I believe that the Bible speaks, very clearly, of a curse that came
upon animals in Genesis chapter 3 at the time of the Fall. Many people
only focus on the aspect of that passage regarding the cursing of the
serpent and the promised supernatural Seed of the woman that would
bruise the head of the serpent. But the exact wording of the curse upon
the serpent, whether it was a literal, physically embodied serpent or
whether it was some form of apparition or whatever, is that the serpent
would be cursed BEYOND the curse that had fallen upon cattle.
I believe that humanity's wrong relationship with animals and the
attitudes that we've entertained about animals has been because of this
curse.
[And a universal principle of Scripture is that Christ came to
destroy the works of the devil and to free us from sin and through
freeing us from sin to then free us from the curses that are inherent in
the sin nature and that necessarily come upon sin from the righteous
judgments of God.]
Were it not based on this particular passage and were my
interpretation of this Genesis 3 passage as flawed as the interpretation
of those who've erroneously interpreted Noah's curse to be a curse upon
African descendants, my argument would in no way lose it's force from
the standpoint that the enslaving of Africans, of Native Americans, and
of others throughout the world wasn't practically, universally condemned
until the 19th century, though there had always been "extreme" voices
against that type of behavior towards our brothers and sisters of
different skin tones and cultures. So, the longevity of a practice does
not give it it's legitimacy. And all moral issues haven't yet been
universally deciphered and judgments rendered accurately by humanity,
intuitively, from the heart of God.
Otherwise, humans would have never enslaved other human beings for so
long, attitudes towards women wouldn't have been oppressive for so long,
and child labor issues wouldn't have been issues for so long, were the
decisive moral import of the overthrow of a practice rooted in whether
or not it's been overthrown by now or in relation to how long ago that
it was overthrown. Were all issues of iniquity practically overthrown in
the past, as some romantically want to assert subliminally in their
defense of the uses/abuses of animals as historical fact, then history
would certainly read very differently and there wouldn't be other
equally righteous issues that other people are presently fighting for,
against, and/or in regards towards.
(faq-047)
Animal Gospel
