Christian Vegetarian Association Blog - Are Our Most Inner Values Aligned With Our Faith?


	CVA BLOG

Are Our Most Inner Values Aligned With Our Faith?
December 5, 2011

Welcome to the weekly CVA blog! In it you will find famous quotes, news and commentaries.

Faith and Ethics

Famous Quote: Leo Tolstoy

Supporting Animal Cruelty

Bible verse: 1 Peter 5:8-9

Weekday Vegetarian: An Ethical Dilemma

This Week’s Video: Mercy For Animals’ National Ad Campaign

1. Faith and Ethics

Michael Gilmour, Professor of English and biblical literature at Providence University College in Manitoba, writes about the connection between his Christian Faith and the choice he made to adopt a vegetarian diet. While he confesses that it wasn't theology what prompted him to go vegetarian, but instead the ethical implications surrounding it, he realizes that his diet avoids treating God's farmed animals cruelly or frivolously. The Bible, Gilmour says, does not mandate a vegetarian diet but it does call us to be compassionate, merciful and kind.

Please visit Christian Ethical Vegetarianism: A Modest Proposal:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-gilmour/christian-vegetarianism_b_1022172.html

Our Christian faith and ethics should go hand in hand. Animal agriculture is an industry that profits from the pain, fear and death of God's farmed animals. Each one of us, by adopting a plant-based diet, is helping reduce the abuse and death of thousands of animals, the devastation of the environment and the rate of chronic diseases.

2. This Week’s Famous Quote

This is dreadful! Not only the suffering and death of the animals, but that man suppresses in himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity—that of sympathy and pity towards living creatures like himself—and by violating his own feelings becomes cruel.

~ Leo Tolstoy

3. Supporting Animal Cruelty

Ralph Waldo Emerson said it well: "You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity." It turns out that people who eat animal products would have an extremely hard time performing the standard procedures in a factory farm (de-horning, de-beaking, castration, etc.) or at a slaughterhouse (rip off the skin of an animal, slice open her body to remove the entrails, or butcher her flesh into supermarket-sized pieces); however, these consumers seem to have no problem paying others to do the dirty job. So, who is to blame for animal cruelty?

Please visit Animal Cruelty: Who is to Blame?
http://www.care2.com/causes/animal-cruelty-who-is-to-blame.html

Those who support industries that exploit God’s animals are accomplices of the cruelty inflicted on them. It is time that consumers take responsibility for the consequences of their choices.

4. This Week’s Bible Verse

(RSV) 1 Peter 5:8-9

Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.

There are plenty of temptations to throw us off the path God wants us to follow. However, by trying our best to follow Christ’s teachings of compassion, mercy, love and peace, we can rest assured that we are under God’s wing.

5. Weekday Vegetarian: An Ethical Dilemma

Zoe Weil, president of the Institute for Humane Education, explains why she wasn't particularly thrilled upon watching the 4-minute TED talk, Why I'm a Weekday Vegetarian , by Treehugger.org founder Graham Hill. Hill explains in this short talk why, in spite of having full knowledge of the devastating effects of animal agriculture on the environment, our health and farmed animals, he decided to stick to a plant-based only on weekdays. Weil clearly and concisely raises the ethical dilemmas associated with this decision and wishes Hill set better ethical standards for himself and the rest of the people who look up to him. Please visit The Ethical Dilemma Inherent in the Weekday Vegetarian Plan:
http://www.care2.com/causes/the-ethical-dilemma-inherent-in-the-weekday-vegetarian-plan.html#ixzz1cbYrGWNs

I think Mr. Hill shows weakness of character and dubious ethics in trying to rationalize his eating of God’s farmed animals “only” on weekends in spite of having the knowledge of the devastation that agribusiness causes in God’s Creation. It’s sad that a person who many people admire for his environmentalist work chooses to let his taste buds trump his ethics.

6. This Week’s Video: Mercy For Animals’ National Ad Campaign

Mercy For Animals has launched a very ambitious national ad campaign – consisting of three groundbreaking television advertisements – that will air from coast-to-coast on MTV. Over the next month, the ads will be viewed millions of times! To view the ads please visit:
https://www.charity-pay.com/mfa/adsponsor.asp

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