For the Record: Why I'm a Vegetarian (And Yet Manage Not to Call Down Fire and Sulfur on Everyone Else)

"Agrippa said to Paul, ‘Are you so quickly persuading me to become a Christian?’ Paul replied, ‘Whether quickly or not, I pray to God that not only you but also all who are listening to me today might become such as I am—except for these chains.’" Acts 26:28-29

For the most part, Laura and I are pretty quiet about our decision to become vegetarians (which we both made in the same year, independently of one another--but that's another story.) We are not the type to get green in the face at the dinner table of a gracious host and say, "Do you have any idea what you're eating?" or some such rude comment. In fact, I find myself being asked about it at least twice or three times for every one time I volunteer information about it, and to my memory I have not once in sixteen years proactively changed the subject to that of my diet.

It's kind of like faith in a way--we're a little timid about it in the current cultural climate, where folks have plenty of other stuff to disagree about without our making it a huge issue. And, like sharing one's faith, it can also bring out a defensive strain in people, as if my life choice somehow invalidates or places me in judgment over yours. It doesn't. And to get the other unspoken question out of the way, we're also not doing it to annoy you.

With all that said, as my thinking about this issue has evolved over the years (I admit that in high school I more or less did it to impress hippie girls), what I've discovered is that there are some strong connections between this one simple choice and my faith. And like my faith, I do feel it's something I can share with others, so maybe they can derive some benefit from it too. In all honesty, I do happen to think the world would be a greener and more peaceful place if there were a few more vegetarians in it. So just in case you ever wondered, here are a few ethical and theological reasons why I choose not to eat meat.

1. It's a compassion thing.
Prior to high school, I didn't have much of any concept where my food came from. That's not uncommon; we tend not to think about it these days. I guess I just pictured the first ten minutes of The Wizard of Oz. A farm someplace, with a kindly flannel-clad old man and woman raising up happy cows, chickens and pigs, who will live a long, full life and meet a relatively painless death. You don't need to know much about farming in the 20th and 21st century to know that's a fantasy. We can choose not to think about it, but let's at least not deceive ourselves.

I don't intend to gross you out with gory details, but suffice it to say that life is not good for your average commercial livestock animal in America today--nor is it especially good for the laborers whose job it is to kill them. If the subject is of interest to you, Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation was a huge eye-opener for me, even though it came out ten years after I had already become a vegetarian.

Now, I have no problem with the basic principle that organisms need to kill and eat other organisms to survive. I've heard the snide, "oh, but why do you want to kill those poor, defenseless carrots?" comments plenty of times. But for anyone who believes in right and wrong, there comes a point where you have to acknowledge that like any resource, there's probably a right and wrong way to use it. And especially if said "resource" has basically the same central nervous system, pain receptors and fear response as human beings do, there's got to be a more compassionate way than growing it in a cage in close quarters with thousands of other animals, feeding it stuff it was never meant to ingest (including, occasionally, bone protein from its ground-up relatives), pumping it full of antibiotics, and shooting it in the head on an assembly line. It's hard to think of the God who made all creatures, called them "good," and commanded Adam to tend them, live among them and give them names, being totally and completely OK with meat production as it is today.

2. It's a stewardship thing.
I've also heard the hilarious joke when people point at my plate of healthy green veggies, grains and beans, and say, "That's not food. That's what food eats." Lolz. I'll give you a minute to stitch your sides back up and stop slapping your knee. Shall we go on?

That joke actually illustrates one of the best points in favor of vegetarianism from a creation stewardship standpoint. Did you know that almost half of all corn grown in the United States goes to livestock feed? Almost half. In a time when the climate is changing, droughts are getting longer and worse close to the equator, the amazon rainforest is being cut down at an alarming rate, and one in seven children on this planet is going to bed hungry. Kind of makes you wonder whether we couldn't make a major impact for the world God made, even if just one meal a day we "cut out the middle man" (or cow, as the case may be) and ate "what our food eats"?

3. It's an eschatological (thinking about God's future for us) thing.
A central tenet of all three Abrahamic faiths is that God has a plan for this universe. The creation is not static, nor are the sufferings of today indicative of what always was and will be. God's world is going someplace. And if God, who made, loves, and died to save this world, has anything to say about it, the place where this world is headed is going to be a more loving place than where we live now.

Nobody knows exactly what form God's future for us will take. As Christians, we believe that Jesus' resurrection is the first and dominant interpretive key for what eternal life will look like. It's all about resurrection. The creation we know, the bodies we know, the earth we cherish, only no longer fallen, but just as God originally intended. And the thing about God's original intent is, uh,

Adam and Eve were vegetarians.

Apparently, all humans were. Meat was mostly off limits until after the flood, at which point God had largely thrown up God's hands and given up on the idea of an ideal, harmonious creation. As a parent of 2 small children, I can definitely relate to this, remembering how uptight we were about every little detail of pregnancy/birthing/infant care with Maggie, and now with Soren, mostly calling it a win when he walks out the door with a diaper on. The way I read it, it was a concession to a fallen world. Now, I am not a Biblical literalist, so I can understand the argument that we have, in fact, evolved to be omnivores. But as any science-friendly Christian will also tell you...evolution does have a way of moving on, doesn't it?

So, about that garden. About that idyllic place where God placed the human beings to be in harmony with God's other creatures. About that healing tree of life, which if memory serves, actually doesn't serve bacon. About that peaceful kingdom where the wolf will lie down with the lamb. I think we can lean into that future. By the choices we make today, we can begin to live as though the kingdom has already come. And a vegetarian diet is only one of a hundred different ways to do that. If it's not for you, fine. You might try striving for peace and justice in all the earth, or forgiving others as much as you've been forgiven, or loving others as God loved us. Seems to me that not eating cow, pig and bird parts is quite a bit easier of a way to work on that, but hey, you're free in Christ, so knock yourself out. :-)

So that's where vegetarianism fits into my faith. But just as I could stand to be a much better Christian most days, I could also stand to be a much better vegetarian. I eat fish from time to time. I eat eggs and dairy, a LOT, even though much of what I just said applies to that stuff too. Hey, they're tasty, and they keep my kids from rioting most of the time. We're not Pharisees. We try the best we can, and often fall on our faces, just like everyone else. But even eating less meat is a step in the right direction, toward a greener, more peaceful future. So there it is, for what it's worth. It's not the 95 theses, but it's worth some discussion...maybe over a nice tofu roast?

Analog Theology Part IV: Analog Ethics

But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. Jeremiah 31:33-34

In an increasingly digital world--a world broken down into one's and zero's, yes's and no's--I've been reflecting on human experience, and especially our experience of faith, as an analog phenomenon. It's unified, it can't be broken down, and in some very important ways, it will be slightly different every single time you play it back.

So we've already discussed analog reality, analog worship and analog faith. Here's where the rubber meets the road: analog ethics. We're done talking about what happens in our brains or hearts or souls. What difference does this make for what we do?

In his book, Ethics, Dietrich Bonhoeffer starts off with a bombshell:

"The knowledge of good and evil appears to be the goal of all ethical reflection. The first task of Christian ethics is to supersede that knowledge."

Whoah. Kind of sounds like this Lutheran pastor, who wrote several volumes of Christian theology, taught at a seminary, and stood up to Nazism when most of his Christian contemporaries couldn't cave fast enough, is saying that Christians shouldn't trouble ourselves about figuring out right from wrong.

Sounds like that, but it isn't.

Instead, Bonhoeffer writes at length about the search for "knowledge of good and evil" as the first human sin, and that the very fact that we feel like we need to know, as a sign that we're fallen. Remember that Adam and Eve didn't just eat the forbidden fruit because it looked tasty, but because the serpent made the case that eating the fruit would give them knowledge of good and evil, making them independent. They wouldn't have to be in relationship with God anymore; no more asking or reflecting with God.

What we as human beings desire is a formula: the ability to decode the data of our lives for ourselves, a long list of "yes's" and "no's," one's and zero's, "good's" and "bad's", that can be copied in its exact form to apply perfectly to any situation. In effect, what the serpent is offering to Adam and Eve is to "burn them a copy" of the source code to the universe. That's what we want. But as we've already established, that's not how the universe works. We can't come to any legitimate knowledge of what to do with our lives, unless we first seek union with the source of our lives: God.

There's a good reason why the shelves in any book store, Christian or secular, are overflowing with self-help volumes. And there's also a good reason why if you wait five years, you'll be able to buy each of them at a garage sale for a dime. We want a simple formula, and there isn't one. We want something that will create a life free from shame, mistakes, missteps, regrets, and we want it to work every time, for every person in every situation. We want one's and zero's: "yes" to envisioning your life goals, "no" to negativity, "yes" to my political platform, "no" to the other guy's, "yes" to fruits and veggies, "no" to carbs, on and on and on. We want a fool-proof guide to living in peace and harmony within ourselves and with others, in perfect, HD, digital clarity. And there's no such thing.

When it comes right down to it, that's where Jesus and the Pharisees parted ways. The Pharisees were offering a universal template for behavior, and Jesus was offering a relationship that makes a unique impression on each person. Life was getting complicated: in a newly globalized society, the normal way of making amends with God for mistakes--by offering a temple sacrifice in Jerusalem--was getting too costly and impractical. People needed a way to get free of that system. The Pharisees' solution was an increasingly complex mechanism for keeping your hands clean in the first place. They proposed more laws to supplement the laws; more rules to supplement the rules; a great, long list of commandments to help you make sure you were properly keeping the commandments you already had. The goal, it seems, was to eventually have a perfect, digital, "downloadable" rule book for staying ritually and ethically pure on your own.

Jesus' solution was simpler, yet more demanding. Yes, he did spend a good deal of time on ethical teaching, just like the Pharisees. And, like them, he generally set the bar ridiculously high. But unlike the Pharisees, that was what Jesus was actually trying to do. I won't go as far as many Lutheran preachers, who have taught that the whole point of Jesus' ethical teaching was to point out how impossible it is to even try to keep the law, so people would have to rely on good ol' salvation by grace through faith. That's an anachronism. Jesus was a Jewish teacher, and he most certainly did want people to stop selling themselves short, and actually try to do what God requires of us. But he also was very clear that this doesn't come from a rule book. It comes from following him. It comes from making a commitment to be a part of his movement, and trusting him enough to go where it leads, in community with other followers. You can't just download a rulebook, and follow it on your own, because the rules will change as the world changes. What matters is relationships: coming to him, no matter how dirty or clean we think we are, and being forgiven, and experiencing a unity with God that makes us able to make the earth more like heaven.

Jesus does not want to give us the latest updates of "ethical living 2.0" for individual household use. He wants to live with us, and make an "impression" on us. To cut grooves into our souls, to play back the loving music of the heavens for this world. And Jesus makes the conscious choice NOT to hand down a digital template, or a book of "Yes's" and "No's," but instead to use human beings--flawed as we are--to play back the message of God's love. So yes, it's going to sound pretty lousy sometimes. Through living among other scuffed-up people in a scuffed-up society, we will develop some pretty major scratches and skips. We will have wounds and scars, all the more so if we are actually trying to follow him. But the scars are part of the message. The stories of redemption become part of God's story in this world, by which other cracked and scratched people--people still bearing God's image after all these years--might come to follow.