The principles of justice
Let’s resolute to be compassionate towards our fellow creatures, says MANEKA GANDHI
Although it is the Eastern religions like Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism that are primarily associated with Ahinsa or non-violence- all religions endorse respect for nature and compassion for living beings. True religious leaders have consistently recognised that a compassionate God would care about all beings of every shape that have a desire to live and experience pleasure and pain. The principles of compassion and justice must be universal because as the Rev. Martin Luther King rightly observed, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” All religions acknowledge that humankind depends on nature for its own survival and avoidance of meat has been a part of religious practice in nearly all faiths.
“Universal religious thought promotes universal compassion. And condemns the opposite-the unnecessary slaughter of animals-as fundamentally irreligious” quotes Steven Rosen in Diet for Transcendence
In the Old Testament, the foundation of Judaism, one of the Ten Commandments instructs ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ This is traditionally misinterpreted as referring only to human murder. But the original Hebrew is ‘lo tirtzach’ and Dr Reuben Alcalay’s Complete Hebrew/English Dictionary says that the word tirtzach, in classical Hebrew usage, refers to ‘any kind of killing,’ and not exclusively the murder of a human being. Those who draw distinctions between the two are concocting their own laws. There are other pointers that Judaism regarded vegetarianism as the rightful path. Jews believe that before the coming of the Messiah, man must demonstrate the utmost regard for all animals – as first seen in Eden. Therefore, vegetarianism is a Judaic ideal, and keeping kosher is a compromise between this ideal and the reality of life on Earth. In addition to fasting, Jewish law directs that no leather be worn on Yom Kippur because one cannot ask for compassion while dressed in the products of slaughter.
Many Christians believe that Christ ate meat based on the many references to meat in the New Testament. Nowhere in the New Testament is there any direct reference to Jesus eating meat. This is in line with Isaiah’s famous prophecy about Jesus’ appearance, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call him name Emmanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good.”
Vegetarianism is in fact far more consistent with Jesus’ teachings. Many of the early Christians were vegetarian like the two Ebionites Athansius and Arius. Of the Church fathers Clement, Origen, Tertullian, Boniface, St Jerome and John Chrysostom were vegetarian. St John Chrysostom considered meat-eating to be a cruel and unnatural habit for Christians.
Mathew ate only seeds, nuts and vegetables.
Genesis (9:4) directly forbids meat-eating. I quote 3 extracts:
“But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat. And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it.”
“God is manifest in all creatures. All creatures live in God and God is hid in them. The fruit of the trees and the seeds and of the herbs alone do I partake, and these are changed by the spirit into my flesh and blood. Of these alone and their like shall ye eat who believe in me and are my disciples; for of these, in the spirit, come life and health and healing unto man.”
“And the flesh of the slain beasts in his own body will become his own tomb. For I tell you truly, he who kills kills himself, and who so eats the flesh of slain beasts, eats the body of death.”
Is there actually any direct biblical reference to Jesus buying or eating meat? No. Not even in the Last Supper. Though many believe it was a Passover meal, significantly there is no mention of the traditional Passover lamb dish.
What about fish? The only two occasions on which Jesus is believed to have eaten fish were AFTER his death and resurrection. Besides the fish was a well known mystical symbol among the early Christians. The Greek word for fish (Ichthys) was used as an acronym that meant Jesus Christ, Son of God, and Saviour. So there is some ground to believe that all of the fish stories in the gospel were actually intended symbolically rather than literally.
Another pointer that Jesus was vegetarian comes from what we know of the people among whom he was born and lived-namely the Essenes, Nazoreans and Ebionites. The Essenes were Jews who were remarkably similar to the early Christians .The first Christians were known as Nazoreans and the Ebionites were a direct offshoot from them. All three groups were vegetarian. Eusebius, the first church historian reports that James the brother of Jesus drank no wine and ate no animal food. If James was raised as a vegetarian, it seems reasonable to suppose that so too was Jesus. Historically, asceticism demanded vegetarianism.
Later books of the Bible, also condemn killing and meat. According to the Bible, man was created as and intended to be vegetarian. The Garden of Eden, God’s perfect world, was vegetarian. The question then arises as to why and when Christianity abandoned its vegetarian roots.
In his book ‘Food for the Spirit’, Steven Rosen reveals that Christianity was vegetarian up to the 4th century when Constantine decreed it illegal. A meat-eating version of the Bible was officially adopted by the Roman Empire and vegetarian Christians were persecuted as heretics. In 1052 in Southern France, a group of Albigensian vegetarians (a Cartharist religious group) were hanged to death for refusing to kill a chicken.
But even up to medieval times in England, meat continued to be forbidden in monasteries. Meat was prohibited by papal edict. But gradually as monks no longer confined themselves to the cloister and rules began to be relaxed, in 1339 the Pope conceded that since prohibition was unenforceable, meat was to be allowed to half the order at a time while the other half maintained the vegetarian rule. Again this would indicate that the Church considered meat a sinful luxury rather than a natural or necessary diet.
Vegetarianism made a comeback in England when the Bible Christian Church of 1809 became the first to defend and require vegetarianism on orthodox theological grounds.
If it is the quest of religion to lead man to salvation, to bring him to health, happiness, peace and justice, then vegetarianism becomes an obvious Christian priority as the way to respect His creation with a vegetarian diet and lead the human race out of the violence and selfishness that have made a hell out of the paradise that God prepared for all creatures.
Listen to Mahatma Gandhi and think on the New Year: It ill becomes us to invoke in our daily prayers the blessings of God, the compassionate, if we in turn will not practice elementary compassion towards our fellow creatures.
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Rebirth of hope
By Arlette Azavedo
New Year is a time to learn to rely more heavily on the grace of God, as trusting upon God we can do everything as through Him it is He who gives us the strength. And I believe that God’s strength sees one through a lot – through pain, joy and accomplishment. If this last year, you didn’t practice relying on the Lord as much as you should have, there is no time like the present to make a New Year’s resolution.
The beginning of a new year is, for me, always a time of reflection, of introspection, of careful consideration of the past and planning for the future. New Year’s resolutions are worth making. The first day of a New Year is always a solemnly joyous day. Though there is no real difference between it and any other day, yet in our mind and thought it is a marked period, which we regard as one of the milestones set up on the highway of our life. It is only in imagination that there is any close of one year and beginning of another; and yet it has most fitly all the force of a great fact. We have sailed into the year of grace. If Jesus has not made us new already, let the New Year cause us to think about the great and needful change of our hearts.
As when we change calendars it is a good time for reassessment. How did last year go? What do I want to do differently this year? Don’t we all need to know where we’ve wronged and how the changes we made in the past are affecting us today? We need to find a time and place to do this, if we want to. There are many benefits of deciding to look inside, as suddenly you are allowing yourself to do something precious – give yourself time. Every one of us is over burden in our lives with little time to do anything for ourselves. We have our families, friends, our jobs, and house chores. All demand our attention. It is indeed, a difficult task to do your inner research. Sometimes you have to deal with issues you swept under the rug – knowing one day you would have to look at them again.
But guess what? Today is all any of us gets, and even this is not a guarantee. So look inside – deal with what you want to avoid now. Get it out of the way so you can move forward. All of us have had a rocky road at sometime or the other in our life. We need to celebrate the challenges we have overcome. The New Year resolutions ensures our growth as individuals, to make healthier choices and to live a better life. These resolutions mostly centre on our values and are tools that allow us to make definitive changes and improvements in our lifestyle, if we abide them.
Every New Year is the beginning of a new journey. Will God grant us the strength that we need? Yes, God’s strength will be there when we need it and this is promised by God Himself to us. We will never find a day when God’s strength is lacking. We will have strength as long as our days last. Many times we tend to limit our thinking to the fact that God’s presence is with us as we go through life. That’s true. He’s not only with us now; he’s already way up the road ahead of us. Remember, that while we struggle with the problems in our lives, God is hard at work providing solutions for the things we are going to face tomorrow. He’s already there, working creatively in situations we have yet to face, preparing them for us and us for them.
The New Year is a good time to refocus our thoughts and energies on realising the hope that is within us. My prayer is that this coming year would be a rebirth of hope for each one of our lives in which we see the promises of God being fully realized in each of our hearts. What the New Year brings to you will depend a great deal on what you bring to the New Year. Cheers to a New Year 2011 and another chance for us to get it right.
