Grateful For Meat

http://www.boundlessline.org/2009/06/grateful-for-meat.html
I really enjoyed the article (actually, I didn’t like since it convicted me ;-). It brought a great sense of conviction in just an overall idea of why don’t I just eat less? But for me, it was an overall consumption, not relegated to just meat. I get very caught up in God’s bounty that I forget it is just that. A bounty from God. And just because I don’t vomit just so I can eat some more doesn’t mean I’m not being a glutton or, as she highlights, not giving thanks to God when it is due.

I do have one minor disagreement. In the article, she says

…animals would live longer, more productive lives when they were given plenty of grazing room and time to rest.

I just am not sure how you would measure a productive life for a cow or a chicken. It smack of the elevation of nature, which sounds just beneath the surface. Definitely not to the stereotypical PETA extremes (stereotypical, not necessarily typical), mind you. From that she states, in essence, that we should think about eating more veggies. That is also fraught with peril, just different application (how are farms treating their land, etc.).

I am grateful for the reminder of how I should be thankful to God for what He provides. Which is another extremely small point in that a) all good things come through God and b) there is no conscious act the animal does for which (a point simply to contrast thankfulness towards a person), hence thanks to the chicken sounds absurd. Regardless, though, giving thanks for God’s blessing is very often lost in the middle of reaching for that second….third…..OK, fourth helping of potatoes or brats.

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New Comment:

BDB:

I had read something interesting about eating Crickets. If I understand it correctly, it’s based in the days of the Killing Fields. People ate whatever they could to survive. That meant crickets, too. The crickets wound up being a carryover from a horrible time period for them. Very sad.