We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
Contemplating Food Choices
As many of you know, Shelley and I have been vegetarians for the last eight years or so. This is a personal conviction, not a doctrine, but there are compelling reasons for adopting this lifestyle. The main conviction that led me to quit eating meat was that I felt I should never kill anything out of convenience or for pleasure. A close second was that the way animals are treated on industrial farms is absolutely hideous. As a person who’s first mandate from God is to reflect reflect his loving character by caring for the earth and the animal kingdom (Gen 1:26-28), I feel strongly that I should not participate in, let alone benefit from, this barbaric and even torturous treatment in any way. (I encourage all meat-eating followers of Christ to find out how your food choices impact animals and to buy your meat only from free-range ranch farms.) Since Shelley and I have made this decision, we have notice many other unintended benefits as well. For example, we’ve both observed significant health benefits. It’s been good for our food budget. And I almost immediately noticed a greater appreciation for, and delight in, the inherent worth of all living things.
All that being said, here is a really interesting article that should give all people — but especially followers of Christ — another reason to adopt a vegetarian diet. In fact, it seems to me that, even if there were no other benefits to becoming a vegetarian, the future that this article paints could be (I almost wrote, “should be”) reason enough. I hope you read it with an open mind and heart.
May we all become the stewards God calls us to be!
From the article:
Adopting a vegetarian diet is one option to increase the amount of water available to grow more food in an increasingly climate-erratic world, the scientists said. Animal protein-rich food consumes five to 10 times more water than a vegetarian diet. One third of the world’s arable land is used to grow crops to feed animals. Other options to feed people include eliminating waste and increasing trade between countries in food surplus and those in deficit.
Image by Mark Rosenberg. Used in accordance with Creative Commons. Sourced via Flickr.
Category: General
Tags: Kingdom Living, Vegetarianism
Topics: Creation Care
Related Reading
Guest Post: Culture War Neighbors by Bonnie Kristian
Matteo Parrini via Compfight The first time I was aware of meeting a gay person, I was 18. I took a summer job waiting tables, and it turned out two of my coworkers were attracted to people of the same sex. One, a waiter in his 40s, fit every stereotype on Will and Grace. The…
When the Gospel is Reduced to a Sinner’s Prayer
Jeff Clark posted an article recently entitled The Gospel of Sin Management and the Loss of Discipleship. We do violence to the gospel when we forget that we are called beyond a mere “sinner’s prayer” to a life of discipleship that imitates the life of Jesus. This might sound harsh, but it’s actually an integral…
God and Our Political Platforms
Rachel Held Evans posted a blog today on the stir created when Democrats booed the passing of “an amendment to the party platform reinstating language that identified Jerusalem as the rightful capital of Israel and that referred to people’s “God-given potential” in its preamble.” Of course this fed into the belief that if you’re a…
World Wants
Trey Ratcliff via Compfight Here’s a reflection by D.L. Mayfield from A Deeper Church on how busyness and distraction keeps us from the things that really matter, the things we’re made for. What is God calling you to pour yourself into and what is getting in the way? From the blog: It’s true: world wants…
The Kingdom of God ≠ Political Activism
Given the centrality of following Jesus’ example, it is vitally important we not only notice that Jesus was a revolutionary (see post) along with some ways that we can join his revolution (see that post here), but how he was a revolutionary. Many Christians today assume that in order to revolt against ungodly aspects of…
The All-or-Nothing of Kingdom Living
Nothing is more central to the kingdom of God than agreeing with God about every person’s unsurpassable worth and reflecting this in how we act toward them. Nothing is more important that living in Christlike love for all people at all times. In fact, compared to love, nothing else really matters in the kingdom. In…