About a year ago, I was working with a man on a landscaping crew. He was a very open-minded man, in his 30s, and we had several discussions about various topics, including a few religious discussions. On this particular day, I happened to notice a small garden spider on the wall of the client’s greenhouse and, being an animal lover, I reached out my finger and started playing with it, very gently, before moving it out of the way so I could continue working. He noticed this and had apparently noticed other instances in which I had played or interacted with animals around the client’s house in some way, because he said to me, “Jacob, I noticed you are always very kind to all the animals. Where did you learn something like that?”
He was very thoughtful in this way and was always asking “why,” but this was a very difficult question for me. I gave the best short answer I knew to give, “I think I learned it from my dad over the years, while we were out hunting.”
He was slightly taken aback at this, as I imagine a lot of people would be. He asked me to explain because he didn’t understand how this could be, that I could love and respect even the smallest of animals, and yet still kill and eat them. I spent a great while explaining my beliefs about animals, which I have hopefully ordered better and expanded with citations into the sections below.
In order to understand something, we must start at the beginning. So, we go to the beginning of the animals, in Genesis.
“Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind”; and it was so. God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good.”
— Genesis 1:24-25 (NASB)
Here we see that on day six God creates the animals that live on the ground. A day previous, he created birds and sea animals. The mere fact that God created something is reason enough to respect it, but things get more serious for us in the verses that follow.
‘Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”’
— Genesis 1:26-28 (NASB)
God made us separate from the animals, in his image. He gave us dominion over all the animals, and power to rule over them. Surely this is a position to be treated with respect and honor! But God wasn’t done explaining our relationship with animals yet. When God made the covenant with his people in the Old Testament, he gave them very specific and intricate rules. He gave them very complex rules concerning what animals they were allowed to eat. In Leviticus 11 you can read all of the details about ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’ animals, what parts of the animals they could and could not eat, when they could and could not handle animals, and other oddities that they were to follow to perfection. This law held for many years and centuries until the new law, the one we are bound by, was put into effect by Jesus’s death and resurrection. So what does the new law say about how we are to treat the animals God put under us? Acts 10 holds our first clue.
“On the next day, as they were on their way and approaching the city, Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray. But he became hungry and was desiring to eat; but while they were making preparations, he fell into a trance; and he saw the sky opened up, and an object like a great sheet coming down, lowered by four corners to the ground, and there were in it all kinds of four-footed animals and crawling creatures of the earth and birds of the air. A voice came to him, “Get up, Peter, kill and eat!” But Peter said, “By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything unholy and unclean.” Again a voice came to him a second time, “What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy.” This happened three times, and immediately the object was taken up into the sky.”
— Acts 10:9-16 (NASB)
While I highly recommend reading the entire context here, this is the part I want to focus on. This vision, like many, had a deeper meaning than the obvious. God was taking away the restrictions on clean and unclean animals, and idea which shocked Peter at first. He was also taking away the restrictions on the Gentiles. Under the old law, Jews were not to associate with Gentiles, they were to be treated as unclean. But God was going to remove this, he was going to give everyone one law, and one means of salvation, and mingle Jews and Gentiles in one church. This idea was appalling to many Jews, and it caused strife in some of the first-century churches which you can read about in some of the epistles.
So God has told us we can eat of any animal, we do not have to restrict ourselves to ‘clean’ animals any longer. This doesn’t mean God does not want us to respect or care for the creatures he has blessed us with! We are to be good stewards of the earth because we have been given the animals to have power over them. And we certainly know we are not to be cruel masters! Ephesians 6:1-9 talks about how those in positions of authority and servitude are supposed to conduct themselves, reminding them that we have a master in heaven. Certainly, principles can be applied to how we treat the animals, although they are lesser than us.
One final point I will make.
“One person has faith that he may eat all things, but he who is weak eats vegetables only. The one who eats is not to regard with contempt the one who does not eat, and the one who does not eat is not to judge the one who eats, for God has accepted him.”
— Romans 14:2-3 (NASB)
This passage tells us that one that eats meat and one that does not eat meat should not treat each other with contempt. This is a very clear passage. We should be careful in the way we treat brothers and sisters who eat or do not eat meat, not to regard with contempt or judge, as this passage says.
I explained to my coworker that I was grateful for the blessing of animals God gave us and that I recognized he gave them to us as food. I explained that I understood that a creature had to lose its life so I could eat and that I have great respect for that, and I told him that I’m thankful to God every time he blesses me with another animal. At the end of my explanation to my coworker, he said he understood how I could both love and eat animals.
Although we had many discussions that turned to religious topics, I never got my friend to sit down to a dedicated study. I still pray he will make time to listen to the full message of the gospel. I wish more people are as willing to consider different viewpoints as him.
— Jacob Brewer