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| I came across the following title in the religion section of a local bookstore:
Finding God On Your Own
Maybe it's actually a social science experiment to test how gullible book shoppers are. | | |
| I know I’m getting all the pet owners out there worked up. I’m pressing your buttons, yes, but I wonder if we really think about this outside of our own reference point. I think perhaps my lovely wife feels that I am “preaching” a point of view, but I think we can put this discussion to some practical use.
The famous sci-fi writer/socialist/evolutionist/historian H.G. Wells once wrote about the public outcry in England over vivisection (experiments on animals of which the most graphic examples included skinning a specimen alive). The term has now come to represent all animal testing, and when I googled it there are plenty of groups who still are strongly contending for such practices to stop.
What was interesting about the debate over 100 years ago is that most people were against animal testing based on their sentimental feelings about animals they had as pets. Wells quite rightly pointed out that the breeding of pet dogs (which often removes their natural ferociousness, strength etc.) and the conditions they were kept in (indoors all the time, little exercise etc.) was equally cruel to their use in medical/biological laboratories.
We are quite sure that our pets love us, but do they? Do we use pets selfishly? Do poodles really like those awful haircuts and the ribbons? (Okay, that last one was just for fun…)
We have trouble seeing our pet culture for what it is since it has existed for so long (in it’s present, “pampering” form). Even a hundred years ago, a dog was often used for hunting – it had a purpose other than entertainment or the filling of our emotional needs. You might almost ask if we rob animals of their dignity when we make them our pets!
lilly~ mentioned that some animals need human care – they wouldn’t survive in the wild. But isn’t this state of affairs a result of our breeding practices – forced dependence on humans!
If you look at it from outside our cultural reference point, you are forced to question our pet practices:
▪ There was a real stink here in Canada a few years ago when some Korean Canadians applied to import dog meat. The public were in an uproar – not about the health concerns, but because they felt offended that the Koreans thought of dogs as food instead of pets.
▪ In Africa, a dog that is not a hunting dog is a nuisance, an extra mouth to feed in a continent where many people go without.
Can we morally justify the way our pets eat when so many people starve around the world? Aren’t we saying through our actions that animals are more important than people? Pets are not part of the food chain. We breed them for pets; they are not a necessity to the ecological stability of this planet.
It is true that many people waste money on other things (perhaps our children are too pampered as well), but that doesn’t make it okay.
So, you’re probably wondering what I propose to do with all the pets – should we let the animals starve so we can feed the Africans?!
Not exactly. The underlying topic here is, “What is our Christian understanding of “stewardship” of creation (Ge 1-3)?” How do we interact with the animal kingdom in a Christian way?
It seems to me that stewardship involves care. Jesus tells us that God clothes the lilies and watches the sparrows. He is involved in caring for living things. We should also care for living things. Perhaps Christians should be more actively involved in stopping animal testing. Certainly we have a better reason for caring for animals than the evolutionists. We will answer to our creator for our ethical treatment of the other species God left us in charge of. The evolutionist is perfectly justified in using the “lower” species as he sees fit: humans have made it to the top of the food chain, and answer to no one.
I think we should limit the demand for pets. Stop putting the time and money into them. Care for the pets we have until they expire (I don’t thing we need to put them all down! No pet Holocausts!). Don’t go overboard on the extras.
I’ve been reading in Christianity Today about the emergence of Christian environmental advocacy groups. This is long overdue. Perhaps a whole range of lifestyle changes that respect our God-given environment can be spear-headed by the church. And why not start with pets? | | |
| I don’t agree with pets. It’s not that I don’t like them; it’s that I’m morally opposed to them. I know people are going to get angry with me, and I think I can live with that.
Can anyone justify the expense, the time, the hassle of pets to me?
No, I don’t mean seeing-eye dogs or rescue dogs etc. These animals are not pets in the usual sense, they perform a function. They are working animals. I’m talking about the pampered, bred-for-pet-lovers animals that create the pet market, and all the peripheral goods and services that market entails (no pun intended).
What if pets were outlawed? How much money would be freed up? What could we do with that money?
Why pets? | | |
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Thanks for all your posts! Some great thoughts here... you all have me thinking.
If I could speak first to OldmanGordon 's comment and draw the rest of you in:
I think I understand where you're coming from: God might allow bad things to happen in the early church. I'm wrestling with this idea. God didn't allow bad things to go on forever in human history; he intervened through the incarnation of Jesus. He does intervene in history when it serves his purposes. In fact, it seems to me that intervene does not really do God justice. He is in fact, the author of history and is intimately involved in its unfolding, that seems to be one of the major thrusts of the Bible message, especially in prophecy (see Acts 17:26-27).
I wonder if the establishment of the New Testament was a special task of the Holy Spirit in history (I really don't know about the idea...it’s food for thought!). Since the Bible as we know it would be essential to future generations of believers, perhaps the canonization of Paul and the other NT writers was protected by God's divine plan. (Again, I'm "thinking aloud" here, there may be good reasons why this idea doesn't work... respond if you wish)
I think I may have been coming at the original topic from the angle of disputing with radical liberal theologians who feel that Christ was quite palatable, but that Paul puts a male-authoritarian spin on Christ's teachings and essentially perverted them (He wasn’t just in error, he changed the message—this is the problem).
I have a hard time imagining that God would allow the early church to be so tainted, i.e. some defect in Paul would have come to light by which his epistles/teachings would have been discredited by Jesus' "true" followers.
As lillyinthewater points out, many of Jesus' teachings about himself point to the conclusions that Paul makes. However, Jesus never goes as far as the writers of the epistles. He says inflammatory statements in front of his Jewish audience ("I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!" – a truly unique and amazing claim!) but in his earthly ministry he doesn’t reveal all of the “cosmic deductions” that the writers of the epistles would later claim (e.g. Colossians 1:14-17 – namely, Jesus is the universe’s creative force, everything “holds together” by his will etc.).
This is where certain “avant-garde” theologians will say that the Jesus of the Epistles is not really the same Jesus as the Jesus of the Gospels. What I was attempting to do was show that this argument allows in so much doubt as to make the Jesus of the Gospels not really worth believing anyway. It's sort of a back-door argument for the unity of the Gospels and the Epistles.
This really gets back to heresy, and how heresy does not provide us with something better or more unique than the historical creeds of the church (derived, of course, from the Bible). All of the so-called “new” ideas about Jesus are old ideas that were rejected by the early church—that is why the Creeds were written in the first place, to distinguish between what was Christian (in the Spirit of Christ), and what was not.
My wife and I were at a great conference on the weekend where we heard about these other “gospels” that are getting a lot of media attention. Gospel of Judas, Gospel of Thomas etc. People unknowingly quote them as examples of how the organized church “pushed out” competing ideas about the meaning and identity of Jesus.
What I found most interesting is that all of the Gnostic writings downplay Jesus’ humanity and exalt his spirituality. This is not a theological move forward, but really a return to the otherness of the Greek and Egyptian mythology. The old gods are separate from humans. They never partake in the frailty of humanity: its tears, temptations and weakness. This is one of the key distinctive teachings of our faith that we should not overlook. The incarnation is a radical theological idea. This idea has not existed before, and if it has been offered since, it has been used by charlatans and conmen, whose character shows them to be false messiahs.
Only Jesus can claim what lillyinthewater quoted and live up to it by living a selfless, sinless life, dying, and rising from the dead!
That said, I was intending to post on our interpretation of nature, but that will have to wait for next time.
Until then, you can order my new book “Heresy: The Great Step Backward” at Amazon.com (just kidding – I feel like I'm too serious lately!). | | |
| yoursisadifferentlight was sharing with our small group about a family member who felt that we should just follow Jesus’ teachings and disregard the influence of Paul and the apostles.
I think this idea has been popular at different times in the church’s history. It certainly fits with the current “conspiracy theory” climate in the media (DaVinci Code etc. – MxOxTxHx mentioned this after my last post).
The general flavour seems to be something like this: “Jesus was this really cool guy and then his followers messed up his message with this divinity teaching and stuff.” Or “The Catholic Church subverted Jesus’ teachings and covered up stuff that would have changed how we understand Jesus.”
I can see how this view appeals to people who have had bad experiences with organized churches, those individuals to whom Jesus’ radical uniqueness appeals, but they can’t reconcile it with the many poor examples of Christians that grab media attention.
Another group to whom this theory appeals, is people who want to avoid the complexities of doctrine and theology. My last post may have given the impression that I’m against theological reflection, but that’s not where I was going. There needs to be theological study that is strongly grounded in the real interpersonal experience of ministry, so that scholars don’t lose sight of the very essence of Christianity: change from hopeless sinners into effective and productive vessels of God’s grace. That should be the highest priority for every Christian.
The ground that we stand on is Jesus. When we start to get “above” Jesus, we’ve lost touch with what the church is supposed to be.
As I contemplated why some want to write off Paul and the apostles, I began to think of what the logical consequences of this argument would be:
If Paul actually did corrupt Jesus’ teachings, or at the very minimum, clouded their meaning with his own conclusions, what does that mean about Jesus himself?
- Jesus was not really God. If he was God, he could have divinely protected the new group of believers we call the early church from Paul’s doctrinal distortions of Jesus’ teachings. In other words, the Holy Spirit about whom Jesus said “he will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13) was apparently not able to do that, since Paul was able to bring error into the church in its very infancy.
- [this one is thanks to MxOxTxHx] Jesus shouldn’t be followed. Where are you getting your info on Jesus’ teachings to be sure that what you believe he said, he actually did say? Here is the real trouble with questioning the Bible: where does it end? How can we believe what Jesus said, since it was written down by the apostles?!! But if we can’t trust the apostles, can we really be sure Jesus said anything listed in the Gospel accounts? And then maybe there is nothing distinctive about Jesus at all, since somebody made it all up.
So it seems very savvy to say you’ll follow Jesus and not Paul, but in the end you’ve really eliminated any reason to follow Jesus. Because of this, I have a great deal more respect for skeptics who say the entire Bible is false, than liberal theologians who want to have it both ways. If some of the Bible is false, why bother?
It does take faith to accept that the Bible, a complicated collection of writings written over so many years, has been passed down to us uncorrupted. If one investigates, there are many evidences that can temper one’s doubts. But in the end, you have to trust somebody. You either trust the critics of the Bible, or you trust those who defend it. You are believing someone. You have put your faith in something.
When I get to this place in a logical argument, I begin to look at the character of the people I have a choice to believe in. What has been the end result of Jesus life, death and resurrection? Do his true followers have hope, joy and peace? Can the same be said of those who question the integrity of the Bible? What are the fruits of that belief?
John 16:13
But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.
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