Jesus and Fishing
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Jesus and Fishing

Comments by Jay Young - 29 Mar 2006

Hi Frank and Mary again...

I acknowledge that there is some cruelty with, as you call it, factory farming -- and I have visited both cattle processing and chicken raising plants. Without going into a lot of detail, because some are bad doesn't mean that they all are; I've seen good and bad. The fact is, there is a food chain, and if you study microbiology -- well, on second thought, I think that I'll just bow out because it's beyond the scope of emails back and forth, considering my schedule, and how complex this is to explain, especially considering where you seem to be and how strongly your views are on these issues. Unfortunately, mine are strong too, about scripture being my basis for checking my world view, even in this area.

I'll just say that the Bible clearly commands the people and priests on how to make sacrifices, including Passover lambs. It involves killing them and eating them, and especially at the time of Jesus, his disciples had to keep the Passover and eat the lamb, or they would have been in sin by not obeying the Passover specifics.

Secondly, Jesus cleansed the temple because they'd violated the spirit of the house of God; namely, they'd gotten materialism mixed in with worship. Moreover, those animals weren't supposed to be in there. It wasn't in the law of Moses for them to be there, but they were in a holy place that should have been a reverent place in an attitude of prayer...so they were sinning, because God had very specifice instructions on how worship was to be. Still, God/Jesus never told them to stop sacrificing animals there when he made the whip of cords. That was not his contention in cleansing the temple.

"Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins," the book of Hebrews explains. The sacrificed animals showed the people the seriousness of sin, and they pointed to Jesus being the future sacrifice. Again, you can't find the forbidding of eating meat in scripture. Being more "strict" than God doesn't make us holier than God. Since he is perfect and he knows everything, and only does what is right, if we are more strict than him, we are wrong, and imbalanced, and there is a very good chance that we can even get our ideas, if not our actions, into a system of ultimately being influenced by religious demons -- it's called ascetism, and these are the very sects that you metioned, for example, in Judaism, that didn't eat meat. That's not to say that they were not good in other areas. They were, and they may have been stronger and more disciplined in some areas than other groups...but your contention that they didn't eat meat, is definitely not something that Jewish doctrine could be drawn from; the church has done many things wrong, and many things right, but getting doctrine from their practices has to be reinforced by scripture, and again, scripture doesn't forbid the eating of meat.

I don't want to make a big contention. It's just that my authority, and my hedge against heresy, is only the Scriptures and what I think God is illumining through them to me, and through others in the body of Christ. So, please pray for me. The nature of deception is to not know that one is deceived. If I am deceived about the need to stop eating meat, please pray that God open my eyes, spiritually. From the arguments that you've given though, I still see no precedent in scriptures, although there is wisdom, as I see it, in not eating much meat.

I would prefer to stop our discussion for now, just because it's not the place where I want to draw my line in the sand. I see this, for you, as an area of liberty and choice, and if you want to eat only vegetables, okay. In this case, I want to stand my ground on where I'm at with it because, to me, it goes beyond scripture to forbid the eating of meat on the grounds that an animal had to die. There are other places in scripture that forbid the eating of meat under certain circumstances, such as, if it died of its own accord, if it were offered to idols and so on, but just because an animal had to die to provide meat, is not one that you can find in scripture, to the best of my knowledge. If you can give me chapter and verse, okay, but otherwise, let's please stop and focus on other things, since we are not to quarrel and go on and on about issues of personal liberty and conviction -- as other portions of scripture talk about.

I say this with respect and pleading, not in arrogance; yes, with a little weariness about the issue, but honestly, since emails don't really show tone of voice, I do want you to know that I thank you for the time and effort of the responses, as well as the great tone, and not being harsh. I will continue to consider these matters, but for now, if there are no other clear scriptures that forbid the eating of meat because an animal had to die, please just pray for me to be undeceived. If I am deceived in this area, it is against my will.

Thanks. And again, you guys have been very good about the tone of your response.

Sincerely, (really!) thanks!

Jay

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