Veganism and Christianity: worldviews on a collision course

Veganism is in the news at the moment as folk are encouraged to go vegan for the New Year. Once apparently the preserve of a few off-beat, left wing, hippy types, increasing numbers of mainstream figures are now declaring support for veganism. Unlike vegetarianism which encompasses a wide range of motivations, veganism is underpinned by a set of quite strict values which make it a world-view rather than mere set of dietary choices, but it could be argued that veganism is pseudo-religious in character. 

It is easy to disregard veganism as just a rather extreme lifestyle choice but in fact these principles that make up veganism are in aggressive opposition to foundational Christian doctrines. They are also increasingly seeping into mainstream thought via the media, especially in areas like conservation and agriculture.

These principles include the following:

• Humans have no special status. Veganism explicitly places the same value on animal life as human life. Human beings are just another animal. Some vegans even go so far as to compare society's use of animals for food to the Holocaust, and human ownership of animals to pre-Abolition slavery. (Ironically, however, vegans actually place humans on a different level from other animals, as other animals feel no compunction in killing and eating one another, and by expecting humans to behave in ways completely counter to natural selection, a theory which has done so much to shape veganism.)
• Rejection of the so-called 'commodification' of animals, so vegans will not, for example, keep animals captive or use for milk production, clothing, riding/ploughing, keeping pets or taking any medicines that might have been tested on animals.
• Veganism asserts that meat eating is immoral and veganism is therefore a moral obligation. One prominent exponent of this position is the philosopher Peter Singer, who at the same time advocates full term abortion and even infanticide at the choice of mothers.

Christianity, on the other hand asserts that:

• Human beings are distinct from the rest of creation because they possesses a soul and are created in the image of God.
• God gave mankind special status as steward of his creation: Man may have abused this role at times but God still regards him as the pinnacle of his creation and as the steward of the rest of creation.
• God gave all living creatures to human beings for them to use including as food and for sacrificial purposes. 
• The killing of other life for food and sacrifices can be viewed as a shocking necessity meant to bring home to human beings the seriousness of their sin. God determined to provide the animals to act as these substitutes and symbols 'before the foundation of the earth'. They were provided to point forward to the final true sacrifice, that of his son Jesus Christ who offered himself 'for the sin of the whole world'.
• To say that it is wrong to kill animals therefore a) denies God the right to utilise things he created as he chooses, b) challenges the rightness of God in giving them to people for that purpose and c) therefore attacks substitutionary atonement for sin which is the heart of the gospel.

Veganism is the combined result of pursuing Darwinism to its logical conclusion and attempts to provide an ethical framework for life which specifically excludes any reference to any being outside the physical world. Veganism and humanism therefore go hand in hand. Most Western vegans have explicitly rejected belief in God although some follow atheistic forms of Buddhism. Some proponents of veganism, like Peter Singer, are among the most obnoxious and vociferous critics of Christianity.It can be seen from this that veganism is not a neutral lifestyle choice but an ideology which is on a collision course with Christianity.

We can see from this that, although it is quite possible for a Christian to adopt a non-meat eating lifestyle, it is not possible to be both a vegan and a Christian. More importantly, we can also see that below a relatively innocuous surface lie a set of ideas which are distinctly anti-Christian, which  are increasingly seeping into mainstream thinking  and which Christians need to understand - both in order to engage with them in contemporary culture and to guard our own hearts against erosion in confidence in God's providences and principles.

Divers and dolphins: clues to our role in God's world

This week there was a remarkable film in the news of an injured dolphin apparently deliberately seeking out human help and waiting patiently whilst a diver gave it assistance. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21176914 For a lifelong wildlife fanatic like me, it was fascinating footage but it also seemed to me to give a brief glimpse of how things might have been between man and beast, had it not been for the Fall.

As the chief among God’s creatures, man was not only the pinnacle of God’s creative achievements  but was also set apart by being given a conscious mind, vastly superior intelligence and spiritual awareness – being ‘made in the image’ of God. The Genesis account portrays the role God had in mind for man as manager or steward - to ‘subdue’ the earth and make it fruitful, for the glory of God and the blessing of all man’s fellow creatures.

Instead, man has used his gifts to exploit his fellow creatures and abuse the earth’s resources. Far from making the world fruitful, man’s selfishness has resulted in famine, drought, species loss and desertification.  The vast majority of animal species regard man as a threat and either flee or respond aggressively to his presence.

I don’t go for the gaudy, sentimental pictures of man and beasts together in Eden that you sometimes see. Even before the Fall, I suspect man’s role as manager of God’s creation would have required all the strength, mental ingenuity and spiritual wisdom with which God had endowed him.  Personally I do not picture Adam spending his days in sleepy idleness with a lion on his lap, as some of these images suggest! But I do believe the relationship would have been very different, with animals viewing man as a benevolent authority figure rather than a threat, and man in turn treating God’s creatiures in a responsible way.

Although creation will now never be as God intended until he ‘makes all things new’, (Revelation 21:5)  Christians can still make an impact today by taking this ‘steward’ role seriously. Only this week I was reading about ‘integral mission’ projects which use principles from the Bible about looking after the earth, crop management and community relations to help poor communities develop, at the same time as proclaiming the gospel to them. As Evangelicals, I fear we have been prone to make an artificial distinction between ‘the Gospel’ and the rest of life, forgetting that God has given us a framework of glorious principles that speak to every aspect of our communal life. We have left the platform entirely to a largely atheist environmental lobby, the new pagans, liberal ‘Christian’ organisations and secular humanitarian organisations and I have no doubt this has been to the ultimate dishonour of our Creator God and the obscuring of his Gospel.

{NB – in the above post, my use of ‘man’/’he’/’his’ is deliberate as,  although  in many senses we are talking about the roles and responsibilities of all human beings, this stewardship role was specifically laid on Adam, the man, and therefore substitution of gender-free terms like ‘humankind’ does not sufficiently reflect the Biblical nuances involved. Very happy to discuss further  in ‘Comments’! }

To blog or not to blog...that is the question.

It is Easter, so it seemed like a good time to begin this blog. I’ve been in two minds about blogging. There seems something inherently narcissistic about broadcasting your own opinions. And I know that pride certainly isn’t something I’m likely to get free of any time soon!  However, there is also a need for the church to engage with the world outside its walls through these media, so I’m praying to be able to use this space in a God-honouring way.

I have called the blog ‘Strangers and Pilgrims’ because that is how the Bible describes the people of God in relation to the world. According to the writer of Hebrews, the great heroes of faith:

‘…admitted that they were aliens and stranger (strangers and pilgrims) on earth… Instead, they were longing for a better country, a heavenly one.’ Hebrews 11:13,16

The Greek phrase for strangers and pilgrims is ‘xenoi kai parepidemoi’. Parepidemoi literally means ‘the ones that are passing through’. It carries the sense of people living in a foreign land for a limited season and a specific purpose, interacting with the society they move in but not belonging there. This reminds me straightaway of the old Spiritual;

‘This world is not my home, I’m just a passin’ through

My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue

My saviour’s beckonin’ me from heaven’s open door

And I can’t feel at home in this world any more.’

I find this metaphor helps both to know how we should relate to the world and to explain some of the struggles that we experience as we go through the Christian life.  Expatriates experience considerable challenges in some countries. In some countries their presence may be tolerated rather than welcomed, and in others Britons are at risk of  violence because of their nationality. Even where this is not the case, a host government does not have their welfare at heart; this is the responsibility of the British Government. Expatriates are governed by two legislatures as they must abide by the laws of the nation where they reside but are also still subject to the laws of their own country. They never truly ‘belong’ in that country although they may learn the language, make local friends and even adopt some local practices.

Do some of those things resonate with you? Do you have a sense of alienation at times from contemporary British society? Do its values and laws clash with your Christian beliefs? Does it feel at times as though society has turned on the Church - that it is tolerated but not really welcome in society? This is what it means to be parepidemoi. This earth is not where we ultimately belong and this life is not all that there is. Abraham, the archetypal figure of faith in the Bible, is described as ‘looking forward to a city with foundations, whose builder and architect is God’ (Hebrews 11:10) and, once  God had called him, he put down no roots in this world. Living as a nomad and owning no land on the earth, God made him a living picture of this ‘sojourning’ existence. He was happy to live that way because he knew that he had a home elsewhere, a city where he held citizenship. That city, the New Jerusalem of Revelation 21, will be the final resting place of all God’s children and it is the place that we should all be homesick for.

So I’m hoping this blog will be a space to explore our ‘sojourning’ here and to contemplate the great hope that we have before us.

Have a very Happy Easter.