The more that I understand how we are all connected by love and God in the universe, the more the commandments and morality makes sense. I have been participating in a social media group. There was post asking about if a behavior was evil and suggesting that people shouldn’t kill animals. I believe in having respect for all life. (I don’t want to get into the fallacy of veganism). However, it occurred to me that not killing wasn’t just about a sin of pride.
I totally believe that I have no right to kill because only God has dominion over when life should begin and end. For me to kill would be to say that I know better than God when life should end. Yet, when I start to understand this universal connection, it goes even deeper. If I kill someone else, then I am in essence killing a part of myself. Every time a injure one of my brothers or sisters in Christ, I do injury upon myself. So of course, I want to love others as I love myself. They are part of me.
Now about killing animals for food and veganism…People say that they don’t want to kill another living thing for food, but plants are alive. Then, they say plants don’t feel pain and they don’t think. How do we know? Maybe plants do communicate in a different way that we just haven’t discovered. Maybe they do have feelings and maybe they do feel it when we kill them for food. It isn’t a question about killing. It is a question about honoring the life I take for food and being respectful. If a hunter hunts for sport and then throws the animals body away to rot, then that isn’t honorable and respectful, but if a hunter hunts to feed his family and uses the animal for nourishment, then how it is any different than a lion killing a antelope? God teaches us to be thankful for the food we eat and to be respectful for the sacrifice. Every time we eat something, we should be mindful of where it came from and the sacrifice that was made for us so that we might live. Not just the animal, but the plant as well. I believe now more than ever there’s a connection to everything in the world and that showing honor and respect to that connection is the path to being the person that God intended me to be.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
