1 Timothy 4:3 “Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.”

1 Timothy 4:4 “For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving:”

1 Timothy 4:5 “For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.”

Hello readers, today I want to talk about vegetarianism/veganism in the light of scripture. Read the above verses ^ and you can see that the Bible sure does have something to say on vegetarianism! Recently I blogged on “sustainability” as a buzz word of our times, and in it we saw that yes, there is a threat to sustainability…. but that it is sin and not CO2 that is the threat to our sustainability. We saw that according to the Bible, sin and unrighteousness is not sustainable, not personally (ie you and me) neither corporately (ie our society and country). And then we saw how that people want salvation from a false threat in CO2, but do not want salvation from a real threat in sin, and that they want sustainability in their sin and to sin. But you cannot make sin sustainable, and it will not be sustainable in your life, just wait and see.

And so this blog is almost just an extension of this previous one, because when we talk about vegetarianism and veganism, really that whole movement has sprouted out of the “sustainability” movement ie. with the rise of “sustainability” we have seen a rise in vegetarianism to be more sustainable. As people have become more ecologically and environmentally “enlightened”, “conscious”, “aware” and “responsible”, they have looked to a life beyond meat, and to a plant based diet. Man I really pray for the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit in your life so that you can identify the real issues and a true cause in your life.

As of the beginning of the year 2023, vegetarianism has become one of the new virtues of this new sustainable world we are trying to make. It has become a matter of righteousness. People think it’s what’s “right”. If you’re “vego” you’re seen to be or promote yourself as more righteous than others who eat meat. It always strikes me as kind of ironic, because in school I was taught that one of the main steps in mankind’s evolution was eating meat which increased our brain capacity and lead to positive evolution… so it seems like if you’re an evolutionist and vegetarian, you are contradicting your own belief system, and you’re really devolving, not evolving. But anyway.

Vegetarianism revolves around the concept of “harm”. It’s justified based on emotional arguments that center on harming animals. One of the main ways people in our society measure whether something is right or not is by “harm” ie. If it’s not harming someone, it’s ok. And people don’t want to see anything and anyone harmed, like the animals, and so they go vegetarian for humanitarian reasons. I don’t want to be too facetious in this blog, because we want this to be productive, and I don’t want my personality to get in the way of truth, but I often see that these same people are pro abortion and pro choice. I haven’t met a vegetarian who isn’t pro killing human babies and pro the freely choosing to do so. But if you’ve seen the way rabid vegans (more radical vegetarians) behave, they’re kind of against your “choice” to eat meat, but they are pro the choice to kill humans in the womb. So that’s the thing I really see personally in the vegetarian movement, is that the movement is laced with hypocrisy and contradiction. Hopefully if you care about “harm” you actually care about harm to fellow man before harm to the beast. Just recently, I saw a video where a vegan was saying to someone about animals “do you think they want to live?”… well do you think human babies that are aborted would like to live?

At the heart of the vegetarian movement is righteousness, and self righteousness in particular. People do care about righteousness and being right, or at least feeling so. Where they detach from the Bible is that they are not willing to submit to Christ’s righteousness, but rather seek to establish their own righteousness. You know how God outlaid his ten commandments to the nation of Israel, well this new world has it’s own ten commandments and things like not being racist, not harming animals, they’re right in there. See we all are pretty legalistic. You live by some rules too, just the ones you invented and not the ones God gave. And that’s the fallacy of vegetarian righteousness, because you may be righteous based on meeting your moral and ethical rules, but true Biblical righteousness is based on meeting God’s rules that he made. And there’s only one man, who is truly righteous, who met those rules… Jesus Christ, who’s righteousness we need and and who we all must trust in.

So lets see what the Bible has to say about vegetarianism. I quoted from 1 Timothy at the start, and Paul specifically mentions vegetarianism as a phenomenon of the last days, and it’s pretty definitive on the issue at that. But if we wind all the way back to Genesis 9:3, we read that God said “”Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.” The context is that God is talking to Noah after Noah’s flood, Noah’s just stepped out into a brand new world after the old one was destroyed, and here God says that eating animals is ok. So based on God’s authority, not your opinion, and not mine, it is ok to eat meat. God made the animals, God said we can eat the animals. So there’s nothing to be guilty about. It really is case closed at that point. But lets continue.

Of course, God added rules around what he said to Noah, like not eating the blood. That’s why we drain the blood and cook the meat before we eat it. We just don’t bite into a living animal. And there’s good reasons for these rules, we cook meat for good reasons. And if you read on in the Bible, for the nation of Israel, God’s holy people, God insitutued relatively strict dietary laws regarding what you could and couldn’t eat, for instance, clean versus unclean animals. But then we go to the New Testament, and we learn that as Christians, we are not under the dietary laws that God gave Israel. Furthermore, like for instance in Acts 10 and Peter’s vision of the sheet of animals let down from heaven where God said “What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common”. Of course, primarily, Peter was realizing that salvation was not just for the Jews, but for the Gentiles also, because in Christ, the distinction had been finished. So it doesn’t matter who you are and where you come from, you can be saved. Nevertheless, it shows that animals are fine to eat, and all animals at that. So you can eat a pig and go to heaven. But back to dietary laws, sure, you can live by them if you want, and there is some wisdom to them, but you don’t have to, and if you do, it doesn’t make you one bit better than anyone else.

Either way, on the authority of God’s word, we can say that eating meat is fine. Jesus Christ himself ate meat like in Matthew 9:10 “as Jesus sat at meat in the house”. What about after his resurrection when he ate fish on the shore with some of the disciples? And we know that Christ fulfilled the law, so there’s no reason to think he didn’t eat meat that the Jews were allowed to eat, and just think of that sacrificial system which God instituted if you think killing animals is so beneath you. And maybe you’re pretty high on the self-righteous sugar rush that you get from not eating animals, but there is none more righteous than Christ, and he ate meat, and you’re not better than Jesus Christ.

Maybe you think you love animals and are more considerate of creation than the God who made it… but you’re not. Not just in the case of vegetarianism, but it’s incredible how people, and even Christians, sincerely think they love people and earth more than God does. Well God loved humanity so much, wicked humanity, that he gave his sinless Son to die at the hands of sinful men to save those sinful men. Are you more loving than that? And do you really think you love animals more than God who created them, who sees the groaning and suffering of creation under the curse of sin, which came by guess who… man. See man’s sin introduced death, and the killing that came from it. And man cannot lift that curse himself by going back to a plant based diet voluntarily.

Because if you are unfamiliar with the Bible, or familiar and yet totally unfamiliar anyway, this is what you should realize. Death and eating meat is the result of the sin of man. More than harming and killing animals, sin is what has introduced pain, suffering and death… and that’s because of us, because of man. So if you care about animals, you must care about sin, otherwise you do not truly care about animals. The reason why animals are under the curse like this world is under is because of sin. Just read these verses. This is from Romans 8, one of the more important (well they all are) but this is a pretty key chapter for the Christian.

Romans 8:19 “For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.”

Romans 8:20 “For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope,”

Romans 8:21 “ Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.”

Romans 8:22 “For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.”

If you think you’re in tune with animals, guess who is moreso? God who created them. If God gives your dog a command and you do, guess who your dog will obey? Remember Balaam in the Bible? He had an ass that served him faithfully, taking him wherever he wished to go. But guess who that ass obeyed first when it came down to it? It obeyed God, not Balaam. And Balaam wanted to kill it because it wasn’t obeying him. Remember, creation itself knows who God is. They answer to their Creator. Psalm 150:6 “Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord.” That is the very last verse of Psalms. So know this, that animals cannot wait, not for you not to eat them, but for sin to be gone, and they can’t wait for when the curse is lifted. The Bible says they wait for the “manifestation of the sons of God”. They’re waiting for the glorification of all those that have believed in Christ, who will enjoy a planet free from the ravages of sin and death and pain and suffering. The only question is, will you be there?

So the main point of my blog is to point out, that if you really care about animals, if you truly care, you must care about sin first. Sin affects the environment worse than anything else. What’s ruining our planet isn’t driving cars… it’s pride and lust and greed. And both vegetarian and non vegetarian systems of living are plagued by that same stuff. You not eating some lamb or beef isn’t helping anyone or anything, it’s doing nothing. But your sin, and my sin, and our sin is making this earth suffer. It makes everyone suffer. Read this verse… Leviticus 18:25 “And the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants.” Guess what troubles the land? Sin! It was the sin of all the nations in Canaan, so bad, so filthy, and so vile, that the land literally vomited them out of it. It couldn’t wait to see them go. Ask yourself. Is the planet better for you or worse for you? If you are living in sin, it’s worse off with you.

I’m sorry if the theme is monotonous, but really all the problems in the world trace back to the sin of man. And sin isn’t rectified by not eating meat. You not eating meat doesn’t subsidise for your hatred, jealousy, lust, pride, greed, deceit, lies, covetousness, fornication, adultery etc. You’re not easing the planetary load. Furthermore, eating meat is not even wrong. So you’re not even addressing something that is wrong. The animals were created for us, not us for them. And while taking the life of an animal is not trivial, that’s the way it is, and those sacrifices at the tabernacle did show the seriousness of sin, when you slit the throat of that lamb, you were meant to gain a real appreciation for how serious our sin is, and how holy God is. Think about this, if mankind didn’t sin, not a single animal would have died. Additionally, everytime an animal dies to feed us, that is the innocent dying for the guilty. You get a picture of Jesus Christ every time you have a meal that came from the life of animal. Maybe you’re not eating that meal though. Maybe you aren’t at that feast of salvation. Maybe that’s why you have no thanks to God, but I thank God forever for not sparing his Son so I could be saved. Remember, without the harming and death of Jesus, there would be no salvation from sin. If God was unwilling to see his Son harmed, no one would be saved. Remember, there is no salvation without sacrifice.

So to finish up… if your life really is not about harming others or anything, that’s great, because sin produces harm. But where do you draw your line at? Because all sin is harmful. Adultery is harmful. Fornication is harmful. Alcoholism is harmful. Drugs are harmful. Lying is harmful. Pride is harmful. Lust is harmful. Greed is harmful. Do you disagree? Do I need to show you the alcohol statistics for deaths, disease, depression, dysfunction in our society? Do I need to show you all the homes that are broken and lives ruined by these things? So don’t be a hypocrite, don’t turn a blind eye to all that real harm going on just to protect an animal which is not a human. Remember, evolution is a lie, humans are not just another animal, we are separate from the beasts because we were originally made in God’s image, we have a spirit and consciousness that animals do not have.

If you do not want to eat meat, fine, don’t. But it’s fine if others do, and you’re not better or more caring or loving because you don’t. On God’s authority, eating meat is fine and necessary. Remember, as Christian we are meant to get on meat spiritually speaking. 1 Corinthians 3:2 “I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able.” And Hebrews 5:4 “But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.” So don’t think for a second that this issue is not truly spiritual in nature either. There are a lot of vegetarian Christians out there these days, “minerally”, “vitaminally” and spiritually deficient, who have not grown strong on the meat of God’s word, because they’re not able to eat it, just like babies without their teeth yet can’t eat it. That’s why they cant find the right side of issues like these, because they don’t chew on God’s word, they don’t like how it tastes, it’s too much work, they’re too good for it, they don’t need it… and they don’t have sense just as Hebrews warns. But to sum up, if you have a problem with what God clearly says, which is that it’s fine to eat meat, go argue with God, like you really care about animals than he does.

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