Vegetarianism and the respect for life
or why aren?t witnesses vegetarian?
This is not my own argument for vegetarianism, but merely one which I might challenge a witness to, from the perspective of their own belief system. It is not meant to attack those who eat meat for their own reasons, but as an argument to those who, like the Pharisees to Jesus, would make judgements on me while giving no attention to weaknesses of their own behaviour because it is allowed according to their code. It strikes me that witnesses live by so many petty rules, which I am condemned for not living by, yet one rule which I have recently set myself - that of minimising the damage I do to other creatures - they find curiously unnecessary.
Witnesses are not vegetarians because there is no law which says that they should be. According to biblical text, Noah was told by God that he had permission to eat animals. This was not challenged in the new testament, with Jesus eating the Passover lamb the same as everyone else. Witnesses reason : we are allowed by God to do this thing, therefore we do it. Any pang of conscience about being part of a system which massacres billions of animals is circumvented, because God says it?s all right, just as no guilt is felt about being part of a system which, they believe, will see the brutal deaths of billions of people at Armageddon. God says its fine and so there is nothing more to think or feel about the matter.
From a witness perspective, if the bible does not condemn something, does this mean it is the ideal way to behave? It is clear from the issue of marriage that this is not always the case. A scripture early on in the bible shows that marriage between one man and one woman is the ideal, yet the practice of multiple female partners continues to be accepted until a law is made later. It would, though, have been more acceptable to God for a man to have had only one wife at that time, even though there was no law about having multiple wives, because God?s feelings had been indicated on the matter. It is the understanding of witnesses, that we are able to learn how God feels about an issue through careful study of the bible. In this way, we learn how best to serve him, even when there is no explicit rule of conduct defined in the bible text. This is why Witnesses celebrate no holidays, including Christmas and birthdays, and do not undertake acts which are not overtly ruled out in the bible, but which the leadership has banned.
How does this relate to vegetarianism? It would be difficult to see how, at the time Noah left the ark, (particularly as presumably every single plant would have been wiped away by the flood) he and his offspring would have been able to survive well without meat in their diet. There was not an adequate substitute for meat and there were not the kind of alternative staples such as rice, pasta and potatoes, which we take for granted today. It is the same in the Roman period, and so Jesus would have continued to rely on bread, fish and meat.
Noah was permitted to eat meat on the condition that he show respect for the life that he had taken by pouring its blood onto the ground. The principle was given that life is sacred. The status of ?meat eater? was not the ideal human condition, as according to the bible, Adam and Eve, and implicitly, everyone else that followed until Noah, had not been allowed to eat meat. From the biblical texts that witnesses use to construct their vision of the new system, they believe men and women will go back to vegetarianism. The animals will no longer kill each other for food, and humans will live in harmony with this peaceful arrangement.
With this being so : with the understanding that God views vegetarianism as the ideal state - that mankind came from this and will go back to this; that God told humans they could eat meat out of necessity, with the proviso that the blood is poured out on the ground to emphasise that life is sacred; that they were told this because there was no substitute for meat that would sustain them adequately - with this all being so, does it not make sense that now that the technology and range of foods exist today to allow the possibility of not eating meat, should we not show respect for God?s feelings about the sanctity life by stopping eating meat now.
Given the choice between
a) showing respect for life by killing animals and pouring out their blood, or
b) showing respect for life by not killing animals at all,
which makes the most sense to you?
Of course, witnesses choose the former, which demonstrates the same kind of reasoning which has them showing respect for life by allowing their children to die for the lack of a blood transfusion. In both these instances it seems to me, their actions demonstrate a complete absence of any respect for life.
Note : this is my argument for why witnesses should be vegetarian, but I have not researched the diet of those living in the biblical period, and I do not know if there were people who survived well without meat with the alternative food types that they would have had available to the Israelites.