Why DO we eat dead animals?

    I don’t usually let bumper stickers bother me, nor do I care to post my political opinions (even when I have them) on social media sites. But there was a vehicle in my work place’s parking lot today with a sticker that just made me mad. It read:

“How can you be pro-LIFE, when you eat DEAD ANIMALS?”

    Well, allow me to hurl up a few pieces of my mind.

“Why do we eat dead animals? The live ones wiggle too much.”
- a beloved family member

“If eating animals is wrong, why aren't we on a campaign against carnivores?”

“Excuse me while I go uproot an entire forest of seedling pine trees, throw them in a heap, and burn them with fire.”

“If the ever growing wolf population in Eastern WA has the right to eat elk, so do I.”

    I won’t claim the ability to change anyone’s mind about being vegetarian OR about being pro-abortion. Being vegetarian is not a big deal at all; I really don’t care if people don’t eat meat. But if you protest AGAINST the killing of animals at the same time that you protest FOR the woman’s "right" to kill her own baby, my heart burns with anger at your sin and it breaks with sorrow for your soul.

    People are more important than animals. Stop killing our babies.

    There is a God who created the world and everything in it. He is all-knowing, He is all-powerful, and He is Holy. He created life, and He alone has the right to give it and to take it away, unless He Himself gives permission. Which He did, in regards to animals: "Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything." (Genesis 9:3) Whether you believe He exists or not, it doesn't change the fact that you will stand before Him one day, and I pray that His Holy Spirit will bring conviction to your soul before you meet Him face-to-face.

               

   
    "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God." John 3:16-18

    "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Romans 3:23

  

    "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." Romans 6:23

    "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." - Jesus, John 14:6

               

               

               

Let us exalt His Name together...

I've been encouraged recently by a book by John Piper called This Momentary Marriage. It is obviously a book about marriage, but Piper focuses on our relationship with Christ and how marriage is only a temporary picture of that relationship. And in focusing on Christ, he has a good deal to say about single men and women, as well. I'm totally married now, but I have a heart to know more about how God is glorified in single men and women. I'd like to share a bit from the book that encouraged me today. Piper is mainly teaching from 1 Peter 4:7-11, Ephesians 5, and 1 Corinthians 7 in this chapter.

If you are a follower of Jesus, and have to read a "marriage book," I recommend you read this one. :)

"What's driving this chapter is a desire for Christ to be magnified in the way married people and single people show hospitality to each other. Or, to put it another way if it's true, as I tried to show in the previous chapter, that God's family, which comes into being by regeneration, is more central and more lasting than the human family that comes into being by procreation, the implications for relationships are very important. How members of that family, the church, relate to each other as married and single will witness to the world that our lives are oriented on the supremacy of Christ and that our relationships are defined not just by nature, but by Christ. I long to see Christ magnified through married people folding single people into their lives and single people folding married people into their lives for the sake of Christ and the gospel...

"...Neither marriage as a physical parable nor singleness as a physical parable is to be idolized or feared. Marriage is beautiful and physical. Singleness is beautiful and physical. God made them both. Both are designed, like all of nature, to display the glory of Christ. 
    Marriage and celibacy can be idolatrous. Spouses can worship each other or worship sex or worship their children or worship double-income-no-kid buying power. Singles can worship autonomy and independence. Singles can look on marriage as a second-class Christian compromise with the sexual drive. Married people can look upon singleness as a mark of immaturity or irresponsibility or incompetence. 
    But what I am trying to clarify is that there are Christ-exalting ways to be married, and there are Christ-exalting ways to be single. There are ways to use our bodies and our appetites in marriage and in singleness that make much of Christ."

This Momentary Marriage, ch. 10: Singleness, Marriage, and Hospitality
by John Piper