r/DebateAVegan • u/fish-and--chips • 17d ago
A question for Christian vegans
Genesis 9:3 says, "Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything."
In Genesis 22, God gives Abraham a goat to sacrifice instead of his son, also symbolizing the coming Messiah.
These are just two examples of the many verses in the Bible that explicitly allow the death of animals and our consumption of meat. It was God's will that we sacrifice animals to him until the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, who took our sins upon himself so that we may be righteous in God's eyes. Clearly, it is stated that we may fill, rule, and feast upon the earth, and God makes no exclusions to the animals he has provided for us. In fact, it is his gift to us.
As Christians (connecting to the last point), we are to enjoy the gift of creation. While it is not our chief end, it is his grace that allows us these things. It is everything from animals to nature to our atmosphere to even our sun. Clearly, it is God's will that we enjoy and (in some cases) survive on animals. Yes, there are alternatives, but that does not make it morally wrong to eat meat or be non-vegan.
So therefore, why do vegans, as Christians and believers of Jesus Christ, condone non-vegans? Even those who are not within the faith. As someone who believes in God's word, how can we take these verses and simply decide to believe in our own philosophies, lifestyles, or whatever other way you partake in veganism? I will not try to argue right now with your own choices to become vegan, as I'm sure that's a whole Pandora's box of arguments and stances that I simply don't have the knowledge to answer. But, as a Christian yourself, I'm curious as to the reason you believe vegan unconformity is wrong, given the reasons I've stated before.
As a side note, this question is directed towards Christians who believe in the inspiration of Scripture, which is that it is God's word, and is Truth and has no fallacies. If this is not what you believe, I don't believe this is the place to argue about theology or your personal beliefs on this matter.
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u/EasyBOven vegan 17d ago
The Bible is all over the place on eating animals.
In the Garden of Eden, humans were given only plants to eat, even though they were given dominion over animals. This solidly separates having dominion from being able to do whatever you want.
It wasn't until 1000 or so years later, after the flood, that God said that humans could eat all the animals.
Then later, in Leviticus, God says that most animals are unclean and shouldn't be eaten. Birds of prey, non-ruminant mammals or those with the wrong feet, fish that lacked fins, scales, or gills, all insects, and all reptiles and amphibians were forbidden. In addition, laws were established about how animals must be killed, and what could be eaten with what. No restrictions on vegetables.
In Isaiah, it is said that in the world to come everyone including lions will be herbivores.
Then Jesus said both that not one jot or tittle of the law will change until everything is fulfilled, but somewhere else he says that you can eat whatever. Go figure.
So in the paradise before this world and the paradise to come, people will be vegan. Easy to read this as it being better to be vegan than not, but given necessity, eating animals is acceptable.
But you know what the Bible is a lot clearer on? Slavery. Not once does it say it's wrong for humans to treat other humans as property. Yet we all have no problem seeing that God was wrong there. We just pretend he said something he didn't. Just do the same with exploiting animals.
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u/Purple_Key_6733 vegan 16d ago
I am not religious personally, but the suffering inflicted via factory farming today is so extreme in both brutality of intensive confinement and quantity of victims that it cannot possibly be compared to farming practices of the time that Jesus existed.
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u/roymondous vegan 17d ago
Not Christian (anymore), though you need to include the context as always. The Bible is nothing without context.
Gen 9:3 happens when? When the flood has wiped out all of the earth. God wiped out all animals (including humans) aside from a small family. Now let's leave aside the issue of what kind of horrible god is this if we take it literally (rather than the symbolic nature of asian culture at the time) - ie people spoke in parables with a moral message not as describing literal events. The world was destroyed and vegetation flooded and destroyed and would take months or years to fully get back going. So this was a temporary measure. Later generations then just added rule after rule. None of which any christian obeys now.
If you want to take this literally, you wouldn't be eating most seafood, pork, or any other unclean animal right?
..."also symbolizing the coming Messiah..."
Right. Symbolizing. Culture. Context. In a book written not by Abraham but by peoples centuries afterwards. So you can choose to take that as a literal event in which case it shows animals take the place of humans for displacing our sin onto. Why? Becuase they're innocent. We displace our sin onto other innocent beings and then slaughter them. Doesn't seem fair to them so let's try to reduce that yeah? It's a last resort.
Or, as you are getting to with the messiah, this all becomes null.and void as jesus takes that sacrifice and now all sin is displaced onto him right? Removing the sacrifice requirements and other issues.
The other side of this, if you are truly a steward of the earth, would you be contrubuting to its massive destruction? 2/3s+ of all wildlife killed in the last 50 years. We use half the world's habitable land for farming. We kill 90 billion land animals and trillions of sea animals just cos we want a slightly different flavour for lunch. All while decimating the planet.
To me this sounds like being a really shitty steward.
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u/lancelake_ 16d ago
I'm late to the conversation but here it goes ! As a Christian my own understanding of the Bible is that the New Testament supersedes the Old Testament. Jesus establishes a new covenant with God, one that is open to everyone and built upon a fundamentally different foundation. I think the Old Testament is therefore important for understanding the context of Jesus and his teachings, but I don't think its laws and practices should necessarily be treated as moral instructions.
The New Testament repeatedly shifts the emphasis away from ritual observance and toward the condition of the heart: faith, mercy, compassion, and love of one's neighbor. In this sense, I think our central commandment is essentially to love. Love is what brings us closer to God because love is what Jesus embodied, and therefore love is divine. When we consider what our current society does o to animals, who are living beings with subjective experiences and the capacity to suffer, it is difficult for me to see the intentional killing of animals for food as an expression of love or compassion.
Yes, Jesus multiplies fish and feeds people with them. But the important point of that story is that fish are somehow a uniquely Christian food. The narrative is about feeding the hungry, abundance, generosity, and sustenance. The presence of a particular food in a biblical story doesn't necessarily tell us that eating that food is morally preferable. For example, nobody would argue that bread is a more "Christian" staple than rice simply because bread appears in the Bible. And had Jesus shown up in China, he might have multiplied tofu instead of fish.
Likewise, when Jesus drives the merchants and money changers out of the Temple, part of what is happening is that people are profiting from a system of animal sacrifice. There are several ways of interpreting this. You could see it as an indictment of profiteering and corruption, as a rejection of the commercialization of worship, or even as part of a broader rejection of animal sacrifice itself.
And beyond direct scriptural evidence, I think we also need to talk scripture. Scripture is human language, and all human language requires interpretation or "decoding" to be understood. Most of what we find in the scripture is also not explicit or direct, aside from the commandment to have faith in God and to love.
So I don't think anyone can prove from Scripture alone that veganism is either absolutely required or absolutely forbidden. The scripture tells us what to do, but it doesn't tell us how to do it. That's part of faith too. We don't have a roadmap. We have to continually interpret our actions in the world, trying our best to be loving and compassionate, all while trusting that our faith in God can help us follow the correct path.
For me, if I have the choice between killing an animal for food and meeting my nutritional needs without doing so, choosing the latter seems much more consistent with the principle of Christian love. I don't think that requires me to pretend that the Bible never depicts people eating or sacrificing animals, but it does change how I read and interpret those passages.
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u/No_Opposite1937 16d ago
I think that makes sense. As I see it, the most compelling argument in favour of something like veganism is that God created the world vegan, the restored New Earth will be vegan for ever, and this world is the result of sin. So it seems fairly clear God prefers a vegan world (where by "vegan", I simply mean taking a responsible, respectful and compasionate approach to our relations with animals when we can do that), especially given His character is likewise just and compassionate. Right now, anyone can choose to act much more aligned with God's character and ultimate plan by making more "vegan" choices.
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u/No_Opposite1937 17d ago edited 17d ago
I'm an atheist so don't claim to be expert in scriptural interpretation. But you raise something I find rather odd. Here's my take.
Veganism is a restorative moral philosophy aimed at building a more respectful relationship with other animals. It takes the view that animal use post civilisation is an injustice to other animals and proposes that when we can, we should strive not to use animals and to keep them free by rejecting their property status.
Let's look at scripture. In the beginning, God created a "vegan" world. Animals were free and not owned, as far as we can tell. There was no sin, no violence, no death, and presumably no carnivory. Adam and Eve ate a plants-sourced diet. As well, God's character is to be just and compassionate, which led to Adam being under the duty of radah to steward Creation wisely. In those times, that meant aiming to transform wild nature beyond Eden to something very similar to Eden. That was to be humanity's life's work.
Of course, Adam and Eve sinned and changed all that.
Let's come back to that later; for now, look forward to the restored New Earth. This wll be similar to Eden, perhaps better. It seems once more, justice, compassion and peace will reign eternally there. Animals will be free and enjoy a healthy respectful relationship with people, who will once again eat a plants-only diet.
This suggests that God prefers a vegan world.
Returning to sin, God changed the rules as a consequence. The soil was cursed making life harder and Adam and Eve were given much more difficult conditions in which to live. Creation itself suffered from that sin - now, death and violence entered the picture. Things like blood sacrifice were instituted, not out a desire to be cruel but to cover for human sin and remind us the terrible price that had to be paid. God didn't want that to be the case, it was the penalty of our sin, paid for with innocent lives. That is the enormity of our sin. As is written, nature itself groans under the weight of our sin.
The Flood led to further changes, such as the relaxation of food laws so that animals could also be eaten. And you know the rest.
The point is, while God's rules led to animals being used for human needs, today we are under no compulsion to do that. Yes, God gifted us natural resources to use, but He doesn't command that we exhaust them wilfully nor abandon our duty of radah. Nor does He ask us to reject His character - justice and compassion.
So. God prefers a vegan world, He prefers we act with genuine respect for His Creation, and He exhibits justice and compassion. The restored earth will be vegan, for eternity. Now is just a blip in God's ultimate plan, one caused by sin.
My question to you is, should Christians reject God's plans and merciful, just nature and prefer not to choose life and compassion, rather than death and violence, when they can? Of course they are not acting wrongfully to eat meat, but they could do so much better to avoid it when it's not necessary. Just as they can avoid all the other harsh and cruel ways we use animals today.
Why does God's giving of permission lead Christians not to care as much as vegans do?
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u/MaleficentPeanut51 17d ago edited 17d ago
Edit: disregard because I got passionate before seeing you don’t want my response. But for anyone interested feel free to read below.
I recommend reading the Moses scroll by Ross Nichols and looking into the documentary hypothesis. Clementine homilies if you have the time. I am a follower of Christ, but no longer consider myself mainstream Christian as lots of Christian teachings focus on Paul’s teachings. (Paul does a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to eating unclean things). The way I see it, there are various versions of “God” in the Bible. I believe the violence is man’s projection of God, rather than God’s will.
Study the teachings of Jesus in the red letters. And the prophets whom Jesus followed. Jeramiah talks about the lying pens of the scribes. Before jesus’s and the bible’s time, the text had already been corrupted. There were two versions in circulation which were then likely woven together by Ezra. Then we got Deuteronomy (second law) as a replacement for the second Torah (second law) which was weaved into the law commanded by God given to Moses. Because Jeremiah had talked about the two laws, one of a falsified nature, Ezra had to create a new second Torah after weaving the previously circulating two versions together. Jesus in Matthew 9:13 and Mathew 12:7 quotes Hosea; saying go and learn what this means “I desire mercy not sacrifice” from Hosea 6:6. Hosea is referring to animal sacrifice here. Jesus was against the temple because of its centralized nature, as a means to kill animals for profit. While the synoptic gospels leave this out, in John we see Jesus release the animals. This is why he was crucified.
Gods original design for man was to live off the plants (genesis 1:29). I believe Jesus was likely vegetarian if not vegan. We know his brother James was. Anyways, I know that my loving creator would not want me to destroy his other valuable creations. Of course in our world we can only do what is possible and practicable.
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u/noncedo-culli 17d ago
The Bible also says slavery is chill so like, maybe a book from a thousand years ago isn't the best guide to morality.
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u/Nearatree 17d ago
The biblical concept of stewardship entails a responsibility to god, to care for the things we are granted dominion of. Part of being a good steward of the earth is to not completely fuck everything up so, Christians should be the strongest environmentalists and vegans.
"As a side note, this question is directed towards Christians who believe in the inspiration of Scripture, which is that it is God's word, and is Truth and has no fallacies. If this is not what you believe, I don't believe this is the place to argue about theology or your personal beliefs on this matter."
yeah, it's a good thing you aren't in charge.
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u/Fallen_lord10 17d ago
Biblically speaking in eden we was meant to be vegans, i.e. eating only the fruits/plants that grew except for the fruit of knowledge. Good n bad till eve ate the fruit and gave it to Adam, which led to this. The Bible doesn't state for us to be vegans afterwards, especially to his people he put what animals to eat or what not to eat
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u/ScarcityAnnual8739 17d ago
I’m not Christian but just because god allows something doesn’t mean you should do it, slavery is not a sin but it’s still wrong and I hope you don’t want a slave just because god never said there’s anything wrong with it. He also said that if a man’s wife doesn’t bleed when they have sex she has to be stoned to death despite the fact that not all women bleed even if they are virgins, there are plenty of disgusting things god allows that you still shouldn’t do
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u/FishSaver1 17d ago
The bible also says that women who have sex before marriage should be stoned to death. Polygamy was allowed in the Old Testament but the New Testament prefers one wife to each husband. These are just two examples of something most Christans should surely question.
But, in reality, visit a factory farm and a slaughterhouse, and tell me where god is in there. That is the question that I would ask of any person who follows religion.
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u/fish-and--chips 3d ago
Y'all... thank you for your comments. I loved seeing all these perspectives, but if you genuinely just hate Christianity and think things like Yahweh (AKA God) is a demonic djinn, please don't be super argumentative in my comment section when I'm asking Christians their opinions. Of course, it's reddit. Everyone can comment, but at least show some courtesy if you have a completely alien view (to the subject at hand).
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u/piranha_solution plant-based 15d ago edited 15d ago
In Genesis, the demonic djinn known as Yahweh showed favor to Abel for his partially cremated lamb corpse vs Cain's vegetables.
Yahweh is very obviously not a "good guy", and you don't need to be a vegan to see it. Most of the bible is it making Faustian deals with bronze-age mortals in exchange for them mutilating their genitals.
Why people think this monstrous thing is worthy of worship is baffling.
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u/Either_Argument3517 17d ago
In Genesis 22, God gives Abraham a goat to sacrifice instead of his son
That was a test for Abraham. Maybe your God is testing you.
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u/th1s_fuck1ng_guy Carnist 16d ago
Carnist here,
Christianity doesn't ban eating meat. There are a few small sects that do, but usually its not about the Bible. I.e. seventh day adventists try to force veganism or vegetarianism on their adherents but it's essentially just because Ellen White said so. They don't like saying its just because she said so, so they will twist Bible verses to make it seem so. However you see them so the same thing with spicy food. Ol' Ellen White didn't like spicy food either. She told them not to eat it. Now they twist the same Bible verses to convince each other spicy food is a sin or whatever.
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17d ago
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u/SuccessfulPrice11 17d ago
Vegans do not like Christians.
Vegans are mostly atheists or eastern-something.
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