against animal violence

A few months ago I bumped into Kurt Willems on Twitter, a writer and pastor who journals at The Pangea Blog on theology, ethics, ministry and recently even animals!  Kurt kindly offered to share a post I wrote on the theme of nonviolence which is close to his heart as an Anabaptist evangelical.  Here's a preview of "The Nonviolence of the Kingdom ... Towards Animals":

Witnessing such acts as Lincoln and Sobosan did, and the resulting agony of noble and harmless creatures, would have been hard for me to process as a child well.  I don’t know that I would have reacted more approvingly of explicit cruelty as I grew into adolescence and something resembling adulthood.  But I do know that the deep-seated fascination and heart which I had for the animal kingdom as a boy was replaced with a practical indifference to their existence, and wellbeing.

I'm grateful to Kurt for sharing "The Nonviolence of the Kingdom," and hope you'll have a chance to read the rest of the post and check out more of Kurt's blog.  I'd also like to thank fellow Moody alum Eric Beach for sharing a version of this reflection a couple of years ago at The Brew Mag (R.I.P.). 

(photo credit Bhupendra Singh/123rf.com)

Comments

[Tracey Clarke]

This is powerful writing, Ben. Beautifully done. I can see the images of your words clearly.

[Ben DeVries]

Thank you very much for the affirmation on the piece, Tracey, it means a lot to me. Ben