I am not very religious, but even in the absence of any devout ritual or religion, I have, as with everything else, tried to be informed. The subject of religion is especially sensitive to many vegans, as many humans use God(s) as their reason and justification to be cruel to other beings and destructive to our planet, or be passive in the face of so much suffering.
Personally, I don’t care if you worship Satan, if you are Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, an Atheist, etc. I simply hope that you are a moral and kind person who accepts responsibility for your part and your choices.
I believe all vegan advocates have had the frustrating experience of hearing someone declare, "God made animals for people. We're supposed to eat/use animals."
However, The Bible describes the Garden of Eden as vegetarian (Genesis 1:29-30), and the prophet Isaiah envisioned a similarly peaceful end of time, when the Messiah will come and "the wolf shall lie with the lamb" and "the lion shall eat straw like the ox" and "they shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain." (Isaiah 11:6-9)
Also consider: Genesis: "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food."
But it isn’t just about the act of killing and violence ("Thou shalt not kill") - In his book, "Dominion" - a magnificent and hard-hitting argument for veganism through a religious lens - Matthew Scully writes: "Modern farming isn't just killing: It is negation, a complete denial of the animal as a living being with his or her own needs and nature."
When Pope Benedict XVI was asked about the rights of animals in a 2002 interview, he said, "That is a very serious question. Animals, too, are God's creatures…this degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me in fact to contradict the relationship of mutuality that comes across in the Bible."
Compassion for animals was also a prominent theme in John Paul II’s papacy. Pope John Paul proclaimed that "the animals possess a soul and men must love and feel solidarity with our smaller brethren." He went on to say that all animals are "fruit of the creative action of the Holy Spirit and merit respect" and that they are "as near to God as men are."
Strong compassionate people of faith should persistently and respectfully encourage their church communities to study and reflect on what their faith really teaches about humankind's proper relationship to nonhuman Creation and Earth.
Buddha, a known vegan, stated, "When a man has pity on all living creatures then only is he noble."
By their mere existence on Earth the animals and other creatures are a gift!!! Thus great men and women recognize that we owe them kindness. We should recall the gentleness with which saints like St. Francis of Assisi or St. Philip Neri treated animals…"It is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly."
In our modern world, ALMOST ALL suffering and death of animals is unneeded!
Animals possess the divine spark of life - the living quality that is the soul - and they are not inferior beings, as factory farmers, fur farmers, and others who exploit animals for profit would have us believe. Animals have the ability to suffer and feel pain, to feel lonely and depressed, and to clearly demonstrate love for others and their families.
The Reverend Al Sharpton is a vegan and a compassionate soul. His dramatic weight loss and robust appearance of late is due to his vegan lifestyle. "We're paying for a life of misery for some of God's most helpless creatures," says Mr. Sharpton.
This all comes as America's churches are a becoming a starting point for a grassroots revolution in food production: From Methodists' support of compassion, to a recent statement by U.S. rabbis that humans should prevent animal suffering.
These movements align religious people with the morals and values they claim to hold. Gandhi once said, "It ill becomes us to invoke in our daily prayers the blessings of God, the Compassionate, if we in turn will not practice elementary compassion towards our fellow creatures."
Veganism is clearly a religious and spiritual ideal. There are many religious passages that oppose cruelty to animals and even more that praise compassion, kindness, and caring for the weak and the poor. When considering the harmful effects of animal agriculture on the Earth, world hunger, animal welfare, and human health, one could rather easily draw the conclusion that, if Jesus or God were among us today, he would be a vegan!!!
"According to religious people, God allows you to make free decision in your life...God allows bad and good things to happen, it's just up to you to interpret what the good things are and what are the bad...God may ‘allow’ this happen, but it doesn't mean he wants it to, that would be like saying he supports murderers, rapists, and pedophiles, too, simply because it ‘happens’."
- Author Unknown
Cardinal John Henry Newman eloquently expressed, "Cruelty to animals is as if humans did not love God."
Please choose a meaningful life living the values of compassion and with love for Earth and our fellow beings!!!
"If God intends us to eat meat, then God is either ignorant, irrational, or malevolent. If God doesn't know that eating meat causes heart attacks, cancer, strokes, etc., then he is ignorant about nutrition. If God knows that eating meat is harmful to our health but intends us to do it anyway, then either he is malevolent and wants bad things to happen to us, or he is irrational since, despite wanting us to be healthy, he intends us to eat a diet detrimental to our health. Since, by definition, God is neither ignorant nor irrational nor malevolent, it is incoherent to believe that God intends us to eat meat."
- Mylan Engel, Jr.
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