The Breath of Life: Why I Am Considering Going Vegan

Like the majority of omnivores, I long thought that vegans - at least of the Christian variety - were just deluded cranks who hadn’t appreciated the nature of God's creation. After all, doesn’t it say in Genesis that mankind was given dominion over all the animals?

Yes, it does say that (Genesis 1:26-8); but this does not entail a right to eat animals. On the contrary, in the next few verses, God tells Adam, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” (emphasis mine). At the beginning of creation, when all things were good, both mankind and all of animal-kind - that is, “everything that ha[d] the breath of life”[1] - were vegetarian (possibly vegan, in fact, given that neither milk nor eggs were explicitly mandated for consumption). It is especially interesting to note that both animals and humans were created on the same (sixth) day (Genesis 1:24-31).

In fact, the first time we encounter the death of anything with “the breath of life” - the same breath that God breathed onto the soil to animate man - is after the fall, when God renders “garments of skins” for the ashamed Adam and Eve (Genesis 2:21); presumably, God slaughtered an animal to acquire these skins. From then on, we see animals slaughtered as a sacrifice to atone for the now-ubiquitous sin. Indeed, these animal sacrifices were necessary - while God rejected Cain's sacrifice, which comprised “the fruit of the ground”, he accepted Abel’s sacrifice, which comprised “the firstborn of his flock” (Genesis 4:1-7). It is not until Genesis 9:3, moreover, that animals are explicitly given to man for food in addition to plants. Only a few lines down in verse 8, however, when God delivers his multi-coloured promise to never again judge the world through flood, he specifies that the covenant is not only for Noah and his offspring, but also for "every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark; it is for every beast of the earth"; the chapter repeats the phrase "every living creature" three more times in subsequent verses. Even when animal consumption is permitted, moreover, there is a sober and reverent caveat that the blood - which is the very essence of life - must not be consumed. The subsequent books of the Law stipulate in more detail the complicated procedures required for animal consumption.

Ultimately, of course, the ultimate atoning sacrifice of the Lamb of God – the Blood of Christ – was necessary to abolish the consequence of sin, namely the curse of death. On the one hand, this implies that all foods - including animal products - have become clean (Mark 7:19). On the other hand, this idea could be turned on its head - doesn’t the fact that Christ has defeated death imply that we can/should go back to the Edenic state of veganism? This, I think, is where the ambiguity enters in, and why I am still reluctant to commit one way or the other. Yes, we are living in the New Life of Christ, having been reborn spiritually; but we are living in a strange intermediary period, for although are spirits are redeemed, our souls are still arenas of conflict, and are bodies (along with the rest of creation) are still subject to death (Romans 8:18-25; 1 Corinthians 13:12, 15:50-6). To be sure, one day the process of renewal will be complete, and in that day, even carnivorous animals will become herbivores, living harmoniously alongside the creatures that they once killed (Isaiah 11:6-9, 65:25).

In the meantime, it might seem reasonable to conclude that even if animals have souls (minds, emotions, etc.), they do not have spirits; and since it is only our spirits that are fully redeemed, whether or not we kill animals is irrelevant. But I can’t get past the phrase in Genesis referring to the animal kingdom, “everything that has the breath of life”– isn’t breath a symbol of spirit in the Bible, for example when Christ breaths the Holy Spirit onto His disciples (John 20:22), and when that same Spirit falls “like a mighty rushing wind” onto the brethren at Pentecost (Acts 2:2)? Indeed, our English word ‘spirit’ comes from the Latin ‘spiritus’, meaning breath. If it was God’s breath that initially gave us our person-hood and that now allows us to partake in His divine nature (2 Peter 1:3-4), do not animals then contain some spiritual person-hood? If we bear the image of God, do not animals also, given that they are not all that different from us in a physical sense (there must be a more significant physical difference between a slug and an ape than between an ape and a man, for example)? And even if animals are ‘spiritually dead’, don’t we say the same about those who have not accepted Christ’s sacrifice, whom we most certainly think it is wrong to kill (and even more so to eat!)?

At present, I do not object to killing or eating animals in principle. What I find repulsive is the soulless commodification – the battery hens, the mass-market pig ‘farms’, the factory-line abattoirs – of something (someone?) that bears the same signature of the divine Creator that we ourselves bear. After all, what does it mean to have “dominion” over animals - merely that we are at the top of the food chain? Obviously not, because in pre-sin Eden there was no food chain. On the contrary, when the food chain did come about (after sin that is), mankind was probably not at its apex – I would think that sabre-tooth tigers, leviathans, and whatnot could probably stake a greater claim to that position. Dominion must mean something more holistic than merely domination; it must indicate some sort of stewardship. How can we create a system of dominion in its holistic sense? Surely Christians should be concerned with these sort of questions, if we indeed want to see the Kingdom of God come, His will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven!

Note:
[1] Genesis 8: 21-2 actually specifies that it is land-borne creatures that possess the breath of life.