A Love of Fishing Causes Emotional Violence
Church Silence Promotes Violence: an Article Series From All-Creatures.org

Church silence promotes violence to humans, to animals, to our environment, to our economy, to our education, to our finances, and to our health.
By: Mary T. and Frank L. Hoffman

People are constantly writing to us about how emotionally shocked and upset they become at the church's hardness of heart when it comes to the suffering of animals.  The following letter from Jenny Moxham is one of these examples:

My son goes to the Seventh Day Adventist school (vegetarian philosophy) and yesterday he said the principal started his talk (at assembly) with 'I love fishing!" and then went on to talk about fishing.

I was shocked to hear that ...seeing that they have a vegetarian philosophy .......but 'checking out' their beliefs on the net just now it seems that it's all about 'us humans'. e.g we must keep our bodies healthy by eating vegetarian (it doesn't say we should keep other creatures bodies healthy too)

We find the fishing comments of the principal of the Seventh Day Adventist school where Jenny Moxham's son goes to be totally contrary to the beliefs and teaching Ellen G. White, the founder of the church, who wrote:

"The moral evils of a flesh diet are not less marked than are the physical ills. Flesh food is injurious to health, and whatever affects the body has a corresponding effect on the mind and the soul. Think of the cruelty to animals that meat eating involves, and its effect on those who inflict and those who behold it. How it destroys the tenderness with which we should regard these creatures of God!"
~E.G.White, Ministry of Healing pg. 315

Jenny and her son were treated cruelly, and in our opinion, the principal was engaging in a form of child abuse, because by his remarks on fishing, he was hardening the hearts of the children in his care. He was destroying the very tenderness in these children that Ellen White taught was important for us to have for the other creatures of God.

And about this principal, and people like him, Jesus said,

Matthew 18:6

but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it is better for him that a heavy millstone be hung around his neck, and that he be drowned in the depth of the sea.
NASB

Go on to next article: Animals in Heaven - A look at Revelation 4:6-9
Return to previous article: A Few Observations By Ima Curmudgeon
Return to Church Silence Promotes Violence Table of Contents

The intent of this series is to wake up and encourage the Church to greater works of love and compassion (John 14:12).  It is not to condemn the Church, in general, or any individual, any more than Jesus condemned the woman caught in adultery.  Jesus said to her, "...go your way.  From now on sin no more." (John 8:11)  And this is our message to the Church:  Recognize our sins of the past and go forth seeking to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48), correcting the sins of the past, for that is the only way we can truly show the world that we love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, might, and mind, including the whole of creation, which includes our neighbors whom we are to love as ourselves.