What Does The Bible Say About Eating Animals

Q: I have an ongoing problem considering I'm living every bit a hypocrite. I'm an animal lover but I eat meat. I don't swallow veal or lamb because they are from young animals, but I consume meat, fish, fowl and eggs. Is there anything in the Bible that refers to this or to Christ's personal practice? Did Jesus eat meat? I'm aware that I'm looking for absolution for eating meat, only I can't get rid of this conflict in my heed. As I say, it is hypocritical. I would never hunt or fish, simply I eat what someone else kills to put meat on my tabular array. Is killing and eating animals a sin in the optics of God or Jesus? What would Jesus have said? -- From L

P.S. I contribute to many animate being groups, especially to help farm animals and to ban dog racing, etc., but it doesn't erase the guilt.

A: In Genesis 1:29 God speaks to Adam,

"And God said, Behold, I have given yous every herb-begetting seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to yous it shall be for food."

In the second chapter of Genesis (2:16-17) vegetarianism is re-affirmed equally people'southward spiritually proper diet. However, one tree in the Garden of Eden bore forbidden fruit,

"And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not consume of it: for in the day that 1000 eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."

Null could be clearer. God does non want us to swallow meat. People are made in God'south image and animals are not, but this spiritual difference is not sufficiently morally significant to let killing animals for food. Killing another person is a capital crime and a sin. Killing an animate being is just a sin.

The moral and spiritual ambiguity about eating meat is made more explicit in the ninth affiliate of Genesis (Genesis ix:3-half-dozen) when God tells Noah in the covenant made with him afterward the Great Alluvion,

"Every moving thing that liveth shall exist meat for you lot; even as the green herb have I given you all things. But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not swallow. And surely your blood of your lives will I crave; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of human; at the hand of every man's brother volition I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man'southward blood, by human shall his blood exist shed: for in the prototype of God made he human being."

So God has a change of center and strikes what I consider to be a perfect spiritual balance. God is maxim that being a vegetarian is conspicuously the higher way, but it is not the only way. Meat is not murder, just it is not the highest moral level to which nosotros can drag our diet. Eating meat too makes us comfortable effectually claret, and blood is life. Spilling the claret of animals makes usa less revolted by spilling the blood of people.

This nuanced position that eating meat is a concession to human carnivorous urges merely non our highest level helps usa to learn that the Bible offers u.s.a. many levels of spiritual do. We can live a life on every bit high a level as nosotros desire.

The question of whether or non Jesus was a vegetarian is complicated. There is no direct statement on the subject by Jesus in the New Attestation. The story of Jesus feeding fish to people would support the view that Jesus may accept been a pescatarian. Paul seems to accept been more open up to meat eating, but even Paul was open to vegetarianism. In i Corinthians viii:xiii Paul said, "Wherefore, if meat brand my blood brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend." So for Paul vegetarianism was a style of not offending vegetarian hosts, but was not an explicit control of God.

Modern Christianity has produced the vegetarian Seventh Day Adventists who are vegetarians considering of the teachings of their co-founder Ellen G. White.

So what tin can I say to ease your carnivorous guilt? I would suggest that yous experiment with meatless Mondays, and so no meat till dinner, and then peradventure a menstruum of time when you swallow no meat for a flow of time. Your moral intuitions are right. There is something hypocritical near the way we profess life and so swallow the earth to expiry. Remember that your journeying to God has many levels and y'all ought to have no shame or guilt near the stage of your journey that y'all have reached so far.

Send questions and comments to The God Team via email at godsquadquestion@aol.com. Rabbi Gellman is the author of several books, including "Religion for Dummies," co-written with Fr. Tom Hartman.

Source: https://www.thenewsstar.com/story/news/local/blogs/2018/06/22/bibles-stance-eating-meat-may-surprise-you/721359002/

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