1. Proposed Bumper Sticker
2. Leafleting Feedback
3. Getting Our Message Into Churches
4. The Peaceable Table
5. Christianity and the Problem of Human Violence: Romans 12:1 and
6:23
1. Proposed Bumper Sticker
We’re thinking of printing a new bumper sticker entitled “Eden Was
Vegan,” and we’d like feedback. Please let us know at
cva@christianveg.com if you
think you would like to order the bumper sticker imaged at
http://www.christianveg.com/edenwas.htm.
2. Leafleting Feedback
Rick, Vince, Sarah, Albany, Onui, Julia, Michael, and others leafleted
and tabled at the Rainbow National Gathering in Routt National Forest
near Steamboat Springs, CO. They distributed 1500 CVA Honoring God's
Creation booklets as well as approximately an additional 2000 booklets,
pamphlets and cards from other veggie organizations including Vegan
Outreach, PETA, Farm Sanctuary, FARM (Farm Animal Reform Movement) and
the local Colorado group HEALTH (Humans, Earth, Animals living together
in Harmony). Thanks to all the groups contributing literature to help
make this event successful and special thanks to Ann of HEALTH for her
considerable efforts to help make this endeavor possible.
This was the first time for a CVA presence at Rainbow and we received
overwhelming positive feedback for participating. It demonstrates the
power of leafleting with roughly 25 CVA booklets distributed from
leafleting for every one distributed by tabling.
To find out about all upcoming leafleting and tabling opportunities
in your area, join the CVA Calendar Group at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group.christian_vegetarian/. Read the home
page, and then join. You will then be able to log in anytime to identify
upcoming events in your region. Contact Paris at
christian_vegetarian@yahoo.com if you might be able to help.
3. Getting Our
Message Into Churches
Sue Riley writes: I will soon be showing the video "Honoring God's
Creation" to my cell group (Bible Study group) of 5-8 women. This is a
new group which started by having a flyer in our church bulletin that a
new cell group ( Bible Study group). This created more response for
forming a cell group than any other time in the history of our church
trying to form new cell groups.
I started attending this cell group a few weeks ago and mentioned to
some members one on one that I was vegetarian. Then, during a recent
cell group, one of the other ladies told the others that I was
vegetarian and we discussed it a lot including the part about animal
suffering. They were hungry for the info and then I mentioned that I
would like to show them a video call "Honoring God's Creation" and they
were so open to it and enthusiastically asked me to show it the next
time we meet. Two of the ladies in particular told me how much they
admire the fact that I am vegetarian and wish that they could be veg
also.
4.
The July issue of The Peaceable Table is now available
* The editorial "God Has Given Them Joy" is a reply to the defenders of
the status quo who hold that animal life in nature is virtually nothing
but violence anyway, so that for humans to kill animals is only
participating in "the way things are."
* Reviews include Jonathan Balcombe's important new book The
Pleasurable Kingdom, giving much evidence of gratifications and
pleasures in animal life, and An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's
documentary film on global warming.
* The Recipes column includes a tasty recipe for penne pasta with
ricotta "cheeze.".
You can read this issue here:
http://www.vegetarianfriends.net/issue23.html
5. Christianity and the Problem of Human Violence - Romans 12:1
and 6:23
[This series reflects my views and not "official" CVA positions. It is
being archived at
http://www.christianveg.com/violence_view.htm.]
Paul wrote to the Romans, “I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by
the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy
and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (12:1). The age
of sacrifice had ended, and Paul wrote that we are to dedicate ourselves
completely, including our bodies, to God.
This passage, I think, helps us form a better understand Romans 6:23:
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in
Christ Jesus our Lord.” Many people interpret this, I think incorrectly,
as indicating that, as a consequence of sin, God demands death either of
the sinner or a sacrificial substitute (and the ultimate sacrifice was
Jesus).
Since Romans 12:1 points to self-sacrifice, I do not think we should
read Romans 6:23 as indicating that God desires that we sacrifice other
individuals to substitute for ourselves. Indeed, Romans 6:23 does not
say that God desires death at all. I think the passage is making a
simple and valid observation: Sinfulness leads to death. When we model
our desires on each other and fall into rivalries, we are on a path that
leads inexorably to death – the victims being either those who find
themselves in conflict or, commonly, one or more scapegoats who the
community blames for growing hostility. Girard has noted that,
universally, primal cultures have ritualized sacrifice.
Typically, they re-enact the cultural crisis that generated the
“need” for sacrifice, and then they kill or expel one or more victims in
communal rituals that recreate the sense of camaraderie that originally
unified the community. While we like to think that our culture does not
engage in sacrificial violence, no culture recognizes its own
scapegoating – to do so would eliminate the unifying power of
scapegoating. In addition, like scapegoating, violence is almost always
invisible to the perpetrators, and those who participate in violence
typically describe it as, for example, “justice” or “necessity.” I think
that, as long as people have eyes that do not see and ears that do not
hear (Mark 8:18), Christ’s revelation that God is about love and not
about death will remain incomplete in this world.
Next week, we will explore The Letter to the Hebrews, which I think
has often been misunderstood as a text that endorses sacrificial
violence.
Stephen R. Kaufman, M.D.