what are animals for?
An intriguing, even challenging, take on the creatures most of us know as "livestock," as we close out our series on animals and the environment. It comes courtesy of William Kruidenier, a Christian freelance editor and writer who I'm honored to introduce to not one sparrow. William is a thoughtful and avid cultivator of sustainable, organic and vegan eating, which prompts the following reflection ...
I'm constantly on the lookout for insights leading to understanding of the purpose of animals in God's design of planet earth—something besides eating them, which is not why they were created (Genesis 1:29-30).
A January 25, 2010, Time.com article is helpful in this regard. It profiles the new plans of organic gardening guru Eliot Coleman and his wife, Barbara Damrosch (gardening columnist for the Washington Post), to integrate a small herd of cows and sheep into their Maine organic farmstead. Heretofore, the couple has raised only veggies and written books, sharing their knowledge. But now, for environmental reasons, they are going to incorporate the animals into their plans for sustainability. They are not vegetarians; they are incorporating animals into the life cycles of their growing operations because of what the animals add to the environment (besides eventually ending up on the table).
This is one of those situations where I'm happy to take the good with the bad. I don't support the consumption of the animals for food, but I do support the ideas Coleman will work out for what the animals add to a sustainable lifestyle: specifically, healthy reproduction of grasslands through rotational grazing, the provision of manure for composting to aid in plant production, and the sequestering of carbon in the soil instead of the air. (The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO] issued a report in 2006 saying that factory farming of cattle contributes more greenhouse gas emissions [i.e., methane gas from the cows] to the atmosphere than all the transportation vehicles in the world.)
In other words, these are significant contributions the animals make to a sustainable environment without being eaten. Most people think of this in reverse: We raise the animals for meat and oh, by the way, they have these other benefits. But it's the "other benefits" that are part of the animals' life when they do what they naturally do. They provide these benefits by simply existing, not because they are being raised to be consumed.
It's easy to imagine how, in a perfect world, large and small grazing animals could play a significant role during their lifespan in promoting the ecology and sustainability of the planet—without having to be eaten. This article provides a good overview of those benefits.
(A sincere thanks to William Kruidenier for sharing "What Are Animals For?", originally posted on his personal blog; photo copyright vesilvio/123rf.com)
April 27, 2010
Reader Comments (2)
I agree wholeheartedly with sustainable living through agriculture and animals, particularly people who can find a way to do it themselves without relying on others. What I can't understand is how, as a Christian, you can see eating animals as wrong. If it were, the Lord Jesus Christ wouldn't have fed 5000 people (and certainly himself) fish for dinner. Nor would he have cooked the disciples fish for breakfast in John 21. Nor would he have shown Peter all kinds of animals and instructed him to eat calling them "clean" in Acts. It's not even a remotely debatable issue. Say that you disagree with eating animals. Say that you think animals have feelings. But adopting a position that eating animals is somehow morally wrong or unbiblical is imposing your views on the text and it just doesn't hold up to even lightweight exegesis and frankly, detracts from what might otherwise make a compelling argument.
"Herman," thank you for taking the time to comment, and I actually take a similar approach to the one you mentioned. The Bible doesn't condemn meat eating, so we need to respect that as Christians, but it also does allow for vegetarianism. In fact, there are several very meaningful moral reasons today for cutting back or going without meat, perhaps even some other animal products, which were not nearly so strong as in the time of the Old or New Testament: the grossly inhumane reality of industrial animal agriculture, the massive environmental effects of the same, and the many negative health implications of an animal product-laden diet.
One thing we do ask here on not one sparrow is for folks to use their real name in dialogue. If you'd be ok with that, and leaving an email address so I can follow up with you personally, I'd be happy to dialogue further and perhaps even see what William's response might be. I know him to be an evangelical Christian who also takes the biblical text very seriously, so I'm sure he'd have a nuanced perspective as well which he perhaps wasn't able to completely flesh out in this post - Ben