Yesterday was a tough day for me... Not only did I have a headache the entire day at work, but I ran across something which really disturbed and angered me.
I've been sifting through sites which are 1% For the Planet partners, in hopes of finding a business which would donate a small percentage of its profits to PAN. One of the sites detailed a practice known as "shark finning", where the fins of a live shark are cut off to be shipped to Asia for a soup delicacy, and the live shark is thrown back into the sea to die a horrible death. (There are restrictions on how many sharks a boat can take in, so they just remove the fins and leave the poor shark alive) !!!! I immediately signed the petition against finning and asked several friends and family to do the same.
I received a response from Nathan which thoroughly and graphically detailed how animals in Russia are skinned alive. I cried and cried after that email.
I guess I just feel for animals. Like Mark Bittner of Wild Parrots said, "It's like they're pure, without those neurotic thoughts that we humans have." I remember when Haiti happened; my heart (and a donation) went out to those folks, but when the oil spill fiasco covered the media and I saw a picture of an oil-drenched washed-up bird and a dead turtle. I was mad at humans and , again, I cried.
It makes me angry where we live in a world where animals are exploited and mistreated, and it's a nonchalant, every-day practice!! If people, sipping their coffees on the way to work, routinely ran over humans , you betcha there'd be some lawsuits in the air! It's not the same for animals... why not??
And this is one of the biggest reasons for my being vegetarian. It's not the idea that an animal has to die; we all do. And this is a natural part of nature. However, it is not natural for chickens to be crammed in the dark, their entire life , debeaked, and genetically engineered to have such large breast that they can't even WALK! And, folks, if you're buying cheap chicken, this is what you're supporting. Nearly all of the popular chicken brands use these methods and that's how they sell it for so darn cheap. The chicken industry is just one example. I could write several pages, but wouldn't want to!, on how cows live, the inhumane way in which pigs are killed and the filthy life they often live, and many other animals we "use" for our benefit of life.
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Ok... So this is a glimpse of the emotions going on inside me when I read of these things. It makes me ANGRY! and sad.
And I start to ask God, why? How do these things exist in a world where there are other options? What do You think of it? Why do humans exploit others? Where in the Bible can I find how you feel about this?
I know these practices are evil and unjust. I haven't the slightest doubt, but there are no explicit passages in the Bible warning against them (perhaps because such wide-scale injustices weren't practiced then?). Often our ideas of "morality" have a strong human bias. Why can't similar values be applied all other life sharing this planet?
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