Dur­ing the last few weeks, ani­mals have been very much part of our social envi­ron­ment. In the kitchen, the dogs had the best places near the stove. It was always nice (and warm) to sit with them and scrib­ble their ears. Mean­while, attempts were made to get some dis­ci­pline into the three kit­tens, who were run­ning wild but also liked to curl up on your lap. They were part of the family.

In this post I want to share some thoughts about my favorite top­ic: our rela­tion­ship with ani­mals. Specif­i­cal­ly, it is about veg­an­ism as an expres­sion of love and a type of non-vio­lent resis­tance. I take a Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive, but per­haps the sub­ject is uni­ver­sal enough for others.

Is it ‘sen­ti­men­tal’ to see pets as part of the fam­i­ly, or even go as far as not want­i­ng to hurt any ani­mal? The Oxford the­olo­gian Andrew Linzey does not think so. After all, the same might be said about Jesus; he did not respect the nor­mal bound­aries of con­cern but befriend­ed tax col­lec­tors and prostitutes:

To be unit­ed to Christ involves in our own day an expan­sion of moral sen­si­tiv­i­ty no less an affront or a threat to those in pow­er than was Jesus’ own com­pas­sion in his day.

God’s love is not restrict­ed to humans. God is a faith­ful cre­ator, and com­mits him­self to every­thing that he has made (Gen­e­sis 9)¹. George Mac­Don­ald, a great inspir­er of C.S. Lewis, wrote about Gods faith­ful care of animals:

Those that hope lit­tle can­not grow much. To them the very glo­ry of God must be a small thing, for their hope of it is so small as not to be worth rejoic­ing in. That he is a faith­ful cre­ator means noth­ing to them for far the larg­er por­tion of the crea­tures he has made!

God’s bound­less love for every­thing that exists is the basis of our faith and our love. Love always strives for uni­ty and whole­ness. Gand­hi² talked about the law of love, just like Jesus taught in the two com­mand­ments: Love God, and love your neigh­bour as your­self (Matthew 22).

The first Chris­tians believed that love and killing peo­ple do not go togeth­er, and refused mil­i­tary ser­vice. This changed when the Roman emper­or became a Chris­t­ian. Ulti­mate­ly, Augus­tine was the one who turned the doc­trine upside down and said that war was per­mis­si­ble if it was for a good cause and was car­ried out with the right spir­i­tu­al atti­tude. If you loved your ene­my, it was no prob­lem to kill him.

I can­not help but see a par­al­lel with the cur­rent atti­tude of Chris­tians towards ani­mals. We take good care of the ani­mals we have and do our best to be good stew­ards of cre­ation. But do we per­ceive the love of God that is present in every tree and every chick­en crawl­ing out of its egg? Do we base our deci­sions on God’s love in us or on our greedy ego?

By pos­ing these ques­tions I don’t want to judge any­one, or claim that my lifestyle is per­fect. The fact is that in order to live, we can nev­er avoid manip­u­lat­ing and thus dam­ag­ing nature. But the extent to which our soci­ety does this has run out of con­trol, and most of the con­se­quences of our con­sump­tion pat­tern are invis­i­ble to us.The ani­mals in fac­to­ry farms are but one exam­ple of this.

Love for ani­mals is not sen­ti­men­tal, but rather a sign of God’s King­dom. It is a force to be reck­oned with. In the first quote from Linzey, he men­tions that our com­pas­sion is a threat to those in pow­er. Not for noth­ing, the sub­ti­tle of Kurlansky’s book on non­vi­o­lence calls it “a dan­ger­ous idea”. Veg­an­ism is one of the ways to resist the pow­er of the food indus­try. This is done with­out hat­ing peo­ple, on the con­trary, by mak­ing friends and let­ting love do its work.

Foot­notes

1. Of course God is not either male or female, but in this post I use the male form.
2. More about Gand­hi and non­vi­o­lence in a pre­vi­ous post: The great lit­tle man. The six prin­ci­ples of Mar­tin Luther King Jr. are also inspiring.

Sources

• Andrew Linzey, 1998. Ani­mal Gospel
• George Mac­Don­ald, 1892. The Hope of the Gospel
• Mark Kurlan­sky, 2006. Non­vi­o­lence: The his­to­ry of a dan­ger­ous idea
• Wen­dell Berry, in: Llewellyn Vaugh­an-Lee (edi­tor), 2016. Spir­i­tu­al Ecology