Animals feel pain, are often raised and killed in tortuous environments
and use massive amounts of grain that could feed people. Animal fats
also are a cause of obesity and heart disease. The basic spiritual
teaching of all faiths is that it is a religious virtue to eat things
that do not feel pain when they are killed. Buddhists, Jains, Taoists
and post-Vedic Hindus are very strict in this view and command adherents
to be vegetarians.
The Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam
all allow the eating of meat because animals are not considered to have
souls.
However, all three faiths have many teachings that point
followers toward vegetarianism as a higher, healthier and more
spiritually advanced diet, and Catholics have days of abstinence such as
Lent when they do not eat meat. The biblical texts on this subject are
interesting. Adam and Eve are given permission to eat only fruits and
vegetables in the Garden of Eden: "See I give you every seed-bearing
plant that is upon all the earth and every tree that has seed bearing
fruit. They shall be yours for food" (Genesis 1:29).
The first permission to eat meat in the Bible does not
come until the ninth chapter of Genesis, after the flood. However, in
the passages allowing Noah to eat meat the limitations are clear: The
meat must first be drained of all its blood (orthodox Jews fulfill this
by salting all meat to leech out any trace of blood), and Noah is told
that there will be blood reckoning for all blood we shed, animal or
human.
Then a connection is made to murder: "Whoever sheds the
blood of man, by man will his blood be shed" (verse 6). The idea that
seeing blood pouring from the animal that will be our lunch might harden
our hearts to the image of blood pouring from our victims is a clear
spiritual caution to try to eat the way Adam and Eve did."
Contact the God Squad:
c/o Newsday, 235 Pinelawn Road, Melville, NY 11747-4250,
or at godsquad@telecaretv.org.
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In The Name of Food
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