In Reference to the essay series: Christianity and the Problem of Human Violence - Chapter 93
Dear Folks,
I have not been involved in the raising animals for food purpose since I left the farm in 1948 to start college, and then enter the military. However, when I was a youth, we did raise swine for human consumption.
My Grandfather was a German Immigrant to The USA, and that was practically all he knew to provide food for his family. My own father had a library of animal husbandry that stressed humane care of animals. We definitely did not torture them in any way, because it would have been costly to us besides stressful to those creatures, and we began to recognize their fears, as well as their friendship toward us. We were viewed by them as sort of gods!
I am a Christian, and look to my God as my caretaker while on this realm of existence, and feel that I am obliged to treat other living creations as I know my God treats me.
There is another “however” to this situation also: The “Self-Defense” principle! And along with this, there is “Waste not, Want Not. If any living creature definitely causes threat to my existence, I have a right to preserve my life even to the extent of killing that one, and if it is not of my own species, and is edible, and I happened to be starving, I would proceed to consume it if I felt that action would not physically harm me.
We even, as humans, are widely varying in our needs for survival as we are designed differently in thought and physique. Some of us truly can exist purely on “pulse”, as the original “Daniel” did in biblical scripture, but there are others who would dwindle away and die on such.
I feel that no one of us has the right to dictate way of life or thought, to any other unless we could prove the clear congruence of exact identity in thought and physique. – Aren’t we glad we aren’t all alike?
My principles tell me, that at my age of 82, I have little or no right to health care that might deprive any younger person of those advantages, and so I try my best to leave the new discoveries, and medical tests, and expert care, and best nutritive values to those with need to continue a more useful existence than myself.
I have only begun to discourse on this subject, but even though I am on my “soap-box” it is late in the evening, and my thought processes are shutting down for the day. I would like your responding comment so far, and would like to continue more conversation in the near future.
Just to answer directly although only partially to your “Q”: My experience with “no-kill” shelters, had to do with one of my offspring’s volunteer association with “shelters” in another place, and another time, where they allowed only natural expiration of life, which mandated much pain and distress on those creatures. In wild state, they would be quickly disposed of by their own kind, which to my view, is “NATURAL” . Perhaps I shouldn’t be concerned, because the costs involved in what those shelters did, eventually pushed them into bankruptcy. But such waste!! And the pain I viewed in those at that time. I keep hearing of those places, and their extremities: Have they Changed?
Friend, Fritz-Lorenz
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