Orthodox Christians kill innocent animals

Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living creatures, man will himself not find peace. –Albert Schweitzer

Christianity and vegetarianism

It isn't very hard to find a Christian today who will claim that there is nothing wrong with eating meat. Such people don't know anything about slaughterhouses. Jesus taught mercy, and do the slaughterhouses know anything about mercy? I don't think so.

Watch this video before reading any further. 

Most orthodox Christians out of ignorance claim that Jesus could not have been a vegetarian as Luke’s Gospel records him eating fish. But, lots of evidence proves that Luke’s story could not have been true.

Many scholars believe that Jesus was a member of the Essene Nazarenes, a Jewish religious sect that followed vegetarianism and rejected animal sacrifices. First, let’s come to animal sacrifice. Jesus opposed animal sacrifice strongly. His life was spent preaching mercy and compassion and explicitly opposing the Temple cult, a cult of animal sacrifice. Three points are especially relevant.

First, in Jesus' time, animal sacrifice was considered by many to be the only method of forgiveness for sin. Those who opposed it looked to the eternal law of God, the law of the Garden of Eden and the Prophets, and instituted baptism for forgiveness of sins. Thus, in the course of his ministry, Jesus says multiple times, quoting the prophets, which his followers must learn to understand what God means when He says through the prophet Hosea, "I desire mercy, and not animal sacrifice." The stress on baptism in the Gospel and Acts of the Apostles doesn't have the same impact on us as it would have in first-century Palestine, but the people of Jesus' time understood that baptism represented a complete rejection of the violence and bloodshed involved in killing animals for forgiveness. John the Baptist prepares the way of Jesus by appearing in the desert, "preaching a baptism of repentance for forgiveness of sins." Secondly, animal sacrifice was carried out in the temple, which is why those who objected opposed the temple. Jesus speaks consistently of casting down the temple and overthrowing it. Jesus enters the temple and casts out the animal traders. He quotes from Jeremiah 7, which first-century Palestinians would have recalled:

Jeremiah 7 finds God saying that He never intended animal sacrifice and making the direct link between animal sacrifice and meat-eating. So Jesus enters the temple and prevents people from sacrificing animals for the Sabbath meal. The crucial point is that these people were only selling animals and only for sacrifice. The people would eat the flesh of the animal sacrificed.

Third, and finally, Jesus died in order to put a full stop to animal sacrifice. Isaiah 53: 7- 9 refers to Jesus. Jesus is compared to the millions of innocent lambs who were killed in the name of sacrifice. Jesus died in order to show that humanity need not kill innocent animals, because if a sacrifice is required, God Himself would be the sacrifice in the form of Jesus.

So, when people like Dave are supporting animal sacrifice, it defeats the whole purpose for which Jesus died.

The Ten Commandments supports kindness towards animals. (Exodus 20: 10) It shows that God wanted even animals not to work on the day of the Sabbath. He even gave them permission to rest. But, today’s slaughterhouses are disgustingly cruel and do not even think of giving the animals some time to enjoy the natural beauty. The chickens have to spend their entire lives in small cages. Some of them don’t even get to see the sunshine and they spend their entire lives in pain. The slaughterhouses are doing nothing but making a mockery of God’s creation.

I personally think that any Christian missionary, who talks about love and compassion, but still contributes to this kind of cruelty even after being enlightened, is obviously a hypocrite. It is obvious that if Jesus was alive today, he would fight in order to put and end to this cruelty.

There is a lot of historical evidence to prove that Jesus was a vegetarian. For example, we can look at early Church Fathers like St. Basil, Jerome and Clement of Alexandria. They not only were vegetarians, but also promoted vegetarianism. It is likely that they were inspired by Jesus to follow a non-violent diet.

In Genesis, the perfect world was vegetarian. So is the perfect world as predicted by Isaiah. God gave Noah temporary permission to eat because all the plants were destroyed by the flood. You've already seen the condition of the slaughterhouses in the above video. How pathetic that in today’s world, orthodox Christians tries to justify the brutal killing of animals in the slaughterhouses using this passage from the Bible!

Christian or non-Christian, most people would agree that it is unethical to hurt an animal unnecessarily. So, why are people hurting innocent animals just for their appetite and using the Bible as an excuse? It is because they care about their stomachs more than they do about the life of living creatures.

Jesus taught love and compassion, yet there is nothing loving and compassionate about slaughterhouses and factory farms. There is nothing loving and compassionate about killing an innocent animal for our appetite. A vegetarian diet is much healthier, not only for us but also for the animals. We share the planet with other animals. Let us love and care for them instead of killing them to satisfy our selfish needs.

Blessed are the merciful.