Field poll - should vote their conscience in November, free from concerns of economic peril. ("Economies of Shame")
Please read more from Michael's posts if you get the chance. I especially appreciated his description of how his two-year old daughter would respond if exposed to the conditions of factory farmed animals. It's a valid point to make, that we've lost much of the natural expectation we had as children as to how valuable every animal is and how it deserves to be treated. We wouldn't have been able to imagine anything different, thank God.
Let's pray we can move a little closer back to that innocence as society, which after all is what God always wanted for creation in the first place, and what he wants to restore with our participation (see motivation), as Michael also pointed out.
(thanks very much to Michael for allowing us to share some of his posts; photo from The Animals Voice public domain image gallery)
November 1, 2008
Reader Comments (2)
This is great! I love Michael's thoughts on this issue.
Very thought-provoking. Thanks, Ben!