If you are involved in trying to improve the plight of other
animals, sooner or later you will be confronted by “do-nothings” whose
criticism goes something like this: “Why don’t you do something for
people, instead?”
What these criticizers (who imagine themselves as being very clever
and original!) don’t realize (or choose to realize) is that, first and
foremost, human beings (including the complainers) reap the benefits of
helping other animals.
The factory farms are major polluters and disease spreaders on God’s
earth. If factory farms are abolished, everyone here on earth (including
the criticizers) will benefit. And what about the people, including
children, who are traumatized by the knowledge that there are billions
of God’s creatures needlessly tortured, and that their numbers keep
increasing as other countries copy our obsessive exploitation of other
animals? Complainers obviously limit their “caring for people” to the
ones who are hard-hearted and uncaring as they themselves are.
So, caring about other animals is part and parcel of caring for human
beings; the concerns of the two are intertwined. The degradation of
God’s creatures and His earth affects everyone, both spiritually and
physically.
I like to apply the following Bible passage to what I have just
written above. Note Verse 14 that states: “…the body is not made up of
one part but of many.” This analogy between the collective “body of
believers in Christ” and the “individual physical body” can also be
applied to those who do God’s work in various fields. As you read this
scripture, you will see what I mean:
1 Corinthians 12:12-22
12. The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and
though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with
Christ.
13. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body – whether
Jews or Greeks, slave or free – and we were all given the one Spirit
to drink.
14. Now the body is not made up of one part but of many.
15. If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not
belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of
the body.
16. And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not
belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of
the body.
17. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing
be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?
18. But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one
of them, just as he wanted them to be.
19. If they were all one part, where would the body be?
20. As it is, there are many parts, but one body.
21. The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" And the
head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!"
22. On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker
are indispensable,
~ New International Version
Therefore, every individual who works to improve any aspect of God’s
creation in order to make this a more loving, compassionate, and
peaceful world is fulfilling this scriptural message.
