compassionate dominion & factory farms

Concluding Greg Boyd's compelling, and nonjudgmental, series is "Compassionate Dominion and Factory Farms."  We'll be sharing the post here in two parts, both of which I beg you not to miss.  It'd be hard to imagine a more poignant, or succinct, call to compassionate eating as a Christian:

“The question is not ‘Can they reason?’ nor, ‘Can they talk?’ but, ‘Can they suffer?’” (Jeremy Bentham) 

“A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite.” (Leo Tolstoy)

“The righteous care for the needs of their animals ...” (Prov. 12:10, all passages from Today's New International Version)

In the previous two blogs I’ve offered four reasons why I became and remain a vegetarian.  (By the way, there are many other arguments that others give to support vegetarianism — such as its health benefits.  I think some of these arguments are plausible, but I’m omitting them since they don’t honestly affect my own decision one way or the other.)  I now want to share my fifth and final reason why I’m a vegetarian.  It concerns the fact that we’re called to reflect God’s love and mercy by how we exercise dominion over the animal kingdom (Gen. 1:26-28).

5. Compassionate Dominion and the Factory Farm Industry  Because we’ve been conditioned to see them as products for consumption, few western Christians seem to appreciate just how much dignity and value God ascribes to animals.  It was to animals, not humans, that God gave the first command recorded in the Bible (Gen. 1:22).  Every animal was created by him, belongs to him, and is sustained and cared for by him (e.g. Ps. 50:10-11; Job 12:10).  The Lord is often depicted as a compassionate care-giver affectionately tending to the needs of his pets.  “All creatures look to you,” the Psalmist says, “to give them their food at the proper time” (Ps. 104:27 cf. vs. 11; 147:9).  Jesus depicts his Father as personally attending to the needs of sparrows (Mt 6:26; 10:29; Lk 12:6).

The Lord’s heart is to preserve “both people and animals” (Ps 36:6, emphasis added), and he shows compassion on every living thing that he has made (Ps 145:9).  For example, one of the reasons he gave to Jonah for wanting to have mercy on Nineveh was that it was home to so many animals (Jon 4:11).  Clearly, God has a tender heart toward animals.

One of the clearest signs of the dignity and value God ascribes to animals is that he sometimes makes covenants with them.  When God forged a new covenant with Noah after the flood, for example, he included animals.  The Lord said the rainbow was “the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you [Noah] and every living creature with you …” (Gen. 9:12, cf. 16-17, emphasis added).  So too, as we saw in the last blog, the covenant of non-violence God says he’ll make in the coming Kingdom epoch includes the animal kingdom (Hos. 2:18).

Now, the final act of creation, according to the Genesis narrative, was the creation of humans who were created to be God’s co-workers (I Cor 3:9; 2 Cor. 6:1) and co-rulers (2 Tim. 2:12; Rev. 5:10) carrying out his will “on earth as it is in heaven” (Mt 6:10).  Our original mandate in the Bible centered on carrying out God’s loving dominion over the earth and the animal kingdom (Gen. 1:26-28; Psl. 8:4-8).  We are entrusted and commissioned to reflect God’s care for animals by how we ourselves care for them.

This original commission was never retracted by God.  Caring for animals is still one of our most fundamental benchmarks for how we’re doing as a species.  And by that benchmark, I think it’s obvious we’re failing pretty miserably.

Over the last century we have reduced farm animals to commercialized commodities whose only value is found in how efficiently we can produce and slaughter them for profit.  Consequently, we now have a situation where more than 26 billion animals each year are forced to live in miserable, over-crowded warehouses where there is absolute nothing natural about their existence and where they are subjected to barbaric, painful, industrial procedures.  (I encourage readers to view the film Farm to Fridge [click here to watch] and read Matthew Scully’s marvelous book Dominion to be informed on these matters.)

to be continued ...

(From "Compassionate Dominion and Factory Farms," originally posted Feb. 16, '08, and courtesy Greg Boyd, ©.  Downed Cow photo courtesy Farm Sanctuary, ©; book first published by St. Martin's, '02.)

Comments

[Debby Porter]

It's easy for us as consumers to take for granted the conditions that animals are raised in for human consumption, as the photos and videos of their suffering is not constantly in our face like the advertisements for fast food are. I think a greater awareness of the animal's living conditions is necessary for people to make an educated decision whether to partake of meat, or not.

[Ben DeVries]

Very well said, Debby, thanks for checking in - Ben