Animals as Food

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Animals as Food
Comments by Frank and Mary Hoffman - 9 Apr 2011

Dear Dana:

Thank you for writing and expressing your opinion.

We agree with you about Jesus; however, the fact that the Bible doesn't mention His ever eating any animal flesh prior to his resurrection, does leave a lot of doubt about His ever having eaten any.

The main part of Jesus' teaching was to accept Him as Messiah, and to live according to God's heavenly will and not according to the corrupt ways of this world. And, in keeping with the subject of our discussion, He didn't leave any room for committing any of the cruelty that exists in today's animal agricultural industries.

Far too many people say they believe, and yet they continue doing the worldly things they had done before their "salvation", which we also discuss in our sermon section. We also believe that this has a lot to do with what you are talking about.

As far as equality with animals are concerned: the Bible teaches us that all animals and humans were created as living souls (Hebrew: neh-fesh khah yaw), which makes us equal in this respect, but human being were also created in the image of God, which separates us from the animals, so that we can be their caretakers and steward of God's creation.

We also need to remember that in John 3:16 that God so loved the world, the whole of creation, and not just human beings, and we need to understand this about our relationship with Him.

As you also mentioned, the way we treat animals is reflected in the way we interact with our fellow human beings. When we are indifferent to the suffering of any other living being, we lose a portion of our God-given empathy, and we harden our heart and soul to some extent, which is totally opposite to the teachings of Jesus; He wants us to have a soft heart.

You should also look at the rest of our web site, including our sermon section.

We are not that far apart in our thinking, and we look forward to hearing from you again.

In the Love of the Lord,

Frank and Mary