Christians should care about animals because of who and how Christians are called to be. (Margaret B. Adam, Theologian, n.p.)
The Hebrew Bible, foundational for both Judaism and Christianity, reveals proper human-anymal relations. This earlier text describes creation, complete with the Creator’s ongoing relationship with creation and intention for living creatures. The Hebrew Bible also provides core ethics with regard to human-anymal relations.
5.2 Outline (for full topic outline, go to 5.1 “Christianity: Introduction and Outline”)
I. New Testament
The Relevance of Jesus for Anymals
Christian Ethics (New Testament and the Hebrew Bible)
II. Hebrew Bible
A. Creation: Genesis 1 and 2
B. Creator
Conclusion
Featured Sources
Endnotes
(To view all Christianity topics, visit 5.1 Christianity: Introduction and Outline)
I. New Testament
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Galatians 5:22–23)
The New Testament, backed by the Hebrew Bible, provides core Christian ethics, including love, mercy, service, peace, and humility; the New Testament teaches of salvation for all of creation. The Gospels (first four books of The New Testament) record the life and teachings of Jesus and are central to Christianity. Jesus exemplifies serving God, gentleness and compassion, and helps those who are marginalized and oppressed. The ethics of Christianity not only require kindness to anymals, but indicate a vegan lifestyle complete with anymal liberation.
People sometimes think it’s strange that I am both a firm believer in Christ and a staunch animal rights advocate, but I can’t imagine how I could ever separate the two. (Michelle, “Testimonies: Christians Speak Up for Animals,” n.p.)
A calf and a cat share company at Edgars Mission, an Animal Sanctuary in Australia. (Image courtesy of Edgars Mission and Freedom Farm in Israel, both vegan sanctuaries.)
A. The Relevance of Jesus for Anymals
Jesus is particularly important because his life “has been exalted as the perfect pattern for our own” (“Ultimate Sacrifice” n.p.). Christians “remember, celebrate, and follow” the life of Jesus (Webb 145), who taught and modeled the ideal Christian life. Christians are to “witness to Christ’s love, compassion, and peace” in word and deed in daily life (Kaufman and Braun 48).
Portraits of Christ from the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn (1648). (Courtesy of Jesus.net.)
Jesus as Flesh
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)
Christians give great importance to Jesus as a man, born bodily, but few seem to appreciate the relevance of this for anymals:
Inasmuch as it matters that Jesus was born a man, for the salvation of humanity, it matters that Jesus was born animal, for the salvation of all living creatures. Those who argue that Christian love is wasted on anymals because Jesus was a human being may as well argue that Christian love is wasted on women because Jesus was a man. God took the form of a man in a Mediterranean community, but Jesus was born, lived, and died not just for those similar to him, but for all (Kemmerer, Animals, 208).
Jesus was born not only human but also primate, mammal, animal—a living creature. Inasmuch as the humanity of Jesus is important, so is his animality. “All bodies matter because God became embodied and Jesus rose as a body from the grave” (Webb 162).
Christians generally recognize that Jesus, though a Middle Eastern man, did not just live and die for Middle Eastern men, but also for Malaysian children and Arctic women. We have been slower to recognize that all flesh is spiritually united because Jesus took the form of animal flesh. (Lisa Kemmerer, Ph.D., in Animals and World Religions, 208)
Samantha Dewhirst tenderly provides for the love-needs of orphaned baboons at CARE (Centre for Animal Rehabilitation and Education, South Africa.) (Photo courtesy of We Animals Media.)
Jesus as Loving Servant of the Oppressed
Mark 9:35
Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.
Mark 10: 42–45
You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.
Humanity’s call to exercise dominion should be modelled after Christ’s example of lordship through service and the moral priority of the most vulnerable. . . . As disciples of Christ, we have a duty, as good shepherds, to exercise compassion, care, mercy and, above all, love to all creatures. (Sarx: For All God’s Creatures, “What We Believe,” n.p.)
God is defined through the life of Jesus, a force of humble service to all, especially the marginalized and oppressed. Though a man of comparative privilege, Jesus spoke to women and he spoke for those marginalized, sick, dying, suffering, and downtrodden. Christians find redemption by following his example and serving as Christ served, helping those most in need (the disenfranchised and powerless). Today, this moral imperative must be “extended to nature: nature is the ‘new poor’” (McFague 30).
Jesus taught humanity to “love our neighbors by serving our neighbors, and the farther they stand below us in the hierarchy of power—the more they stand in need of our help—the greater is our moral obligation to serve them” (Phelps, Dominion, 150). The Gospels indicate a life of serving those marginalized and oppressed; few are as desperately in need of our service as pigs on factory farms, dogs in medical laboratories, and foxes on fur farms.
I am a Christian, therefore I am compassionate to ‘the least of these,’ just as Jesus taught. (Michelle, “Testimonies: Christians Speak Up for Animals,” n.p.
A lamb is rescued from the meat industry by an activist with Animal Equality. (Photo courtesy of We Animals Media.)
Jesus as Present with Suffering
2 Corinthians 1:6
. . . if we are being consoled, it is for your consolation, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we are also suffering.
2 Corinthians 1:7
Our hope for you is unshaken; for we know that as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our consolation.
In “Still Falls the Rain” (1940), Poet Edith Sitwell writes of “humanity’s perennial culpability” in the sufferings of anymals:
He bears in His Heart all wounds,—those of the light that died,
The last faint spark
In the self-murdered heart, the wounds of the sad uncomprehending dark,
The wounds of the baited bear—
The blind and weeping bear whom the keepers beat
On his helpless flesh… the tears of the hunted hare.
Suffering is central to the life of Jesus culminating in his betrayal and death on the cross. Inasmuch as Jesus is present in all love and life here on earth, Jesus is also present in all suffering.
God is in the suffering one. That’s where we find God. (Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, n.p.)
God is equally near in all creatures. (Meister Eckhart, Theologian, n.p.)
While God transcends suffering (Jenner n.p.), those in pain can “trust that God is with them” and “hold on to God’s hand through the suffering” (“Where is the Pain” n.p.). To create sentient and suffering living creatures and then turn away from their cries would seem to be impossible for a God who is merciful, just, and loving. “If God is pre-eminently present in the suffering of the vulnerable, the undefended, the unprotected and the innocent, God’s suffering presence is to be located” in anymals (Linzey and Cohn-Sherbok 129). Consequently, in causing suffering, we bring God into that suffering, whether anymals suffer in laboratories, on fishing lines, in factory farms, or at our homes.
A rescued moon bear cub at Free the Bears (Cambodia) looks to a human caretaker for all that a mother would normally provide. (Photo courtesy of We Animals Media.)
Gentle as a Lamb
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. (Matthew 5:5)
As the quintessential Christian moral exemplar, Jesus was not aligned with the powerful and aggressive, but with children. The book of Matthew teaches that the kingdom of heaven belongs to those who are as humble as little children and that such individuals are to be welcomed by Christians, and that to do so in the name of Jesus is to welcome God.
Matthew 18: 1-5
At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called a child, whom he put among them, and said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.
I was taken out fishing in a rowboat when I was a little girl. When the man told me he was going to put the hook through a worm, I wouldn't let him. I screamed and fought the worm away from him until he took me home. (I put the worm in my yard.) (Gael Murphy remembering her child’s heart, n.p.)
Jesus aligns with “lambs, donkeys, and doves” (Webb 139) and is most often compared with sheep, who are non-aggressive vegans. Though powerful in ways that mortals cannot even comprehend, the Gospels teach that Jesus was meek as a lamb, and that we are to strive to live as Jesus lived: “Meekness is the child of love and compassion. As such, meekness is the quality that most clearly displays the image of God in our lives” (Phelps, Dominion, 151).
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Gave thee life & bid thee feed
By the stream & o’er the mead;. . . .
Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee:
He is callèd by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb.
He is meek, & he is mild;
He became a little child. . . .
Little Lamb, God bless thee!
Little Lamb, God bless thee!
(William Blake, 1789, n.p.)
Rescued lamb. (Photo courtesy of We Animals Media.)
Christian Ethics
Should not the Golden Rule (Matt. 7:12)—treat others as you would like others to treat you—guide how we treat animals? (Christian Vegetarian Association, “Joyful,” n.p.)
The New Testament reveals Jesus as moral exemplar, expressing and exemplifying core Christian ethics and ethics taught in the Hebrew Bible, including love, mercy, service, peace, and righteous indignation.
Love
1 John 4:8 and 1 John 4:16
God is love.
Leviticus 19:18
…love your neighbor as yourself.
“Cogito ergo sum: ‘I think, therefore I am’? Nonsense. Amo ergo sum: ‘I love, therefore I am.’” (William Sloane Coffin, Presbyterian minister, BDiv, “The Politics of Compassion,” 11)
1 John teaches that love defines God’s nature “in a practical rather than philosophic sense. . . . God’s nature is not exhausted by the quality of love, but love governs all its aspects and expressions” (Interpreter’s 12:280). The love of God is all-inclusive, generous, and risky. The love of God is fundamental to the life and ministry of Jesus. Scriptures encourage Christ-like love, which originates in the munificence of God’s love and connects us back to the Creator (Broadman 12:214; also “‘Dialogue’ pg. 164” n.p.): Love is “the paramount scripture . . . essential to the Christian way of life” (Broadman 12:214). “True Christian love reflects God’s love in showing charity and compassion for all” (Young 84).
…love your neighbor as yourself. (Leviticus 19:18)
Of course, human beings cannot love as God loves, but we have been told to love one another, and Matthew 25:34-46 tells us that Jesus taught that “whatever you do” for the least of these will be considered “done for me” (“‘Dialogue’” n.p.). Saint Catherine of Siena wrote as if speaking to the Creator:
You love me gratuitously, so that I may love everyone with the very same love. You want me, then, to love and serve my neighbors gratuitously, by helping them spiritually and materially as much as I can (“Prayer 12” n.p.)
As Christians, we are called to be radically inclusive in our love for the least and most marginalized of society, as demonstrated by the life and death of Christ. The most loving thing that we can do toward God’s creatures is not to eat them. (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, “Human and Animal,” n.p.)
Jesus demonstrated the expansion of the moral circle, carrying the love of “neighbor” outward to include Samaritans, prostitutes, lepers—whomever was in need; Saint Paul followed his example, extending the circle of love to gentiles (Galatians 3:28). (For more on “neighbors,” see 5.3.II.A.1 and II.A.2 on “Kinship” and also 5.5.II, “Saints.”)
Scriptures hold an expectation that we consciously expand our capacity for and expressions of love, aspiring to unbounded love that reaches not only across nation and race, but across species. “The mainstream person puts self first; a Christian is charged to be a servant, and believes that our neighbors are all fellow inhabitants of this planet, not just those who are like us, but especially those who are maligned or who are different” (Deronda n.p.; also Rosen 22).
Thierry caretaking a juvenile gorilla (Mefou Primate Sanctuary in Cameroon) who was rescued from the bushmeat trade (to be eaten by humans). (Photo courtesy of We Animals Media.)
Creation in Genesis reveals more commonality than separation with regard to living creatures: The first human is created on the sixth day, when land animals are created; woman is created with and for the same purpose as anymals (to assist man in serving God in and through creation). The Bible does not define “neighbor” as human; scriptures repeatedly show all living beings as kin. Tending “neighbors” must include anymals, who are “to be respected, loved, and helped to attain their purpose according to God’s will” (Hirsch 16). This includes protecting their lives and their homes (habitat): “from the human neighbor to ‘otherkind’ and the earth itself. . . . Solidarity with victims . . . and action on behalf of justice widen out to embrace life systems and other species” (Johnson 15). Inasmuch as we ought to love human neighbors, so we ought to love all of our neighbors: All living creatures hold value “in the sight of God” (Hyland 47). (For more on kinship, see 5.3.II.A.1 and 5.3.II.A.2, both on “Kinship.”)
I like to see in Christian people a reverence towards life, a tenderness towards all God’s creatures. There is much of deep truth in those lines of “The Ancient Mariner”: “He prayeth best who loveth best; All things both great and small.” (Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Victorian, Calvinist, Baptist minister, n.p.; also see Sampson, n.p.)
The love of God reigns throughout the earth. (May Tripp, “At Canterbury Cathedral,” 155)
When we love, we do not deplete our capacity to love, so there is no need to limit or reserve this Godly emotion. Nor is love rightly reserved only for those closest to us, whether our families, our race, our class, our nation, or our species. There is no need to fear running out of love by caring for strangers, those in distant lands, or other species. If we are to serve God by tending creation as the Creator would do, we are obliged to practice munificent love: “If our love is to be shaped by God’s love, it must extend to all that God loves” (Clough, “Infographic,” n.p.)
Christians, like others, are apt to justify leaving animal welfare aside on the ground that human needs are more urgent. We must hammer home that love is indivisible. It is not ‘either-or’, it is ‘both-and’, because a society that cannot find the moral energy to care and act about gross animal suffering and exploitation will do little better about human need. (Rt. Rev. Dr. John Austin Baker, “Service,” 124)
Love is not a “zero-sum game” or some sort of hydraulic fluid whose volume is perforce static. This is the argument of “compassion fatigue” and it only holds short-term. Long-term, all religions and especially Christianity, teach that one can expand one’s capacity to love, and ought consciously to do so. (John Halley, Ph.D., in Kemmerer, Animals and World Religions, 213)
Goat fitted with prosthetics. (Photo courtesy of We Animals Media.)
Hagiographies, which record the lives of Christian saints, show us that holy people (those known for their proximity to God and for living into the Christian ideal) include anymals in their circle of love and tender care. “Indeed, one of the criteria for sainthood seems to be the compassionate treatment of animals” (Webb 29).
[Godric would] watch over the very reptiles and the creatures of the earth. . . . [In] the winter when all about was frozen stiff in the cold, he would go out barefoot, and if he lighted on any animal helpless with misery of the cold, he would set it under his armpit or in his bosom to warm it. Many a time would the kind soul go spying under the thick hedges or tangled patches of briars, and if haply he found a creature that had lost its way, or cowed with the harshness of the weather, or tired, or half dead, he would recover it with all the healing art he had. (Helen Waddell, 19th century scholar and author, writing about St. Godric, Waddell 87-88)
St. Godric was known for his “close familiarity with animals,” particularly reptiles—here pictured with snakes he was caretaking. (Image courtesy of CatholicSaints.Info.)
2. Mercy
Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. (Matthew 5:7)
Jesus said, “Blessed are the merciful” (Matt. 5:7), yet no mercy is shown for nearly all farmed animals. (Christian Vegetarian Association, “Joyful,” n.p.)
Be merciful just as your Father is merciful. (Luke 6:36)
“It is not hard to believe that a merciful God would want His laws to be interpreted in a way that would minimize or eliminate the suffering of animals.” (Lewis Regenstein, author, in Schwartz, Vegan Revolution, 146)
A little bit of mercy makes the world less cold and more just. (Pope Francis, “Pope,” n.p.)
An unmerciful Christian must be either extremely ignorant of his duty, or extremely obstinate, hard-hearted, and ungrateful. (Humphrey Primatt, Ph.D., 18th century English clergyman, Dissertation 77-78)
Mercy is required of Christians; both the New Testament and the Hebrew Bible teach of the importance of mercy. As with love, mercy lies at the heart of Christian ethics and as with love, mercy is without limits, extending to all “living souls who find themselves in our dominion” (Phelps, Dominion, 154). The “sacredness of all beings” and the general subjugation of anymals to the ever-growing numbers (and power) of humanity, elicits—requires—Christian mercy and Christ-like protective tenderness (Polk 185).
The more deeply someone can be damaged by our cruelty, the greater is our obligation to show mercy. And our cruelty damages no one more deeply than the defenseless animals on whom we turn our terrible power. (Norm Phelps, author, Dominion of Love, 152)
The righteous know the needs of their animals, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel. (Proverbs 12:10)
“As God is compassionate, . . . so you should be compassionate” (Schwartz, Judaism, 16). As we depend on God’s mercy, so anymals depend on our mercy. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, which summarizes core Catholic doctrine, states that it “is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly” (Catechism 2418). Moreover, scriptures carry an expectation that we actively attend to the needs of anymals to be sure that they are contented, satisfied, and at ease (Schochet 263).
If, in a given situation, we have it in our power either to leave the creature there in his dark pen or let him out into the sun and breeze and feed him and let him play and sleep and cavort with his fellows—for me it’s an easy call. Give him a break. Let him go. Let him enjoy his fleeting time on earth, and stop bringing his kind into the world solely to suffer and die. It doesn’t seem like much to us, the creature’s little lives of grazing and capering and raising their young and fleeing natural predators. Yet it is the life given them, not by breeder but by Creator. It is all they have. It is their part of the story, a beautiful part beyond the understanding of man, and who is anyone to treat it lightly? (Matthew Scully, conservative Christian author, 43)
Proverbs 12:10
The righteous know the needs of their animals, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel.
At a party with the Beagle Freedom Project, an adoptive parent celebrates the anniversary of a much-loved beagle’s liberation from a medical research lab. (Photo courtesy of We Animals Media.)
3. Service
Ephesians 6:7
Render service with enthusiasm, as to the Lord.
Jesus exemplified “compassionate service to others” (French, “Ecological,” 488), demonstrating lordship as sacrificial and calling humanity to a similar servitude (Webb 97). In Genesis, humans are charged to “care for creation” (French, “Ecological,” 488) “as a wise king rules over and protects his subjects, or as God reigns over creation, sustaining, cherishing, and safeguarding every living thing” (Kowalski 24). Jesus exemplified devotion to God through self-sacrificing service in this world, as humans are instructed to do (Genesis 2:15) (French, “Against,” 48). (For more on God-given tasks for humanity, see 5.3.II.A.4, “Rulership in the Image of God” and 5.3.II.A.6, “Duties Assigned by God.”)
Nature is God’s, and we must be mindful “that all life belongs not to us but to God,” and that “we have an obligation to the Creator to respect what is created” (Linzey and Cohn-Sherbok 49). Christian ethics carry an expectation that humanity serve God by taking “care of what God entrusts to us—our lives, our health, and all the world around us, including animals” (Braun ix). Caretaking anymals is “a matter of justice by virtue of their Creator’s right” to all that has been created (Linzey, Animal Theology, 27). If we fail in our duties of service to anymals, we fail in our duties of service to God.
God loves and cares for creation and has the right to expect this loving care be replicated by humans. Creation exists, not for the glory of humanity, but for the glory of God. . . . God’s creatures have a derived right to live a natural life and to be loved, cared for, and protected against abuse and exploitation. Said another way, since God values and cares for all creation, creation has a derived right to be valued and cared for by humans for God’s glory. (Richard Alan Young, professor of New Testament Studies at Temple Baptist Seminary, Is God a Vegetarian?, 37)
Christian exemplars demonstrate this expectation; hagiographies show readers that anymals have long sought refuge with saints: “Hares flew for refuge to Saints Cuthbert, Anselm, Francis, and Philip; St. Patrick saved a doe and a fawn” (Gumbly n.p.). In Peru, Saint Martin de Porres fed rats and mice at the edge of his garden and created a hospital for lost dogs and cats. In Italy, Bernard of Corleone healed sick and injured anymals (Gumbly n.p.). Celtic Saint Maedoc lived close to nature and was “a friend to many kinds of animals” while Saint Melangell created “a perpetual sanctuary, refuge, and safe haven for the oppressed, humans and animals alike” (Sellner, Celtic Saints, 78 and 83).
Columba/Columcille asked one of the brethren of the island monastery, Iona, to tend a “guest, a crane, wind tossed and driven far from her course” (Waddell 44). instructing him to treat the “weary and fatigued” bird “tenderly and take it to some nearby house” so that the bird could be “kindly and carefully” nursed and fed (Sellner, Celtic Saints 37; also Sellner, Wisdom 94–95). Columba then said, “May God bless thee, my son, . . . for thy kind tending of this pilgrim guest” (Waddell 45).
Some saints served God by choosing not to eat anymals, including St Philip Neri (16th century, Italy and Scotland) and St. Giles (7th century, France).
(Image Courtesy of Abbey of the Arts.)
(Image courtesy of Catholic Concern for Animals.)
Limited though our power is, the seemingly insignificant practices of eating less meat, supporting less intensive farming methods, or adopting a greener diet have a way—like mustard seeds—of giving rise to greater things. (Matthew Halteman, “Compassionate Eating as Care of Creation,” 9)
4. Peace
Matthew 5:9
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they will be called children of God.”
Our Vision: To preach the good news of the kingdom of God, our hope of a world where every creature lives in peace, without fear, and we all live by the eternal law of love as the faithful and wise stewards of the whole earth that God designed us to be. (Creation Care Church, “About Us,” n.p.)
Abstaining from eating animals is a way to honor creation, love my neighbor, and seek the peace that Jesus modeled. (Nicole, “Testimonies: Christians Speak Up for Animals,” n.p.)
Psalm 34:14 remind that wisdom and understanding are precious, and that they are reflected in the work of peace and lives of peace:
Depart from evil, and do good;
seek peace, and pursue it.
Proverbs 3:17 (on Wisdom) states:
Her ways are ways of pleasantness,
and all her paths are peace.
Peace is central to the original, God-given world. Genesis teaches that God created “a non-violent, vegan world” (Kemmerer, “Christian Ethics,” n.p.) where “no creature was to feed on another” (Hyland 21). Isaiah, Hosea, and Job (also sacred for Christians but not Muslims) indicate that we are destined to return to perfect peace.
(Image courtesy of Creation Care Church.)
Isaiah 11:6-9
The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den.
They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
Hosea 2:18
I will make for you a covenant on that day with the wild animals, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the ground; and I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land; and I will make you lie down in safety.
“The Garden of Eden 2” by Roelandt Jacobsz Savery. (Photo courtesy of Wikigallery.)
A world of perfect peace “corresponds to virtually every salvation text” (Young 21). Paradise narratives paint a picture of a “community without violence” or exploitation. While heaven is portrayed as a garden, the Christian hell “has often been imagined as a carnivorous nightmare” (Webb 176).
A dialogue in Job, describing a righteous person, indicates that when one is “at peace with God” there is “a covenant of friendship” between a human being “and the whole creation” (Henry n.p.). The righteous person “shall not fear the wild animals of the earth” and with them, “the wild animals shall be at peace” (Job 5:22-23). To walk with God is to walk peacefully with all of creation, including anymals.
Reestablishing peace is central to serving God. Christianity carries our “focus of the kingdom from something totally future to something now at hand and accessible” (Young 143-44). Scriptures indicate that human beings are not merely to imagine and hope for paradise or the Peaceable Kingdom, we are to work to recreate earth “as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). We are to “strive first for the kingdom of God” (Matthew 6:33) and participate in the “final triumph of God’s will” (Broadman 8:115). This requires a conscious choice to both live and advocate for a life of peace (Interpreter’s 7:312). (For more on the peace that we are called to recreate here on Earth, see 5.4.1.A “God strongly dislikes violence, which is corruption” and 5.6.I.B “Our Lives Embodied.”)
But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace. (James 3:17–18)
God is leading us toward a future where humans and animals coexist peacefully, where justice, compassion, and love reign, and where oppression and exploitation are things of the past. (Richard Alan Young, professor of New Testament Studies at Temple Baptist Seminary, Is God a Vegetarian?, 147)
The Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:10, spoken by Jesus in the Gospels) reveals the expectation that God’s Peaceable Kingdom is to be brought back to earth through the “work of all who believe in Jesus Christ and his kingdom” (Interpreter’s 5:250–51):
“Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.”
Christians are to assist in actualizing “God’s plan to reconcile all Creation,” and we “cannot be true ambassadors of Christ’s peace nor agents for the world’s reconciliation” unless we live a life of peace (Kaufman and Braun 48). A life of peace is a vegan life. This is the actualization of “the knowledge of the Lord” (Isaiah 11:9) (Guthrie 598).
A world “on earth as it is in heaven” is a vegan world. The Kingdom of God is marked by nonviolence, life over death, and peace between species. (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, “Human and Animal,” n.p.)
The ideal of living toward the peaceable kingdom is . . . an invitation to reconsider, in a dazzling new light, our relationships to God, ourselves, our fellow creatures, and our Earth. It is a call to imagine what creation might be like if we were to live today as though the kingdom of God has already arrived. (Matthew Halteman, “Compassionate Eating as Care of Creation,” 9)
Rescued sheep grazing at sunset. (Photo courtesy of We Animals Media.)
Many exemplary Christians lived as if the peaceable kingdom were at hand, including saints who returned “to paradisal relations with the animals, communing with them and curing them” (Sorabji 203). St. Guthlac and St. Godric of England and St. Columba of Ireland lived with wild anymals. Saint Jerome (Croatia) was a vegetarian who lived with hens, sheep, and donkeys, as well as a lion (whom he had healed) (Hobgood-Oster n.p.). Saint Colman (Ireland) “had in friendliness about him” a cock, a mouse, and a fly who offered “their kind service and company” (Waddell 145, 147; also Sellner, Celtic Saints 50-51). Saint Moling (Ireland) lived with anymals “both wild and tame” who “would eat out of his hand” (Waddell 107). The first disciple of St. Ciaran (Ireland) was a wild boar, later joined by a fox, badger, wolf, and deer, “as friends and fellow monks” (Sellner, Celtic Saints, 49; also Waddell 104).
[Saint] Colum/Columban (Scotland) lived in the wilderness with anymals, and would stroke them with his hand and caress them; and the wild things and the birds would leap and skip about him for sheer happiness. . . . [A] squirrel would come at his call from the high tree-tops . . . and it would be running in and out of the folds of his cowl. (Edward Sellner, Ph.D., Professor of Pastoral Theology and Spirituality at St. Catherine University, Celtic Saints, 54; also see Waddell 51-52)
5. Humility
God opposes the proud,
but gives grace to the humble. (James 4:6)
In the Christian view, the “universe is a work of love” (Linzey and Cohn-Sherbok 13). God is the center and measure of all. Human arrogance sometimes holds humanity at the center and as the measure of all, exposing humanism and denying core Christian teachings. Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury, notes that the concept of God “forbids the idea of a cheap creation, of a throw-away universe in which everything is expendable save human existence” (Linzey and Cohn-Sherbok 13). The hope of scientific advancement does not permit harming or destroying rabbits or pigeons.
[Christians are to] humble themselves, which can lead to being kind to the creatures with whom we share the planet. (Matthew King, Pride Goes Before Destruction, 127-128)
Eating habits and taste preferences are not legitimate excuses for factory farming or omnivory (a diet that includes flesh, dairy, or eggs). Profit is not a legitimate measure of a hen’s value. “Creation is not just a colorful backdrop for human actions” (Scully 304). Focusing on God aligns “with something good, permanent, and infinitely greater than any plan we could ever conceive or any profit we could ever gain” through the un-Godly futility of focusing on ourselves (Scully 304).
Humility is embedded in the Creation story. We are all God’s living creatures, fellow servants of God. We were made on the 6th day (along with other land-dwelling creatures), and where creation is concerned, nowhere do scriptures teach of hierarchy or “othering”: Anymals are “fellow creatures on their own terms” and have their own personal relations with the Creator (Scully 26). Scriptures teach that all of us are God’s living creatures and that we are all fellow servants of God. Scriptures not only teach humility as a critical ethic but also indicate that this virtue is part of our most basic existence as creatures of God.
When pride comes, then comes disgrace;
but wisdom is with the humble. (Proverbs 11:2)
6. Sharing
Luke 3:11
In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.”
Christian ethics are rooted in love and service, which carries the expectation of sharing.
1 Timothy 6:18
As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.
Luke 6:38
“…give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”
Sharing entails looking after the needs of others. Choosing to breed and raise (and exploit) anymals who consume large quantities of water and grains in a world where potable water, productive land, and grain crops are increasingly in short supply, is short-sighted and selfish. Crops and water necessary for huge herds of livestock bred into existence by anymal agriculture, might otherwise be used to support human communities. Grains can be shipped anywhere in the world to alleviate hunger. Anymal agriculture is the primary contributor to climate change, and a diet that intensifies climate change (which most directly and significantly harms the poorest human beings), is a selfish choice. In a world of need, in a world where someone dies of hunger and hunger-related health problems every second of every day, consuming eggs, dairy, and meat is selfish—and deadly for many who go hungry. (For more on these harms, see the book “Vegan Ethics: AMORE—Five Critical Reasons to Choose Vegan.”)
7. Salvation for All
According to scriptures, all of creation has eternal significance. “God’s good creation” is a “pathway to the knowledge of God, and a partner in human salvation” (Johnson 6). Scriptures reveal that anymals are created in, through, and for God “and will be redeemed by God” (Clough in “Scholars,” n.p.). All await salvation.
Romans 8:18-23
I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves.
Ephesians 1:7-10
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, . . . a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
Colossians 1:16–20
For in him all things in heaven and on earth were created . . . all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
I held Muffie a lot. Occasionally I would take her with me in the car, where at first she would always exercise her curiosity, looking out the window and poking about the seats and floor. Soon she would snuggle down next to me for the rest of the trip. To the end, she sat at my side, wherever we were. (Karen Davis, Ph.D., founder of United Poultry Concerns, “Muffie,” n.p.)
Muffie with her best friend at United Poultry Concerns. (Photo courtesy of Karen Davis and United Poultry Concerns.)
A good and loving God must remain morally responsible for and invested in every sentient being. Whatever paradisal benefits God brings to humans also come to anymals and all of nature; they are “destined to share in the redemption of God’s people” (Broadman 5:232). This means that Jesus as redeemer acts on behalf of every aspect of creation, anymals included. To suggest otherwise “is to limit God” and “deny the very material reality of the resurrection” (Linzey, Animal Gospel, 34; also Webb 138.)
For them as for us, if there is any hope at all then it is the same hope, and the same love, and the same God.” (Matthew Scully, conservative Christian author, 398)
8. Righteous Indignation
Jesus also teaches an ethic of action—including aggressive and disruptive actions. Of great importance, Jesus turns over the tables of the money changers, who were selling animals for sacrificial purposes, and casts them out of the Temple. (More on activism, direct action, and righteous indignation ahead, in the chapter on activism.)
(Courtesy of Matthew Halteman)
II. The Hebrew Bible
The New Testament assumes not only an understanding of the Hebrew Bible, but the centrality and holiness of these earlier (Jewish) teachings, including the story of creation (Genesis 1 and 2). In the story of Creation (Genesis 1 and 2), God establishes rightful relations among living creatures and assigns specific duties to humanity, thereby revealing God’s intentions for the created world while simultaneously providing a close-up view of the nature of God.
The Old Testament point of view on animals was taken as valid in Judaism at the time of Jesus, and in the New Testament is considered as self-evident. (Lukas Vischer, Theologian, and Charles Birch, Theologian and geneticist, 15)
A. Creation: Genesis 1 and 2
Only Genesis 1 and 2 of the Hebrew Bible tell the story of creation. (For Jews and Christians this is the complete and total story, and it is also sacred for Muslims, though their sacred texts include additional narratives on the topic). In the act of creating, God establishes ideal relations among living creatures, assigning specific tasks to humanity, thereby revealing God’s intentions for the created world while also providing a close-up look at the nature of God. Genesis conveys what God gave human beings to eat and what the Creator commanded after giving humanity dominion. Only Genesis 1 and 2 reveal God’s vision for Creation: God’s vision of a place of abiding peace, kinship, and kindness—a holy place.
Kinship: Sixth Day
Genesis 1:23-26 and 31
And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.
And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.” And it was so. God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.
Then God said, “Let us make humankind . . . .
In Genesis 1, God creates light, land and water, vegetation, and living creatures, who are created in groups according to where they live (water, air, and land). Humans are created on the sixth day with other land anymals, showing our place among living creatures. People tend to mis-read this narrative so as to come away with the false notion that only humanity was created on the 6th day. In this we imagine ourselves separate and distinct in ways that are not true to scripture: We are living creatures of the earth among living creatures of the earth. We are not divine and are rightly categorized among the earth’s many animals (Clough in “Scholars,” n.p.).
I’ve seen footage of cows in milking parlours so fresh from birth that afterbirth is dangling down behind them. Their babies are gone. . . . None of us would want to be impregnated again and again, to fruitlessly endure the challenges of pregnancy and labour, and ultimately to have our children stolen away from us. (Anna Pippus writes of shared animality, Mothers Against Dairy, n.p.)
A visitor meeting a calf in the safety of a farmed anymal sanctuary. (Photo courtesy of We Animals Media.)
2. Kinship: Breath of Life
In Genesis we read that the Creator makes “living creatures,” creatures with soul (nephesh hayyim or nefesh chay/chayah/hayyah) by giving the “breath of life” (“soul wind” or ruach hayyim). In the original Hebrew the words for “breath of life” are identical for all living creatures (Genesis 1:21, 24 and Genesis 2:7), but English translations incorrectly lead readers to believe that we were given something different:
Genesis 2:7 is not the first usage of the term soul. It is present four times before in Genesis 1:20, 30 (where it’s translated, has life), and in Gen. 1:21, 24 (creature). Notice that from Genesis 1:20 to 2:7 the term nephesh is used five times. Importantly, in English, the translators omitted it twice and used the translation creature twice and soul once. . . .
[T]ranslators took certain liberties. . . . every time nephesh refers to animals (fish, fowl, fauna), they either omitted it or used creature. Only when it comes to man, do they use soul. This point is essential because, from a Biblical Hebrew point of view, each animal and each man (i.e., human) is a nefesh, a soul, or a [living] creature.
Genesis states that God endowed all living creatures with the same breath of life (Schochet 53, also Hiebert 139, Mix 79-90, and Kneller n.p.).
Months of monitoring the place, cold night after cold night, and the heart burns from the inside. To take out what I can. To sort out the dying and the dead.
To get up each morning to check who survived the night and who did not [survive] the hell he had gone through.
A few days later Daniel sends me a picture of myself standing by that container, holding one of those chicks in my hand, smiling. I am astounded that in the midst of this horrible night there was a moment that I smiled. A chick, who I thought had no chance, is warming up in my hands and starts cheeping. Indeed, as my grandfather and grandmother taught me, each one is a whole world. (Adi Winter, anymal activist, n.p.)
One chick is enough to keep hope alive for Israeli anymal activist, Adi Winter. (Photo courtesy of Animals Now.)
3. Rulership in the Image of God
Genesis 1:26-28
Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”
So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”
Genesis 1 teaches that human beings are created in the “image” (slm or tzelem) of God. Scholars agree that the meaning of “image” or “likeness” is not physical: Humanity and God do not look alike. In other writings from roughly the same time and place (Egypt and Mesopotamia), it is clear that earthly rulers were regarded “as God’s representative in creation”: They were “the image or likeness of the deity” in both “function and position” (Hiebert 138).
To be created in the “image of God” is to be gifted with “the capacity to reflect God’s love and compassion” (Kaufman and Braun 6). To be created in the image of God is to be created to rule, to have “dominion” or “overlordship” (radha) on earth in God’s stead—on behalf of the Creator as God would do (or have us do). Dominion requires that we serve divine interests, not our own, that we rule as the Creator would, and not as we might prefer (Schochet 144). (For more on the nature of the Creator, see 5.3.II. “Creator.”)
To be made in the image of God, then, is to be gifted important responsibilities (Hume 6-7). We are to be “benevolent leaders”,” to “walk among and have a relationship” with God’s creation (“Subdue” n.p.). Our rulership/dominion is not about power or privilege, it is about serving God.
I’m not sure when we started to believe that because we were made in the image of God we had a license to mutilate, abuse, and kill. Wouldn’t a better reflection of God and imitation of God’s character be marked by love, mercy, and reconciliation? (Sarah Withrow King, MTS, Animals, 20)
There are always a few people who come up and declare, “God created animals for people.” They almost always quickly leave before their assertion can be contested. (Stephen Kaufman, M.D., “Reflections on Genesis,” n.p.)
A wide-eyed calf suckles on an artificial teat protruding from a feeding bucket on a dairy farm in Czechia. (Photo courtesy of We Animals Media.)
4. Vegan Dominion
Though some English translations wrongly state that humans are given dominion over all of creation, humans are only given “dominion” over anymals. Importantly, our dominion does not allow us to eat the other living beings:
Gen. 1:29–31
God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Immediately after we are given dominion/rulership over anymals we are given a vegan diet and the important responsibility of serving and protecting creation. The Creator gives humans an overlordship over other living creatures that “does not include the right to kill animals for food” (Broadman 1:132).
Scriptures do not say that we are more important or superior, only that we are made in the image of God and have certain duties of service that we are to perform, which are outlined in Genesis 2 (discussed shortly). Importantly, as presented in Genesis, human dominion is limited to anymals and, of critical importance, does not include the right to eat those we oversee. Also of note, only after the Creator explains what we are to eat (a vegan diet) is creation completed and pronounced “very good” (Genesis 1:31). (For more on dominion and diet, see 5.3.I “Genesis Diet” and the book “Vegan Ethics: AMORE—Five Critical Reasons to Choose Vegan.”)
Today’s use of animals—for food, clothing, entertainment, and experimentation—denies creatures their God-given behaviors and natures. That’s why I try to exercise our dominion over animals by looking after them, as I think Jesus would, and not by using them. (Dan, “Testimonies: Christians Speak Up for Animals,” n.p.)
Sharing the peace of vegan and sanctuary. (Photo courtesy of We Animals Media.)
God created a world of complete peace and harmony, and scriptures reveal “the pleasure and the delight of the divine viewer” on seeing this peaceful world (Broadman 1:132). God’s preference for a world without bloodshed speaks against eating anymals. Where there are plenty of other food options, this includes hunting and fishing. In comparison with much-respected patriarchs and their descendants, scriptures reveal hunters as fierce characters like Nimrod (Gen. 10:9) and Esau (Gen. 27:40). Scriptures forbid associating with those who are cruel, which must include those who hunt or fish when they could otherwise feed themselves without killing (Cohn-Sherbok 88). Hunting and fishing for any reason other than necessity (a lack of access to vegan foods) is to trivialize life and is “downright cruelty” (Schwartz, Judaism, 25). It is impossible to imagine Jesus choosing to eat by stalking anymals with gun in hand or yanking on a line to pull a hook into a fish’s mouth, and we are expected to model our lives on the life of Jesus.
For more on diet hunting and fishing, see:
Kemmerer, Lisa. Eating Earth: Environmental Ethics and Dietary Choice. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2014.
Kheel, Marti. Nature Ethics. Rowman & Littlefield, 2007
When the hunting dogs and the prince came upon a hare, they pursued it. . . . until he came to a certain thicket of brambles that was large and full of thorns. [There] he found a girl with the hare lying boldly and fearlessly under the hem of her garments.
Then the prince . . . [said] I find that you are the handmaid of the of the true God and the most sincere follower of Christ [and that it] pleased the highest and all-powerful God to give refuge. . . to this little wild hare. (Edward Sellner, Ph.D., Professor of Pastoral Theology and Spirituality at St. Catherine University, writing of St. Melangell of Ireland and Wales, Celtic Saints, 82-83)
(Image courtesy of Green Canticle.)
5. Creation as a Unified Good
Scriptures reveal anymals and their habitat as “good” outside of and prior to the existence of humanity (Genesis 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, and 25). After we are given a vegan diet, “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). A vegan creation is not merely good, but “very good.”
In Genesis, the Creator reveals the “intrinsic worth of species . . . ‘kol tov—and it was good’” (Saperstein 14). Here “good” is singular, indicating that “God views life in all its diversity as a fundamental unity” (Saperstein 14). According to Genesis 1, we are part of a good creation that is singular (and vegan), though composed of many parts. All that exists is interconnected through the Creator, through the act of creation, through gifting the Breath of life to all living creatures, and through our shared purpose as Adam’s helpmates in serving God: “Scriptures depict a solidarity of all creation” (Young 145).
Early in my life I came to the conclusion that there was no basic difference between man and animals. If man has the heart to cut the throat of a chicken or a calf, there’s no reason he should not be willing to cut the throat of a man. (Isaac Bashevis Singer, holocaust survivor who came from a long line of rabbis and was educated at the Warsaw Rabbinical Seminary, in Schochet, 297)
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1978), holocaust survivor whose writings reflect great sensitivity to anymals. (Photo courtesy of Louis Monier/Gamma-Rapho.)
6. Duties Assigned by God
Our divinely ordained role is further clarified in Genesis 2:15: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” Translated here as “keep,” “shamar” also appears in Numbers 6:24: “The Lord bless you and keep you.” In Numbers “shamar” clearly indicates “protect” or “guard,” revealing “a loving, caring, sustaining” endeavor (DeWitt 353).
Translated into English as “till” or “cultivate” in Genesis 2:15, ’abad, is translated as “serve” in Joshua 24:15: “choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served . . . or the gods of the Amorites.” In common use, the meaning of ’abad can be “to cultivate” but the general meaning of the term is “to work, to process, to perform, to labor, to serve (as a servant or slave)” (“Biblical Vocabulary” n.p.). ’Abad holds a sense of subjugation to rulership, whether to landowner or master or Creator (“’Abad” n.p.; also “Biblical Vocabulary” n.p.).
While it is common to till and keep a garden for personal reasons, in “strict theological, spiritual use,” the term ’abad means “to serve (the Lord God), to worship, to honor” (“Biblical Vocabulary” n.p.). Genesis 2 reveals man “as the servant, not the master” (Hiebert 140). Humans were created to “serve (work) and safeguard the Earth” (Hirsch 16); an accurate English translation of Genesis 2:15 would reveal humans as placed in the Garden of Eden to serve God through creation on behalf of the Creator. Those who understand scriptures “move from the idea that the animals were given to us and made for us, to the idea that we were made for creation, to serve it and ensure its continuance” (Linzey, “The Arrogance,” 69).
Veterinarian Manyahilishal Etana checks a donkey at The Donkey Sanctuary Ethiopia (near Addis Ababa). (Photo courtesy of We Animals Media.)
Genesis chapter two tells us that living creatures are all placed in the garden to work together to take care of all that has been created (Genesis 2:15). Hagiographies (stories of the Catholic saints) often portray living creatures in this way (as working together to serve God). Anymals provide a locus for revelation and exemplify piety, they act as martyrs, saints, and sacraments, and demonstrate agape (the love of God). Their agency and power, “their action as subjects in their own right,” is especially clear and prominent in Christian stories where anymals are “bearers of God or imitatio Christi (imitators of Christ). In this role animals act, are acted upon, and enact the will of the divine” (Hobgood-Oster n.p.). Christian scriptures reveal anymals as working with and for the Creator to bring about God’s desired and necessary ends: Christian “sacred history, though often obscured, suggests that animals may indeed be counted among the holy” (Hobgood-Oster n.p.).
A hunter sees a beautiful stag and pursues him into a thicket with intent to kill. As the hunter draws near, he sees a cross in the stag’s antlers, and the voice of God comes from the stag, both asking and telling, “Why are you pursuing me? For your sake I have appeared to you in this animal. I am the Christ, whom you worship without knowing it. Your alms have risen before me, and for this purpose I have come, that through this deer which you hunted, I myself might hunt you.” The stag is spared, and like the New Testament fishermen who became fishers of men, this hunter of deer becomes a hunter of men—Saint Eustace. (Hagiography describing a deer as God’s revelatory servant, Laura Hobgood-Oster, “Holy Dogs and Asses”; in-text quote from de Voragine, 266–67)
7. Shared Purpose: Woman and Anymals
Genesis 2:18–22
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,
“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
this one shall be called Woman,
for out of Man this one was taken.”
Genesis 2 tells readers that anymals and woman were created for the same purpose, so that man would not be alone and as a “helper as his partner” in serving God by protecting Creation. It is written that “there was not found a helper as his partner,” except in woman. This does not change the fact that woman and anymals are created for the same purpose, or that the purpose of all of creation points back to God. While it is clear that woman and man have a unique and special relationship, it is also clear that living creatures (including woman) were created as companions to man, to work with Adam in guarding and protecting creation. No Earthly hierarchy is indicated, only a description of living beings working together to serve God.
Marti Kheel, founder of Feminists for Animal Rights in 1982. (Courtesy of martikheel.com)
B. Creator
If we are to be God’s servants (on behalf of God through creation), it is important to understand something of the Creator and the Creator’s relationship with all that has been made. Fortunately, many passages of scripture reveal both.
Sole Proprietor
The Hebrew Bible states clearly that all of creation belongs completely and exclusively to God: “Life is everywhere and always God’s peculiar possession” (Broadman 1:155).
Deuteronomy 10:14
… heaven and the heaven of heavens belong to the Lord your God, the earth with all that is in it.
Psalms 24:1
The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it.
Psalm 50:10–11
For every wild animal of the forest is mine,
the cattle on a thousand hills.
I know all the birds of the air,
and all that moves in the field is mine.
Leviticus 25:23
…the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants.
As the Creator’s servants in tending creation, we have been commanded to “respect and preserve” anymals and the earth itself (Schwartz, Judaism, 30) In the perfect world that God intended, humanity has been given no license to harm creation.
I don’t see how I can possibly honor God while abusing His creation. (Michelle, “Testimonies: Christians Speak Up for Animals,” n.p.)
If sin is whatever separates us from God, is not cruelty to God’s creatures and unnecessary damage to God’s earth a sin? (Stephen Kaufman, M.D., “Take Heart,” n.p.)
Rescued goat (with visitor) at Israel’s Freedom Farm. (Image courtesy of Freedom Farm Facebook Page.)
2. Fully Invested—Compassionate and Attentive
Genesis 1 and 2 are extremely important for understanding God’s created, preferred, and ideal relationship with creation, which only exists before the fall of humanity in Genesis 3, where humans are disobedient. Afterwards, God banishes Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Much is changed in the process.
It is important to distinguish between the creator God and that same God, angry, when faced with disobedience and violence (described in Genesis 3-6) that culminates in the Great Flood. Scriptures indicate that God can be stirred to a terrible anger, but it is equally clear in Genesis 1 and 2 (supported by Psalms and other scriptures) that God’s innate nature is one of benevolence, munificence, and intimate caretaking of Creation. All beings are utterly dependent on the Creator and no one is “hidden from [the] Maker’s sight” (Scully 26). Anymals cry out to God in times of need. Scriptures indicate that the Creator is also is an attentive sustainer and provider, and that anymals understand God’s caretaking role just as we do (Schochet 144).
Psalm 145:8
The Lord is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
The Lord is good to all,
and his compassion is over all that he has made.
Psalm 145:15–16
The eyes of all look to you,
and you give them their food in due season.
You open your hand,
satisfying the desire of every living thing.
Psalm 145:8
Yonder is the sea, great and wide,
creeping things innumerable are there,
living things both small and great.
There go the ships,
and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it.
These all look to you
to give them their food in due season;
when you give to them, they gather it up;
when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
When you hide your face, they are dismayed;
when you take away their breath, they die
and return to their dust.
When you send forth your spirit, they are created;
and you renew the face of the ground.
Joel 1:8-10
Even the wild animals cry to you
because the watercourses are dried up,
and fire has devoured
the pastures of the wilderness.
Hieronymous Bosch, “Garden of Earthly Delights,” circa 1500 AD. (Photo courtesy of Wikkipedia.)
A loving and generous Creator, who created a world that can only exist through the deity’s attentive care, is central to Christianity. All living creatures have intrinsic value and a personal relationship with God; each living being is personally and individually important to the Creator.
Based on the nature of God, serving God (through creation, in the image of God) requires mercy, compassion, holiness, and living in peace. The Catholic Catechism notes that God surrounds anymals with “providential care” and that the creatures of the earth bless God and bring glory to the Creator, and so we “owe them kindness” (Catechism 2416). To “image God is to image God’s love and law . . . to reflect God’s goodness, righteousness, and holiness . . . wisdom . . . and justice” (DeWitt 354). Serving and protecting creation on behalf of the Creator does not permit using anymals as petri dishes, enslaving them for entertainment or for educational purposes, or killing them for clothing, food, or sport.
Rabbi Zusya of Hanipol was traveling to collect money to ransom prisoners. He came to an inn and in one room found a large cage with many types of birds. He saw that the birds wanted to fly out of the cage and be free again. He burned with pity for them and said to himself, “Here you are, Zusya, walking your feet off to ransom prisoners. But what greater ransoming of prisoners can there be than to free these birds from their prison?” He then opened the cage, and the birds flew out into freedom.
The innkeeper shouted at Zusya: “You fool! How could you rob me of my birds and make worthless the good money I paid for them?” Zusya replied: “Have you read these words in the Psalms: ‘His tender mercies are over all His work’?” (Richard Schwartz, Ph.D., Judaism, 30)
Yael and his friend share affection with a volunteer at Freedom Farm, a vegan sanctuary in Moshav Olesh, Israel. (Photo courtesy of Nir Elias/Reuters and Yahoo.com: News.)
3. Nature/Habitat as Good/Holy
Psalms 104:24
O Lord, how manifold are your works!
In wisdom you have made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.
He knows God rightly who knows Him everywhere. (Meister Eckhart, Theologian, n.p.)
The value of nature lies with God. That which has been created is of God, and as such, is good and holy. God created anymals “before man and pronounces them good without man” in Genesis 1:24–5 (Griffiths 8). That which has been created is from and of God, and as such, is good and holy. St. John of the Cross noted that anymals have been gifted a thousand graces and that the Creator “clothed them with His beauty” (St. John n.p.), which St. John interprets to mean that anymals hold the “majesty and perfections of God” (St. John n.p.).
“If your heart were right, then every creature would be a mirror of life and a book of holy doctrine.” (Thomas à Kempis, 12th century church leader, 69)
Given that Creation is of God and remains God’s and given that creation is holy, it might be expected for the Creator to sometimes appear in or speak through the natural world. Scriptures tell us that the Creator manifest in a whirlwind, spoke through a laboring burro, and sent an angel to appear in a bush: We find “God in and through” nature (Cobb 506-07).
Exodus 3:2
There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed.
Job 38:1-2 (also 40:6)
Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
Numbers 22:28
Then the Lord opened the mouth of the donkey, and it said to Balaam, “What have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times?”
God is equally near in all creatures. (Meister Eckhart, Theologian)
Scriptures tell us that the Creator is in-dwelling with regard to the natural world, and God commands us not to pollute or defile the land. In Numbers the Creator specifically notes that bloodshed pollutes and defiles the land:
You shall not pollute the land in which you live; for blood pollutes the land, and no expiation can be made for the land, for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of the one who shed it. You shall not defile the land in which you live, in which I also dwell; for I the Lord dwell among the Israelites. (Numbers 35:33–34)
The earth was not created as a gift to you. You have been given to the earth, to treat it with respectful consideration, as God’s earth, and everything on it [is] . . . to be respected, loved, and helped to attain their purpose according to God’s will. (Samson Rafael Hirsch, Rabbi, 16)
Elk alongside the TransCanada Highway in Alberta. (Photo courtesy of We Animals Media.)
4. In Covenant with Anymals/Earth
In Genesis, God establishes a covenant with “every living creature” and with the earth itself.
Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.” (Genesis 9:8-17)
[L]et us be “protectors” of creation, protectors of God’s plan inscribed in nature, protectors of one another and of the environment. (Pope Francis, quoted by Patenaude, n.p.)
Genesis 9:8-17 underscores God’s connection with and investment in all that has been made, reinforcing the unity of creation and the Creator’s ongoing commitment to all that has been made. Serving and protecting creation on behalf of the Creator requires that we practice all-embracing, attentive caretaking with all that has been made. (Also note Hosea 2:18, where God promises a covenant with “wild animals, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the ground,” establishing peace and safety between all living creatures.)
“Why do you care so much about them?” some people asked.
“I just do,” I replied, not really knowing how I couldn’t. Maybe it was because Tatu, another signing chimpanzee in Washoe’s surrogate family, covered her eyes with her hands and signed “peek-a-boo.” Or because Moja crossed her arms over her chest and signed “hug/love. . . .” Maybe it was because I made them lemongrass tea when they were sick and banana-leaf burritos when they weren’t. Or perhaps it was because I held and bottle-fed the babies Emma, Niete, and Gwen in my arms. And right before equatorial sundown, when I bathed with just a few precious drops of sunwarmed rainwater, I could still feel where their tiny hands and opposable toes had latched onto my body.
When I cared for Gwen, it was the first time I felt like a mother: this little life was completely dependent, and her human caregiver was the only mother she had. But the fear with which she clung to me reminded me that I was not the mother she was meant to have. Her mother had been murdered for meat when her little baby was less than a year old. Gwen didn’t want to lose anyone else. (Sangamithra Iyer in Primate People, 159-60)
At Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center in Cameroon, Sangamithra Iyer holding Emma, and Gwen; Gwen grooming Niete. (Photos courtesy of Sangamithra Iyer.)
Conclusion
The New Testament (backed by the Hebrew Bible) teaches core ethics that are central to the Christian faith—love, mercy, service, peace, and humility. The Gospels record the life and teachings of Jesus, who provides a “perfect pattern” for the Christian life (“Ultimate Sacrifice” n.p.). As moral exemplar, Jesus is gentle and attentive to the needs of those who are most marginalized and oppressed and the entirety of his life speaks to serving God.
Jesus taught us to extend love and compassion to those who are weak, vulnerable, and different from us, but in the U.S., we kill [tens of billions of] animals each year, just to satisfy our craving for flesh. Adopting a vegan diet is an easy way to honor Jesus’ sacrifice, contribute to a healthier planet, and help stop the horrific cruelty of the meat, dairy, and egg industries. (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, “A Vegan Diet,” n.p.)
Only the first two chapters of Genesis reveal what God envisioned/intended in the act of creating the perfect world; these two chapters are critical for understanding God’s relationship with all that has been made and our rightful relations with Creation. Genesis 1 teaches that creation is a unity, is good, and that all land animals (including human beings) are created on the sixth day, with the Creator providing the same breath of life to all living beings (including human beings) and then establishing a vegan diet. In Genesis 1 and into Genesis 2, human beings are given a vegan dominion and instructed to serve God by tending/protecting creation in God’s stead and on behalf of the Creator. Anymals and woman are created as company for the first man, and as helpers in caretaking assigned by God.
The Hebrew Bible also teaches that the Creator
is sole proprietor of all that has been made,
is compassionate and remains fully invested in creation, and
is in covenant with earth and living creatures.
According to Christian scriptures, contemporary anymal exploitation, including the consumption of anymal products, is contrary to what God intended. Upholding religious ethics and living into the example set by Jesus ought to shape how Christians live on this planet, including the treatment of anymals.
Activists with Animal Equality rescuing lambs from the goat milk and meat industries. (Photo courtesy of We Animals Media.)
Featured Sources
Clough, David. On Animals, Volume I and II. London: Bloomsbury. 2012 and 2019.
Kaufman, Stephen (M.D.) and Nathan Braun. Good News for All Creation: Vegetarianism as Christian Stewardship. Cleveland: Vegetarian Advocates Press, 2004.
Kemmerer, Lisa. Animals and World Religions (Chapters 5 and 6). (Oxford: Oxford UP), 2012.
Schwartz, Richard. Vegan Revolution: Saving Our World, Revitalizing Judaism. NY: Lantern Publishing & Media, 2021.