Have compassion as God has compassion. Matthew 5:48
As Christians celebrate Christ’s ultimate sacrifice and resurrection this Easter, let us resolve to emulate His compassion in our own lives. There’s no better place to begin than the dinner table. As we break bread, let’s break ties with some of the most violent and ungodly places on Earth: slaughterhouses and factory farms.
Before they become Sunday’s centerpiece, animals on factory farms are denied everything that God designed them to do. They never breathe fresh air, nurture their young, play with other animals, or do anything to live out the biblical concept that “God’s mercy is over all His creatures.”
For example, pigs spend their entire lives in filthy concrete pens, and cruelty is rampant, as witnessed by PETA’s investigation of Belcross Farm, a pig-breeding facility in North Carolina, which resulted in the first ever felony indictments for cruelty to animals by farm workers in the US. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. Pigs are abused at factory farms across the country.
Easter is also no celebration for hens on egg farms, who suffer constant confinement to tiny, filthy wire cages. Male chicks are killed, through suffocation or grinders, since they don’t produce eggs. And female chicks have their beaks painfully seared off to keep them from pecking one another.
Then, at the end of their short, miserable lives, these animals are roughly crammed into trucks and transported off to suffer the ultimate terror of the slaughterhouse, where workers hang them upside-down and slit their throats.
Christians whose eyes are fixed on the awfulness of crucifixion are in a special position to understand the awfulness of innocent suffering. The Cross of Christ is God’s absolute identification with the weak, the powerless and the vulnerable, but most of all with unprotected, undefended, innocent suffering.
- Rev. Dr. Andrew Linzey
This Easter, demonstrate compassion by trying some delicious vegetarian and vegan Easter recipes.
Also, visit the Christian Vegetarian Association’s website and read their “Would Jesus Eat Meat Today?” pamphlet.
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Breakfast: Oatmeal
Lunch: Medley of pasta salad, veggies, and grilled tofu from the salad bar at the deli across the street
Dinner: Tofurkey sandwich with chips and homemade guacamole
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This entry was posted on Friday, April 2nd, 2010 at 12:30 am and is filed under Animal Welfare, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
very well written