Thought for the Day at Easter

Octopuses are fascinating creatures. They are just about as weird as it gets. They have three hearts, a brain in each arm, and blue-green blood, and they can squeeze their bodies through a hole as small as their own eyeball. In fact, researchers tell us the octopus DNA is the closest thing they can get to studying alien DNA. Yet octopuses are still highly intelligent, and scientists believe they may help them prove that animals possess some kind of consciousness.

While each of God’s creatures are precious in themselves and full of God’s glory, one thing is certain, the consciousness of animals is very different from our own. Take the donkey that Jesus rode into Jerusalem. She would’ve been tied up after the triumphant entry and would’ve been quite happy to stand there for hours on end, waiting for the next person to jump on her back. But if you tie me up outside my local church and leave me to stand for many boring hours, I know I’d act very differently!

After all, we humans have been gifted this amazing, developed consciousness – a profound awareness. We are thinking beings, who can even think about ourselves thinking. Thought, consciousness, awareness – they are all amazing things. While it is mind blowing that we are living on a planet that is hurtling through space, travelling around the sun at 67,000 mph, it is even more astonishing that we know we are living on a planet that hurtling through space, travelling around for sun at 67,000 mph!

Consciousness, though, is also our curse. Our thoughts and awareness can hold us captive. Worry, anxiety, grief, pain, and suffering can keep us chained. All of us struggle personally in one way or another. And then we turn on the news and we see others facing simply terrible situations, whether through war, illness, disability, natural disaster, or grief. There is no sugar coating any of this – life can be harsh and exhausting, and our minds can very easily descend into despair.

But this incredible thing called consciousness also holds the key to the prison in which our minds can become incarcerated. Our consciousness can certainly be a curse, but it can also be an amazing blessing that God has gifted to us. Today, more than any other day, that fact is brought wonderfully home to us. It is Easter Sunday, a day of hope, a day of joy, a day of resurrection, a day of new life. Today we are offered a reassurance and a life-affirming hope that no octopus can ever grasp or comprehend.

God can, though, open the minds, hearts, and lives of us “thinking humans” to this mind-blowing event. And, by doing so, we are offered liberation from the chains of our daily concerns. Our burdened minds are freed to recognise God’s presence in our often-turbulent lives. We open our eyes, our ears, and our hearts to truly appreciate the small moments of joy breaking into our lives each day – new life moments – Easter moments. These are moments when sunshine breaks through the darkness we are facing. These are moments when God’s light dazzles us in unexpected ways, sometimes even in our ordinary, mundane events – an uplifting stroll in the countryside, a meal with your family, a walk with your pet dog, laughter shared with a friend, an act of kindness, a supportive word, a simple smile. Sometimes, as we face the storms of this broken world, it’s not easy to rewire our minds away from worry, anxiety, and pain. But, carried by God’s strength, we Christians are able to attest that this wonderful gift of life is beautiful.

Holy Week, culminating in Jesus’s crucifixion, affirms the reality of suffering and reassures us that God knows what it’s like when we are facing the storms of life. He knows pain, he knows loss, he knows tears.  Easter Sunday, though, affirms the reality of hope and reassures us that the grave is not the end of the journey, that there is a kingdom all around us that will last forever, and that the light of that kingdom will break through whatever darkness we are facing.

Easter, Notre Dame, and Climate Change

Today is a joyful day – Jesus is risen – Alleluia! His resurrection brings hope and promise in so many ways. Today is a joyful day because of the promise of resurrection in the future – death is not the end. Alleluia! Today is a joyful day because of the hope of new life now – it gives us hope to those suffering in this life – the grieving, the oppressed, the anxious, the ill, the imprisoned. Alleluia! Today is a joyful day because it holds new hope for the whole of creation – there will come a day when creation itself will be renewed and transformed. Today is a joyful day because it brings hope and promise for new life now for God’s magnificent creation. Alleluia!

We are often reminded at our churches about the hope that Easter brings to humankind, both in the future and the present. Rarely, though, do we hear about the hope that Easter brings to the whole of creation. Yet the biblical narrative insists this is the case and our Easter traditions are littered with reminders of this fact. In Jesus’s first appearance, he is even mistaken for a gardener, and Christians have long used imagery from nature to remind us of his promise of new life – eggs, lambs, bunnies, and chicks. And that is before we consider the New Testament’s insistence that, in Christ, the natural world finds its completion. “Behold I make all things new”, as Revelation puts it (21:5). In other words, the most important moment in our faith, the resurrection, speaks directly into the most pressing challenge to our generation – climate change.

It was inspiring this week to see the reaction to the tragedy of the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral. In the flames that we all witnessed in our screens, we had a symbol of helplessness, loss and sorrow – a crucifixion, if you like. On the streets of Paris, there were tears and lamentation, with the realisation that something sacred was about to be lost to future generations. The horror and the disbelief, however, was soon transformed into something very different – a refusal to consign beauty to ashes and a desire to rebuild and give life to the smouldering, sacred ruins. It may take many years, but the cathedral will again became a symbol of hope, new life, and resurrection. Notre Dame will rise again. “Behold, I make all things new!”

But, of course, one majestic Cathedral is not “all things”. Many other things are still broken in the world, and many other things are being destroyed daily, not in accidental fire, but through greed, exploitation, and avarice. These things are being lost at a rate that is staggering and heartbreaking – rainforests, glaciers, whole species of insects, animals, fish, and birds. And the crisis, in changing our world’s climate, is now also threatening human life across the world. My wife recounts the words of an RE teacher in her school in Germany: “we say to our grandparents “why didn’t you do any thing when the holocaust was happening?”, but our grandchildren will say to us “why didn’t you do any thing when the environment was dying?”” As in the burning Notre Dame, God’s groaning, suffocating creation is another symbol of tragedy, loss, and sadness – another crucifixion. Something sacred is again about to be lost to future generations.

A few days ago, my 5-year-old son came to me and, out of nowhere, said: “when I grow up, daddy, and you die, can I have your grey bath towel?” I’m not sure about my bath towel, but it did get me thinking – what will we leave him and his generation? In the distant future, I would love to be able to say to them and their children and grandchildren:

“Yes, we rebuilt the wonderful Notre Dame for you, so you can visit to be filled with the grandeur of God’s glory. But we also did much, much more to show you the meaning of Easter Sunday and the resurrection. We fed the hungry, we freed the oppressed, we defeated racism, xenophobia, and all forms of discrimination and hatred, we brought comfort and hope to those who mourn, we offered peace to those who suffer, we gifted good news to those who feel despairing and hopeless, and we lived out the Easter promise of new life for all creation… and so we left for you clean seas full of fish not plastic, clean air for you to breathe, clean water for you to drink, and green and healthy forests brimming with foliage, animals, insects and birds.”

I’d love to be able to say to them that our world became a symbol of hope, new life, and resurrection – that our planet has risen again. “Behold, I make all things new!”” But will we be able to say this to future generations?

Today is all about good news, and there is good news here – it is not too late and resurrection is hardwired into nature. Plant a tree and things already start to change and be renewed. Yes, we desperately need wholesale changes by businesses and governments to combat climate change. But we also need to remember that our own little acts make a difference. As Pope Francis put it, in an encyclical on climate change that he presented as a gift to a visiting President Trump: “an integral ecology is also made up of simple daily gestures which break with the logic of violence, exploitation and selfishness”. He then lists some of those little acts that can make a difference, that can help bring new life, hope, and resurrection to the natural world – using public transport, car-pooling, planting trees, turning off lights, recycling, and so on. As the activist Howard Zinn wrote: “we don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change – small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world”. This is the mustard seed principle (Mark 4:39-32) – small acts can lead to big change. After all, a snowflake never feels responsible for an avalanche, but every snowflake is making a difference.

Today is Easter Day, tomorrow will be Earth Day, as it is every April 22nd. Both days speak of new life and new hope. A BBC News report earlier this week said of Notre Dame: “this gift to all humanity will rise again”. And that is true. Within a decade, that wonderful cathedral’s bells will ring again, worship and praise will again resound from its pews, and its art and architecture will again speak to people of God’s glory. But we are called to ensure that creation, God’s ultimate gift to humanity, will also rise again. That is our mission, that is our challenge. By acting as God’s hands and feet, even in our smallest actions, we can affirm that all things will be made new. As Eric Liddell, who won gold in the Paris Olympics in 1924, detailed in the Oscar-Winning film Chariots of Fire, wrote: “God is not helpless among the ruins… God’s love is still working. He comes in and takes the calamity and uses it victoriously, working out his wonderful plan of love”. Behold God makes all things new. He is risen. Alleluia!

Animals and Faith

An interview with Dr Greg Dixon, a veterinary surgeon and researcher in animal welfare science, ethics and law

When I was growing up, I didn’t have a pet for any length of time. I had a rabbit named Twm Twitch for a few months, I had a guinea pig named Rupert for a few weeks, and I had a newt for a few days, before he escaped and I found him shrivelled up on the kitchen floor. I wasn’t really an animal-person, unless they were on my plate, next to my potatoes and carrots. I soon took a job in Wimpy burger bar and persuaded my then-girlfriend to give up her vegetarianism and start eating proper food – quarter-pound Wimpy burgers with that lovely pink relish. Animals, to me, were expendable and exploitable – “things” given to us by God to be eaten, worn, and used for our own purposes, however selfish and self-centred those purposes may be.

In my early twenties, I underwent a road-to-Damascus experience in my attitude to animals. It all came from reading the conclusion of the story of Noah’s flood, when God makes a covenant with his people, a covenant which expresses his love and care (Genesis 9:8-17). As I read that passage, it suddenly dawned on me that the covenant between God and his people in the Old Testament, which then became Jesus’s ultimate covenant in the New Testament, is not simply about humankind. The most striking aspect of the covenant with Noah is that it is between God and ‘all living creatures of every kind on the earth’, including ‘the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals’. As if to hammer this home, that fact is mentioned five times in that short Genesis passage alone!

With this realization, I began to view Jesus’s teaching on love in a completely different way. It became evident to me that our call to compassion and care should not simply include those of the same species as us, but should embrace all living things. The medic and theologian Albert Schweitzer called this ‘reverence for life’. In so many matters, we Christians have our faith boxed up, over in one corner – we unpack it and it comes out on Sundays and it sometimes comes out for issues that relate directly to injustices towards people. But other matters, such as animal rights, are seen as issues that are quite distinct from our faith, and are boxed up in the opposite corner to our faith. In this way, there is often a fundamental disconnect between our faith and some critical ethical and societal issues. By now, I believe that animals are very much part and parcel of God’s kingdom and are due care and compassion from those of us entrusted to stewardship of his creation. So I’m delighted that a veterinary surgeon, Dr Greg Dixon, has agreed to speak to me about the issue of animal rights.

Before we go on to talk about your academic research in this area, Greg, can you tell us something about your job as a vet.

“Nowadays I work at a local practice in Cardiff, Wales, UK with a strong interest in canine and feline internal medicine, always happy with an ultrasound machine or an endoscope trying to figure out why the dog or cat is ill and what I am going to do about it. Many people view their pet almost as a family member, and I hope that by helping the pet I can help the people too. But before I came to Cardiff I was a ‘mixed’ vet working with farm companion animals. I have worked over the years closely with dairy cows, and on sheep and pig farms. I was never fully signed up to the farming practices to which I was exposed. I felt I was always a bit like Hawkeye in M*A*S*H – I didn’t agree with the war, but kept patching up the boys and sending them back to the front!”

And tell us something about your PhD research.

“By 2001 I had become very interested in Animal Welfare and Ethics, taking a further professional exam in the subject and helping to set up the Animal Welfare Science, Ethics and Law Veterinary Association. I was offered a PhD at Bristol Vet School, which is a centre for the study of Animal Welfare Science. I went to study the welfare of laying hens there for 3 years! My particular research was looking into the risk factors for the feather and vent pecking in laying chickens. This, in the worse cases, can lead to chickens consuming each other. Contrary to what many might think, this injurious behaviour happens mostly in free-range birds and not caged layer birds. There are few farming systems that are without their welfare problems, when practiced on a commercial scale. Sometimes a well-intentioned change leads us from the frying pan, into the fire.”

So, what led you to research animal rights in particular?

“In my veterinary work and in my research I was exposed to many farming practices, and particularly those of intensive pig farming, commercial abattoirs and broiler (chicken meat) farming led me to deeply question the way we treat our fellow creatures. This, together with much reading and discussion with my colleagues, farmers and philosophers led me to the conclusion that many of these practices, deeply engrained in our culture, are actually very hard to defend in a consistent manner.”

You seem to be saying that animals are not treated well, in general, in this country? Why do you think animals are treated so poorly?

“It depends which animals we are thinking of. I know some chihuahuas who live like kings! However, those animals that we consider only in an instrumental fashion perhaps do not fare so well. I am very concerned about the 850 million broiler chickens who are slaughtered annually in the UK, of whom, in their short 6 week lives, 28% (that’s 126 million sentient individual birds) are so severely lame that if they were horses they would be shot! Now, some might argue that are farm animals are kept better in the UK than in some other countries. That may or may not be the case, but that is not tantamount to treating animals well. In some pig abattoirs the line rate can be 60 pigs per minute, with commercial pressure on not dropping the rate. I think it can easily be seen that this kind of time pressure can easily result in those pigs, killed at the rate of one-per-second, not being treated well. I think that if we did to labradors what we do to those pigs on a daily basis, there would be a revolution! The huge demand for cheap animal products exerts an intense commercial pressure that often comes down, in various ways, directly upon the animals.”

What can we do, then, to ensure animals are treated better than they are?

“Well, of course, we can treat the animals we come into direct contact with well – I think that is the easy part, mostly. Being nice to dogs and horses is normally a pleasure. But what if we come across an injured gull, considered to be a nuisance by many people here in Cardiff? Do we have any duties to them? If so, do we discharge them well? But we also have social relations, mediated through the commodities of animal products, with many more animals than we come into direct contact with, and this is the difficult part. Can we alter our consumption patterns? Could we consume to improve the way we affect these animals’ lives? There is an analogy with people: we all mostly try and most of the time succeed in treating the people we come into direct contact with well. But we have social relations with many more people, mediated via the commodities we consume. Sometimes we try and treat those people we never meet, that make our coffee or our clothes, better by supporting fair trade or boycotting certain goods.”

As Christians, we see compassion and love of people as part of our mission… why do you think that some Christians miss the importance of compassion and love towards animals? From what you know about the Christian message, do the attitudes of Christians surprise you at all?

“I think that some Christians, like most people, might miss the importance of compassion towards animals. It may be reflected in that contentious translation in Genesis: ‘be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it; rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground’ (Genesis 1:28). ‘Rule over’ is sometimes translated as ‘have dominion over’. But this, at face value, could imply that humans, being on top of a hierarchy, are able to put nature and its creatures to whatever use they see fit. There are, of course, alternative readings and those that talk of ‘stewardship’ rather than ‘dominion’ may cast a different light on our responsibilities. I’d like to take a second to do a bit of social history. In the mid-nineteenth century, the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association was founded by Quakers and enjoyed support from the great and the good of the day, including the Archbishop of Canterbury. They erected, by public subscription and generous donation, water fountains for the public and cattle drinking troughs throughout towns and cities. In those days, there was no public water supply and cholera was rife. There were animals throughout towns and cities, unlike today. The benefactors were concerned for the welfare of both people and animals – concern for one did not exclude concern for others. We are not always in a ‘lifeboat’ situation in which someone must be thrown overboard to save the others. The philosopher Mary Midgley once wrote that “compassion is like a magic liquid, the more you pour it, the more there is!” One of the motivations of the Association was, of course, for temperance – before the new drinking troughs, drovers could often only source water for their cattle at pubs that they were obliged to frequent! Nowadays the troughs are often used as ornamental flower boxes. I remember one well in Lewes, East Sussex, UK where I used to live. Alongside it had the imperative from Proverbs to ‘open thy mouth for the dumb’. And that is what I have tried to do in this interview!”

Thank you so much for speaking with us, Greg. I think we would agree that, with regards animal rights, intensive farming, laboratory experiments, live exports, and so on, the old adage “this is the way it’s always been” is no excuse. As Christians, we are challenged to question what we’ve been taught, to read the Bible and to view everything in the light of Jesus’s love and compassion. But our faith is not just about viewing the world in a certain way – it’s also about changing the world. We need to live out the gospel, not simply talk about it. And, with this particular issue, we can do some practical things to take steps towards change: we can pray for all living things, educate ourselves on the issues surrounding animal welfare, read the Bible with the importance of all creation in mind, get involved in campaign (sign petitions and so on), support charities, be selective in shopping (fast food stores, for example, have an appalling record in not taking seriously animal welfare of farmed animals), and spread the word by encouraging friends, family, and colleagues also to educate themselves. Getting our priorities right is certainly the first step, but the next step is for us to ask God to inspire us into action.

See also:

Blog posts

Why I agree every Christian should be a tree-hugging environmentalist

Horses with no Names: What’s Faith got to do with Horsemeat?

Websites

SARX: Christian Animal Welfare

Creature Kind

Anglican Society for the Welfare of Animals

 

Why I agree every Christian should be a tree-hugging environmentalist

Last week I shared an article on facebook urging Christians to care for God’s wonderful creation. This is something that is close to my own heart, but it is also something that I presumed, by now, was blindingly obvious to people of faith. I was, however, to be shocked and saddened at the response of some Christians. There were numerous comments that I thought were long-gone from the Christian tradition:

“I won’t be too concerned about the environment. It’s dying and cursed anyway”

“Surely winning souls is more important than protecting the forests. Get your priorities right.”

“Nothing in the Bible talks about tree hugging environmentalists.”

“I fear for your salvation if you think environmentalism is gospel issue.”

“Work on what is lasting – souls, souls, SOULS!”

Just as Christ wept over Jerusalem, I’m quite certain that he is weeping when he sees how some of his disciples are talking about, and treating, his wonderful creation. This indifference and distain towards God’s wonderful creation is long-standing. In the 1960s, a famous article appeared in Science magazine accusing Christianity of being at the root of our environmental predicament. Lynn White claimed that our faith is guilty of regarding itself as ‘superior to nature, contemptuous of it, willing to use it for slightest whim’.

Certainly much has changed for the better in recent years, with many Churches and denominations issuing guidelines to help their care for God’s creation, detailing information about environmental issues such as recycling, using renewable energy solutions, and reducing pollution. However, my facebook thread shows that there are still Christians whose concern for individual salvation blind them from the importance of stewardship and care for the gift of God’s creation.

The irony is that their dearly-held attitude is not scriptural at all. Certain philosophical and cultural movements in the past have been so pervasive in their influence on our faith that they have defined its very character and led us to truly believe that we are true to the Bible when we ignore the plight of our natural world.

1. Platonism: In its first few centuries, Christianity found itself heavily influenced by Greek Platonic dualism, which differentiated starkly between the soul and body. As a result, Christian tradition followed Gnosticism in becoming ambivalent towards physical matter. This is shown in our paradoxical attitude towards the body, which, on one hand, is seen as the Temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19-20), and, on the other hand, sees bodies as something to be embarrassed about. Thus, the only important thing to some Christians is “souls, souls, SOULS!” This ignores completely that all creation will be renewed and that resurrection is about spiritual bodies, rather than merely souls (see 1 Corinthians 15:35-49).

2. Cartesianism: One of the results of Rene Descartes’ ‘I-think-therefore-I-am’ philosophy in the eighteenth century was that it affirmed the reality of our ‘thoughts’ and ‘emotions’, while doubting the experiences of our bodily senses. The physical world became separated and alienated from us, and we began to further identify with our minds, rather than with our bodies or the natural world. The Cartesian world became, therefore, a world of alienation between body and mind, between person and person, and between human and nature. Christians have been influenced by this in a far deeper way than many would like to admit.

3. Poor theology: The influence of Platonism and Cartesianism on our faith led to many years of poor theology, where biblical texts were handpicked to champion individual human salvation and other sections of the Bible were conveniently ignored. We are left with a bleakly individualistic and person-centred theology that is alien to much of the Bible and to the spirituality that Jesus himself practices in the gospels. Salvation, after all, is not merely about us as individuals, as even our destiny is bound up with the entire created order (Romans 8:18-25). In the Old Testament, we are given a picture of wonderful harmony in nature at the end of time, as the lion lives with the lamb, the leopard lies with the goat, and the small child peacefully leads all the creatures (cf. Isaiah 11:6). In the New Testament, the images of the future Kingdom are, likewise, communal and harmonious – the banquet, the wedding feast, the choir of all nations, and the New Jerusalem. This all has significant implications for the way we relate now to each other and to the world around us. To remain faithful to the biblical evidence, we cannot separate the individual, the community, and the entire created order – in the past, the present, or the glorious future. ‘For by him all things were created;’ writes St Paul to the Colossians (1:16-7), ‘things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together’.

Rather than being dualistic and individualistic, then, our faith should recognise that the world is not an enemy of the spirit. There is no getting away from the fact that matter truly matters to God. The Old Testament gives detailed rules on protecting trees and forests (see Deuteronomy 20:19 and Numbers 35:2ff), while God’s involvement with nature is later shown in Jesus’ special relationship with the created order, and his parables, miracles, and sayings are infused with the natural world. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the risen Jesus was initially mistaken for a gardener!

Darren Aronofsky’s recent blockbuster Noah received much criticism, but it did reflect that very truth about God’s care for all of creation, not only humankind. This is not new-age mysticism, as some would like us to believe, but it is at the heart of the covenant with Noah. After all, this promise was, we are told, an “everlasting covenant” made between God and “all living creatures of every kind on the earth”, a fact that is mentioned eight times in as many verses (Genesis 9:9-17)! When we see a wonderful rainbow decorating our sky we should, therefore, be reminded, not only of God’s compassion for us flawed and frail humans, but also of his unceasing love for all of his creation. And if God’s priority is to show love and compassion for “all life on the earth” (Genesis 9:17), then, as Christians, that should surely also be an imperative part of our own calling.

For more on this subject, see my book The Compassion Quest (Chapter 1 “Faith and the Universe”).