Dear Everyone,
I am having a moral dilemma. How fitting that as soon as I write this Gungor's "The Earth is Yours" comes on my playlist, my current favorite song of worship.
Lord, the Earth is Yours, and singing. But beneath the loud voice of worship there are cries and moans of a broken world.
And activist came alive in me this past summer realizing as I read through Genesis that this Earth is important and beautiful and MUST be taken good care of. I now find myself diving further into the knowledge of good and evil that we as a people became so keenly aware of the day that Eve took the first taste of the forbidden fruit. I know the good. I know a minute fraction of the GOOD of this Earth, and I see also only a small iota of the evil as well. It infuriates me. But what good is my infuriation without action? Ignorance is bliss.
Ignorance was bliss at the morning dawn whenever I cracked my egg into the sizzling butter that fried my morning sustenance. Ignorance was bliss as I unpacked boxes of meat and cheese to display them for the hungry world of Trader Joe's. Ignorance was bliss and a little comedic when I laughed along with knock-off acronyms like PETA: People Eating Tasty Animals.
Ignorance I'm sure to have much of, but not enough to be in bliss any longer. I can't shake the little bit of knowledge I have of where my food comes from now. Food: Something that is supposed to support and sustain us, something that brings us together in community while being grown, made, AND being eaten. If we were all involved in every step of the process (in a pure way) we would all surely be in awe of the Lord. And food was there, first hand experiencing the fall of mankind at the hands of... mankind. The ones who are supposed to be stewarding this bountiful planet have bastardized our food from day one. Can we even get a handle on how to redeem our food? Ourselves? Our relationship with our food? I'm not just talking about a healthy mental relationship, I'm talking about a healthy personal relationship.
Personal, yes, because we eat animals. And the Lord allows that. He has allowed the beasts of the Earth to be food for man. With that allowance though, He has NOT taken away our call to steward this place we live in and take care of it. To live into being a Godly people we must care for our bodies, our souls, we must care for our planet, and we must also care for our animals.
This is where my dilemma comes in. This is where ignorance is bliss. The two eggs I made for myself this morning came from certified organic free range chickens. But free range means not what it sounds like it means. Free range, cage free chickens are hardly that. Do you know that cage free actually means that they are still stuffed inside a building with only one square foot of space per chicken? Free range means that they have a five minute window when the doors of their coop open up to a hardly open space of sunlight reflecting only off of the gravel, grass-less ground that surrounds their home. Their beaks are cut off as chicks, and live male chicks are thrown into a grinder alive because they produce no eggs and, thus, are pointless in this world. There are no laws or standards protecting the way chickens are butchered. Organic or not, they are butchered inhumanely. I won't get into the things that happen in a non-organic chicken farm. It's truly not good in any way. It would bring tears to the coldest eyes.
As for cows: The males, for beef, have their testicles cut off at the hands of a person with a machete without a drug in their body to ease the pain. Men, imagine that for a minute. At a place where the cows are humanly raised they, instead, have a rubber band put around their testicles so the organ dies and falls off. Better?
What has happened? Why do we get to pump God's animals with hormones to fatten them up and feed our bellies? I don't think we realize the sheer magnitude and the lies we have been swept up in with this defilement. Satan has a weapon in ignorance. Hosea 4:6 says, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge.."
I am a meat and beef loving, cheese eating, egg hoarding lover of all foods animal related. I don't think that's a bad thing. But in essence being a meat-eater in this world has become an enablement of SO many of the wrongdoings to God's creation. It's nearly inescapable, and it deeply saddens my heart. The natural habitat for chickens and cows and turkeys and fish are that way because God placed them there. We shouldn't be changing that. Yet when I go to a grocery store and find the label that says grass-fed, and free range I am not convinced. We have been deceived again, my friend.
So what do I do about it? Honor our bodies. My metabolism keeps me hungry often. Grains don't sustain my energy. I'm very aware of how the food I eat effects my body, and the protein and fats that come from the meat and eggs I eat fill me well. Trying to sustain my protein on quinoa and nuts alone because the world has defiled the way we treat our animals is a hard thing for me to accept. So do I accept it anyway? For the honor of the Lord and His creation?
Or do I learn to grow these things myself? Humanly raise and butcher a cow who has grown up with love in a green pasture. Can I even find a nearby farm to provide me with eggs from chickens who aren't ground up alive? I'm infuriated, and I'm sad, and I'm confused.
I have no answers at the end of this day. But I pray to the Lord for guidance. I WANT to glorify him in my food, and my actions, and my words. I trust that He will guide my way.
I'm sorry if I have taken away your ignorance and your bliss. But I hope I have. And I hope you will find that you, too, want to glorify God in new ways you weren't aware of. Perhaps we can walk together down an unseen road towards sanctification.
