After the comments thread on Monday's quiz turned into a discussion about veganism, I have been thinking through some of the things Laetitia brought up, and am trying to form a firmer reasoning for my own choices.Not because I want to argue with anyone over what is essentially a disputable matter (see Romans 14), but just because we should have proper reasoning behind what we do/don't do, and it's worthwhile to discuss.
Laetitia said this-
Originally God gave human beings every seed-bearing plant for food (Gen 1:29). So milk was for baby animals and honey would have been for bees.
Later, after the flood, God gave permission for humans to eat other animals. There were probably less varieties of safe seed-bearing plants around right after the flood. It is interesting to note that it is at this time (when God gave humans permission to eat animals - Gen 9:3) that the fear and dread of man entered animals (Gen 9:2) - prior to this man and animals had co-existed quite happily because we didn't eat them.
This is an interesting take, one I hadn't really heard before. That Genesis passage referred to is very intriguing as well-
1 Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. 2 The fear and dread of you will fall upon all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air, upon every creature that moves along the ground, and upon all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hands. 3 Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything. (Gen 9:1-3)
'I now give you everything' does imply that before the flood, food was more limited to plants. However, I think a conflicting message comes through even earlier in the Bible.
In Genesis 1, God made two kinds of animals- 'wild' and 'livestock'. Now unless I have a wrong understanding of the term, doesn't livestock mean it has beneficial use for humans? For example, Wikipedia lists 'commodities such as food, or fibre or labour'. This contrasts with what Wikipedia says about veganism, which 'seeks to exclude the use of animals for food, clothing, or any other purpose'.
So my point is that in Genesis 1, before the Fall, and before the flood, God created livestock to have beneficial use as a resource for man. I can't help but then assume that if it was there at the point of Creation, that it is good, and God-given.
One other point I have, is that I think that due to God's incredible complexity and intelligence, everything He created has multiple uses and purposes, so maybe it's limiting to say honey is restricted to a back-up food for bees, or cows milk is restricted to calves.
My view is that the chief purpose of every created thing is to bring glory to God. He made it to delight Himself and to bring Himself glory. From then on, things have multiple purposes, that work together intricately like a tapestry. To use the example of a bee, it's chief purpose is to glorify God. God made it, and it is good.
Then it has secondary purposes. It pollinates flowers, becoming an important link in a chain. It produces honey, a secondary food source for itself. God made this honey to also taste awesome, thus appealing to humans and becoming a beautiful delicacy and provision for us. All good uses, and all linked back to glorifying God.
picture from here.
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One more point is that I can definitely respect the idea of not eating meat etc because there is often so much cruelty involved in the way our consumer society gets it's meat etc (eg, chickens cramped in crowded cages and pumped with hormones to become unusually big).
That to me makes sense, but not the idea that meat eating is essentially wrong, or not what God intended. It's more about our failures as stewards of His creation.
Ben, that is really well thought out. You've written my thoughts on this far better than I ever could!
Matt Chandler at Engage talked about how everything - even the act of eating a meal - was originally designed to bring glory to God. His challenge was that when you eat and fail to bring glory to God, you are participating in sin. That blew me away and challenged me to see everything in a God-centric (not me-centric) way.
I think we are free to eat all that God has given us (think Peter's vision of the blanket covered in animals, where God tells him to "get up and eat") - but the key is to eat offering praise to the Lord.
But I also think the person who chooses not to eat certain things is not in sin either - as long as they restrict their eating offering praise to the Lord.
How God is good in giving us this freedom, and command to love each other no matter what our choices?
Thanks, Soph. Yes I very much agree with your sentiments. It's not about what you eat, but what is going on in your heart when you eat it.
And no, I don't think deciding to not eat certain things is a sin, BUT I do think it is still complex. Not eating a cow because you object to how it was treated, that I understand.
But refusing a good provision of God, like milk or honey, when the animals involved aren't suffering but are living out part of their God-given purpose.. I don't know. That seems like a refusal of a good gift to us.
But, I need to remember that we have freedom in Christ to follow our own conscience. Better to do that than to worry about what the person next to me is doing.
I think God made animals delicious on purpose. And I think that's part of how creation points to a creator (Romans 1), and thus God is glorified when we enjoy food.
Maybe.
OK, this comment is in answer to Nathan's question on the other thread about why I eat a mostly plant-based diet. I may post a comment relating directly to some of the things you have raised in this thread later.
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I'm not vegetarian as I still eat seafood, however I do eat a more plant-based diet than most westerners. I also eat a greater variety of foods than I ever did as a full meat eater (and possibly more than most westerners).
My journey started in 1998 when I read Fran Drescher's (The Nanny) autobiography. She said that she doesn't eat dairy as it gives her acne.
Since I suffer with this affliction (or at least, I used to) I decided to see if not eating dairy would stop, or at least reduce, my acne. Sure enough, it did because my acne was basically a response to my body recognising dairy as a foreign body to be rid of as soon as possible - in my case, through my skin.
[Increased mucus production is another symptom of your body recognising something you've eaten as a foreign intruder. So if you routinely find that this happens to you when you consume a particular product, stop eating it - unless you think that the price is worth it.]
Meanwhile, Ian (who I married in August 1998) had been working in the USA, had become very ill, lost a lot of weight and found that any time he ate any animal products he got ill again (he worked it out when he got ill from eating a Mintie sent over by Aussie friends - Minties contain gelatine. Gelatine is anything butchers can't sell as a readily identifiable internal organ or cut of meat (e.g.spinal cord - can anyone say CJD) so it gets rendered down into a jelly).
He later found that he can eat honey without ill effect.
After a while of being married, with Ian doing most of the cooking [always pays to be married to someone who likes this activity :-)] and asking what he could do to discourage me from eating meat (the smell of it cooking can turn the stomach of a vegetarian) I said that if he could give me information on why I wouldn't want to eat it I would consider it.
He directed me to some vegetarian / vegan websites that gave the low-down on what your body has to do to digest animal products including dairy, and the follow-on effects that it has on your system (diabetes, osteoporosis, atherosclerosis, colon cancer....). From that I decided that I didn't really want to shove most of this stuff down my gullet (and if you'd told me that at the beginning of 1998 I would have thought you were off your rocker).
However, I stopped at seafood and eggs because (a) at the time there was only so far I could go at once and (b) it makes catering for me easier.
So my initial reasons for changing my diet were health based. Now I'm finding more ethical reasons, but they can wait for another comment.
thanks for explaining all that Laetitia. I hope you don't feel like I'm grilling you (no pun intended), I am just curious about how a vegan might see things in view of also being a Christian.
I guess from what you said, it sounds more health related than ethical??
Hi Ben,
I'm finally getting around to answering some of the other points raised in this post. Sorry, but this comment is reasonably long.
How do you feel about eating horse? What about camel or dog? How do feel about the idea of drinking goat milk? What about sheep? horse? Yak?
Turning it around, how would you have felt about the idea of E giving her breast milk not just to little e and i but also to a piglet? What about actually nursing the piglet?
Have I just put you off your lunch? ;-)
What I'm getting at here is that all of these activities that seem abnormal and (to a certain extent) abhorrent to us are normal in various other cultures (the pigs one is reasonably common in places like PNG).
Just because God permits something does not mean that that's part of his perfect original design. Many times our activities, including what we eat or don't eat are cultural learnings.
In my own journey I have found that if I give up an animal based food, I no longer desire it and, when I have tried a vegan "taste-alike" substitute I generally don't enjoy it. I have never had this with respect to a plant food (e.g. I don't go off mangoes simply because I haven't eaten them in 6 - 8 months).
Ever wondered why those jars of baby-food have very small quantities of meat included with mainly veg? Could it be that babies don't naturally take to the taste of flesh but have to be acculturated to it?
Regarding the term "livestock", the Hebrew word "behemah" is commonly translated as "cattle" and would include various groups of creatures that congregate in herds including elephants, giraffes, horses, cows and possibly even dogs as opposed to creatures that are essentially solitary (e.g. possums).
Things like leather and bone are useful things that are by-products of eating meat. However, I'm sure you'll agree that they are most useful to the creature itself, and God originally intended them for use solely by that creature. Why should it be different for milk or honey?
With respect to not killing creatures by taking these things, sorry, but that doesn't necessarily apply. It is a common dairy farming practice for calves to be taken away from their mothers so that the milk goes to humans. The boys are taken away and fed a low-iron gruel and kept from exercise in order to keep their flesh white and soft so they can become veal. Their stomach linings are used for rennet to produce cheese. The girls are kept to become the next generation of "milkers". Should I go on about what happens to get the sperm for artificial insemination?
I expect that for most Christian vegans / vegetarians, their views would be affected by their journey to a plant-based diet (assuming that they haven't started off as a vegan / vegetarian).
For me, my journey started for health reasons but I am more and more seeing stewardship reasons for pursuing this path. I am now trying to reduce how much seafood I eat because of the over-fishing of many of the world's fisheries. I try to grow some of my own food, not just because that way I know where it's come from and what's gone into it (and for the fun of growing things) but also to reduce "food miles". Food miles is the distance that food has travelled in its journey from farm to plate and the attendant follow-on effects on the earth due to the pollutants put out by the transport media, packaging...
The system only allows a certain length for comments so here's the rest of what I was going to say...
However, I do place human life above all animal and plant life because we alone are made in God's image. If it comes down to you or me vs an animal that's going to harm us, I'll shoot the animal. If I were starving and the only thing that was going to save my life would be to hold my nose and eat a piece of steak, I'd shoot the animal. Heck, if you and I were on that plane in the Andes like in that movie "Alive!" and I died, you'd have my permission to eat my flesh if it were the only way for you to stay alive.
I don't believe that eating meat is a sin (otherwise I'd be in a lot of trouble since Jesus ate it); if we were to go to a restaurant together, I'd no more give you a hard time for eating steak than I would expect you to give me a hard time for not eating steak or for asking for no cream sauces or cheese to be added to my meal. However, since God only gave us plants for food in Eden and all animal death is a result of the Fall, I do believe that His original best for us is a plant-based diet.
Hi Laetitia, thanks very much for the time you put into giving a good explanation of where you stand. It was a really good example of how we should discuss these 'disputable matters'- thoroughly, persuasively, but not judgementally.
I will give what you've said more thought. I was pretty struck by your paragrapgh about dairy cows. I guess for me that seems like the actual milking is not wrong, but we've gone wayward in our stewardship of the animals, therefore giving a good thing bad consequences.
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