It's good to see other emerging-type Christians coming out as vegetarian. Steve Taylor gives four good reasons, two of which I particularly stand up for myself.
I'd also echo his words on the dietary need for meat. It is Likely that Jesus ate meat, but not at the several times a week rate all too many in the west think is a right, but at a modest sort of rate of occasionally. For people in Jesus's time it was largely economic necessity, in our time emulating the practice as a matter of building infrastructure for a juster world is important. So I echo Steve in urging Christians to be vegetarian, my concession to those who find that scary is to say "or at least vegetarian for most of the week".
humans have protein needs that can be met by both beans and beef. But you can grow lots and lots of beans in the space it would take a graze a cow. In other words, if humans ate more beans and less beef, than more humans would have their protein needs met. In a world of hunger, I became increasingly uneasy about my meat consumption. ...
becoming increasingly aware that many in the emerging culture were vegetarian, and that good, contextual, missiology would want to consider Paul's words "to the Jew I become a Jew, to the vegetarian, I become a vegetarian."
So I went vegetarian. One of the upsides for me has been a far greater link between my everyday life and my spirituality. My Christian faith feels more entwined with my lifestyle and I am made constantly aware of the justice issues around human consumption every time I eat.
I'd also echo his words on the dietary need for meat. It is Likely that Jesus ate meat, but not at the several times a week rate all too many in the west think is a right, but at a modest sort of rate of occasionally. For people in Jesus's time it was largely economic necessity, in our time emulating the practice as a matter of building infrastructure for a juster world is important. So I echo Steve in urging Christians to be vegetarian, my concession to those who find that scary is to say "or at least vegetarian for most of the week".
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Andii
Another element that does not receive adequate attention in Christian circles concerns the ethical problems of industrialised farming (the hormone induced growth of poultry and in unnatural cramped conditions; the problem of pigs placed in confined pens in which they are unable to move around; the maltreatment of animals when herded into transportation to abbatoirs etc).
Our ecological and social justice ethics need to broaden from the difficulties of Third World poverty and malnutrition (versus the gluttony of the West), to also see that the health of the creation in its widest sense must be reflected on. This obviously entails the way crops are sown and harvested, the use of chemicals that seep into the soil and degrade it, and the above problems concerning agricultural animals.
Those Christians who struggle with a vegan or vegetarian diet, can still make decisions about the meat products they consume. Choosing genuinely accredited organic meat produce, genuinely accredited free range poultry, are ethical choices that Christians can make relative to rejecting the greed, cruelty and undignified treatment of industrialised farms.
Here Christians can revisit the creation narratives, the Noahic covenant, and the provisions of the Torah concerning the treatment of agricultural animals (and recalling Jesus' statements about assisting a trapped animal even on a Sabbath day). The eschatological vision of animals worshipping God (Isaiah, Ezekiel) should also cause us to reflect on their place in God's kingdom too.
And if we recall that the sacrifical atonement system of the Torah involved an "innocent" animal, we might see the Christic analogy in a fresh way too.
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