Dear Friends

For a couple of years, in my late teens, I was vegetarian. During this period in my life I was exploring and immersing myself in Eastern mysticism and Buddhism. However, I eventually found it lacking and ultimately an empty cause. It was a few years later, that I became a Christian, by believing and accepting Jesus Christ as my Saviour and Lord. I have not looked back since from following Him.

I mention this because, recently, I read an article in which the author said that his two teenage sons had become ‘zealous’ vegetarians. However, he wasn’t a vegetarian himself, and neither could he be, because he liked the taste of meat so much. But, he found himself unable to argue against their position in any way at all, either morally, philosophically, or logically. But in all his arguments, which he relates in his article, he never once makes reference to God, or to any spiritual dimension at all. It is this, I believe, which illustrates the whole weakness of any moral argument. For without the right reference point, any moral argument is always open to scrutiny from a counter moral argument, and this is what he discovers. Like the light of a lighthouse is the reference point for the ship’s navigator in a storm, to guide the ship away from the rocks and through the wind and waves. But take away the reference point, and shipwreck results.

In any thought process or conversation about moral issues (such as the use and purpose of animals), if God and his creation is not the reference point, then our conclusions will be impossible to defend against any other counter moral argument, for both will be equally weighted.

This is basically what the author of the article concludes: “You have to go your way,” he says to his sons, “and I’ll go mine. But for no other reason, other than, I like the taste of meat.”

Christians may well hold different values on the rights and wrongs of eating meat, and I know some who are vegetarians, though most I know are not, but this is not the point. As Christians, the point is this: for any topic of morality, our reference point has to be God and his revelation to us of himself in the Bible. The Bible tells us that human beings are COMPLETELY different from any other form of animal life, or plant life, because we are the ONLY ONES made in the image of God. God also tells us we are COMPLETELY different because we have stewardship, and a responsibility of care, over the WHOLE of the rest of creation.

So, when it comes to animal husbandry, it means: responsible farming, showing care and respect towards animals, not purposely causing suffering, humane slaughtering, etc, etc. We also know Jesus himself ate fish and lamb.

But once you take away God as the reference point, our principles become lost, confused and ultimately confounded. Indeed, the Bible goes on to say, that one of the signs of a society which has turned its back on God, is that “right becomes wrong, and wrong becomes right.” (Isaiah 5). It seems to me, as I look around, this is more and more the direction our society is going in.

With every blessing, Robert