The holy men of one pantheistic religion wear a gauze mask over their mouth and nose when they go outside so that they don’t accidentally ingest some tiny flying creature. They are so worried about accumulating the karma they believe results from killing other living things that they sweep the ground so that they don’t step on an insect. Because they consider it immoral to kill vermin, their grain storehouses swarm with rats.
The problem with this point of view is that it confuses respect for life with a belief that all life forms should be ranked equally in value. After all, all life forms are conscious, and everything edible is made from something alive. There even seems to be a primitive consciousness in plants. Some people claim, for example, that plants grow more rapidly in an environment where classical music is played than when they are forced to listen to rock and roll or rap! Are we cannibalizing our fellow sentient creatures when we put beans, carrots, potatoes, and turnips in a vegetable soup?
Few people feel much kinship with snakes. Even fewer feel kinship with such primitive creatures as centipedes, cockroaches, and spiders. There is a reason for this. Fortunately, the simpler the life form, the less consciousness, self-awareness, and “personality” it has. If we deny the existence of the food chain and the natural hierarchy of more conscious, self-aware creatures over less conscious ones, we end up valuing simpler, vastly less self-aware creatures as much as human life.
In the first chapter of Genesis, the Bible tells us God said:
“Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground” (1:26 NIV).
There is a consciousness in animals that we share—to a degree. Higher animals aren’t just machines. They have a degree of consciousness with which we should identify and empathize. Many of us are uncomfortable with the killing of animals for food. We have a strong sense of ambivalence because we admire and empathize with our fellow creatures but recognize that the cycle of predation is part of the created order and our bodies need the nourishment that their flesh provides (Genesis 9:1-4). This ambivalence about killing animals is good. One of the early indications of a serial killer is that the person enjoys being cruel to animals or kills them for pleasure. Wanton torture or killing of animals is an indicator of something seriously wrong with a person’s soul. However, because higher animals are conscious doesn’t mean we should treat them as our equals or view them as aspects of the divine. The created world is marvelous beyond imagination, but we must resist the strong pantheistic tendency to worship the creature and forget the Creator.
The dignified and humane slaughter and eating of animals is an important aspect of biblical tradition. (See the ATQ article What Was the Purpose of Animal Sacrifices?) This tradition was affirmed by our Lord in His last supper with the disciples (Luke 22:7-8).
Killer whales, brown bears, wolves, and wild stallions can be tamed by people. This is because people are created in the image of God. If we really value natural order, we’ll see that living creatures are in a hierarchy with humans at the top. When people exaggerate the worth of insects, rodents, snakes, or cows, they proportionately degrade the value of human life.
