KINDNESS TO ANIMALS


One doesn't need to be a monist or a pantheist or believe in reincarnation,
to fell sympathy for another being's pain, whether animal or less. The Bible, 
Proverbs 12:10, says that one of the characteristics of the righteous man is 
that he cares about his animals, while the best the evil can do is cruel 
(or too rough).

Deuteronomy 22:6, 7, 10; 20:19,10; Numbers 22:32,33 support ecology and kindness
to animals. Psalms 148:7-10; 104:11-31 celebrate God's love for His animals and
hint at their love for Him. Revelation 5:13 explicitly depicts animals and sea
creatures, incl. apparently fish, praising God.

Genesis 2:7 man "became a living soul" due to having "the breath of life" 
breathed into him. Genesis 7:15,21,22 refers to animals as having "the breath 
of life" in them, therefore they also are souls. One does not HAVE a soul,
one IS a soul. Soul (nephesh) is both a distinct element and a catchall term
covering the entire creture, incl. body, which the soul loses at death. 
I am NOT a Jehovah's Witness. They confuse the continuity of soul and body, 
with the notion of total cessation at death. The soul survives, in a truncated
form.

Genesis 9:9-11, 15 says God's covenant was with all living creatures as well as 
Noah and humankind. When He gave man the right to eat animals, He also evened 
the game so to speak, by giving animals fear of man. (Proof of pre-Flood human
carnivorousness would not refute this, since it could have been an allowed
occasional thing, or part of the increasingly violent evil for which the Flood
was brought.)

The concept "made in the image of God" is not that we have a soul or spirit - 
all living things do. It is that we combine most of God's character traits in a 
VERY finite form. The larger brain size and greater building skill (somewhat
shown by beavers) and the bipedal gait, giving free use of hands, are all 
relevant to our role of being caretakers and rulers over the animals and plants. 
The humanoid form itslf, is relevant to this. I do NOT mean that God is an 
exalted man with a body, like the Mormons do.

The contrast of soul/spirit to matter, viewing the latter as evil, and the idea 
of the soul/spirit being trapped in the body, is a gnostic and intellectual 
p[agan philosopher idea, which crept into Christianity and to a lesser extent 
into Judaism. This happened partly because Christians in the early church tried
to show how some ideas in the pagan philosophers supported Christian theology,
as if God had put them into non-Christian philosophy so as to prepare them for
the Truth. However, they forgot that were would still be a lot of wrong think-
ing in the philosophers' writings. So many things, incl. some of the "traditional"
ideas about the sxes' nature, were adopted by the time of the early Middle Ages, 
And could be found in some Christans wrierrs earlier than that.

End of file.


Last Modified February 23, 1995

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