Introduction
1CO 6:12 "Everything is permissible for me"--but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible for me"--but I will not be mastered by anything.
Hi What I am about to say is not to persuade you nor tell you how you should live your own life, instead I will be discussing the various negative consequences of eating meat. If you think that vegetarians are weird people or that they are far and few, just do a little search on the search engines on the Internet and you can find countless numbers of familiar celebrities who are vegetarians and very often their health and beauty from their appearances are very mesmerizing. Even Daniel is a vegetarian. One of the celebrities that is memorable to me is Oprah, who once made a proud statement on her show that she will never eat another burger in her life again. The primary reason why people eat is to provide the body with the energy required to function well. The secondary reasons are those of pleasure and enjoyment. Well that people eat everyday and almost every moment, we should not neglect nor turn a blind eye to what we put into our body, for we are what we eat.
Waste of resources
Raising cattle has taken up much more hectares of land in relative to the small amount of yield gain in comparison to growing various types of crops. For an animal to mature enough for consumption will require years of painstaking hard work and not to mention the amount of feed required. But for a crop is an altogether different matter. It can take up the same area of land required for cattle, yet produce many times the yield. And why is that? To harvest a crop only takes the duration of 4 seasons, a year. The basic input required is sunlight and water which is given freely and not much care is needed.
Religious reasons
The Bible promotes one to be a vegetarian
One
of the 10 Commandments is “thou shall not kill” and do not even try to twist
the words, “add or take away” them, cause there is no such think as different
standards of killing, killing is still killing. Would you think that killing
your pet is any different from the killing of your loved ones?
Daniel
1:8 But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and
he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way. 9
Now God had caused the official to show favor and sympathy to Daniel, 10 but
the official told Daniel, "I am afraid of my lord the king, who has
assigned your food and drink. Why should he see you looking worse than the
other young men your age? The king would then have my head because of
you."
Daniel
1:11 Daniel then said to the guard whom the chief official had appointed over
Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, 12 "Please test your servants for
ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. 13 Then
compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and
treat your servants in accordance with what you see." 14 So he agreed to
this and tested them for ten days.
Daniel
1:15 At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than
any of the young men who ate the royal food. 16 So the guard took away their
choice food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables instead.
Daniel
1:17 To these four young men God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds
of literature and learning. And Daniel could understand visions and dreams of
all kinds.
The Bible uses meat as a negative symbol
Numbers 11:4 The rabble with them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing and said, "If only we had meat to eat! 5 We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost--also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. 6 But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!"
Numbers 11:33 But while the meat was still between their teeth and before it could be consumed, the anger of the LORD burned against the people, and he struck them with a severe plague. 34 Therefore the place was named Kibroth Hattaavah, because there they buried the people who had craved other food.
1CO 8:9 Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak. 10 For if anyone with a weak conscience sees you who have this knowledge eating in an idol's temple, won't he be emboldened to eat what has been sacrificed to idols? 11 So this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. 12 When you sin against your brothers in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. 13 Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause him to fall.
One must recognize that the “vegetables” in the following passage does not refer to food, instead it refers to thoughts and ideas, for the wisdom of the Bible is not of the common Man’s wisdom.
RO 14:1 Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters. 2 One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. 3 The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him. 4 Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.
In this context, the Weak is not anyway inferior to the Strong but equal for Jesus has already stated,
MT 19:30 But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.
It takes a “weak” man more strength to stand than for a “strong” man to do the same.
Clean
and unclean foods.
All food is “clean” but not all food is beneficial nor the way they come from, ethical so as to speak, mass inhumane slaughter for example. One cannot be blind to everything he sees/understands/experiences or eats for if one would accidentally eat a specific species of puffer fish, his first bite would be his last. But today even the staple foods that Man eats can bring him sickness and death. Surely Jesus was using food as a parable to bring across his message but food was not all that he talked about.
1CO 6:12 "Everything is permissible for me"--but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible for me"--but I will not be mastered by anything.
1CO 10:23 "Everything is permissible"--but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible"--but not everything is constructive. 24 Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others.
MK 7:17 After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. 18 "Are you so dull?" he asked. "Don't you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him `unclean'? 19 For it doesn't go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body." (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods "clean.")
MK 7:20 He went on: "What comes out of a man is what makes him `unclean.' 21 For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22 greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. 23 All these evils come from inside and make a man `unclean.' "
Health reasons
Meat especially from that of a chicken is full of harmful substances like growth hormones which is injected into the animal to promote fast growth which when ingested into the human body, would cause abnormal growth of the body. Those include the internal organs, the eye ball and cancerous cells and tumors. The animal fat in meat actually promotes the growth of intestinal worms in the digestive system and microscopic worms from not thoroughly cooked pork can actually travel through the bloodstream to inhabit in the brain and literally eat up the cells of the brain and cause lethal consequences. Red meat especially due to it’s complex protein structure would require a very long time to digest and the remains of it may stay in the digestive system for up to weeks. People who have experience with friends or relatives that have a brush with an illness would know that once that friend or relative has been diagnosed with it, the doctor would always recommend a more healthier diet and sometimes he would tell them to eat more vegetables and less meat because the content in meat actually complicates the body’s abilities to fight the illness. People with cancer or other life threatening disease using have a low or non meat diet as digesting meat requires a lot of the body’s energy.
Wrong handling of meat
Exodus 12:9 Do not eat the meat raw or cooked in water, but roast it over the fire--head, legs and inner parts.
Cultural reasons
Human
males have this concept that eating meat makes one look and feel manly but they
have been greatly misinformed. Eating meat has been scientifically proven to
suppress the human ability to produce hormones, precisely the male Testosterone
hormone. I believe this suppression is the main causes of the thinning of hair,
erectile dysfunction, abnormalities and overall reduction in sperm and sperm
count resulting in abnormal births. So instead of promoting the strength of the
body, eating meat has inversely degrade it.
Man ignoring what is clean and unclean meat
DT 14:3 Do not eat any detestable thing. 4 These are the animals you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat, 5 the deer, the gazelle, the roe deer, the wild goat, the ibex, the antelope and the mountain sheep. 6 You may eat any animal that has a split hoof divided in two and that chews the cud. 7 However, of those that chew the cud or that have a split hoof completely divided you may not eat the camel, the rabbit or the coney. Although they chew the cud, they do not have a split hoof; they are ceremonially unclean for you. 8 The pig is also unclean; although it has a split hoof, it does not chew the cud. You are not to eat their meat or touch their carcasses.
Unethical reasons
NIV Proverbs 15:17 Better a meal of vegetables where there is love than a fattened calf with hatred.
Not many people realize or do want to realize how the basic rights of an animal is forcefully taken away in abattoirs and slaughterhouses. In order for an animal to be terminated quickly and cleanly, meaning requiring as little or non harmful substances like poisonous chemicals, quick and destructive methods have to be applied. Methods include electrocution, suffocation and sometimes the manual method of killing. If you thought that animals are put to sleep in the same way as that of an animal is put to sleep peacefully in a vet, or the way a criminal on death sentence is executed by lethal injection, you cannot be more wrong. The screams heard in an abattoir can haunt a person for life and the life after. Millions of gallons of bodily fluid flow out of these killing houses every day, the fluids include mainly blood, foam from the animals’ mouths, saliva, urine, faeces and even semen. Yes even semen, it has been known that when death sentenced criminals are about to be terminated, they ejaculate due to the unimaginable high levels of stress and fear. So for an animal to be killed without anesthetics, the slaughter room functions as a huge toilet as well. The stench from that of a nice clean and air-conditioned meat shop is nothing compared to the thousand-fold stench from abattoirs, why do you think the slaughters wear face masks? I have never been to a slaughter house nor wish ever to in my life but I have witnessed the terror that goes on in those places on television. I have seen on television truckloads of newly hatched chicks being disposed live out of those trucks because they do not have any useful functions in the farms anymore. One can get sick looking at the sea of newly hatched chicks swimming about in one another. To get a little sample of the grossfulness, just take a close look at your regular beef patty in your burger.
1CO 10:23 "Everything is permissible"--but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible"--but not everything is constructive. 24 Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others.