They Shall Be Food For You

This past Saturday, 18 young men gathered outside Summerville at a small farm in the northwest corner of Georgia. They were there for a day camp event held by Three Circle Foundation, a Christian non-profit devoted to “providing year-round mentorship, monthly camps and community service experiences free of charge to fostered, single and no-parented boys...” Along with about a dozen volunteers, the boys participate in projects that are geared toward service and life skills. For the first time in the 4+ years of day camps here, the weather on Saturday didn’t cooperate with the projects planned, so after about 2 hours of working on garden boxes, a tractor shed, and landscaping in torrential rain, we took shelter at a nearby church to dry off, play some games, and eat. By the time the rain blew out mid-afternoon, there was just enough time to get back to the farm and hold some abbreviated activity stations in blacksmithing, photography, nature, horses, cooking, and marksmanship. The boys all seemed to have a blast, and the day culminated in an event that I wanted to spend a few words exploring – killing for food.

And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. Genesis 9:2-4

This is the 2^nd time in as many weeks that I have found myself in front of this passage, directed there by discussions regarding hunting and ethical killing. Last week, it was Jase Robertson’s visit to Rome where he mentioned this passage, and Saturday it was Stephen Collins as he explained the dignity of an animal and the respectful killing of an animal you intend to eat. Quite a few interesting thoughts in this set of verses!

Animals weren’t always fearful of humans. My five year old son is hopeful that his favorite movie, How To Train Your Dragon, could have been a past, and possibly future, reality show. He was very small when he started demanding answers as to why a bear or mountain lion, capable of killing your average human, would run away and hide instead of attack and eat. Good question, and one that was very prominent in his thinking as he would try to fall asleep in the dark at night. It’s a large idea to try to explain and a fairly long path of stories from Genesis 1 to Genesis 9. If prior to this point animals weren’t afraid of men or each other, that would have been a big plus when confined in an ark all together. There is some discussion (not a lot, but some) suggesting that animals might have been able to talk pre-fall, examples being either apocryphal or inferred from the serpent in the garden story. Far-fetched or not, what is clear is that the man/animal interaction in Genesis changed very quickly over the course of a few chapters. From friendly caretaker to killer and consumer.

Suddenly, all animals became potential food.  Another interesting thought though, because not only would the focal people of the Bible later be subject to very strict dietary rules that excluded many animals, it is also true that not all animals (or plants) can/should be eaten. Apparently, prior to this point, man was at least supposed to have been vegetarian. I wonder if there was a learning curve as man discovered the frogs, eels, fish, turtles, and bugs that deter their own consumption by killing the eater.

God authorized hunting. There are a lot of people I meet and chat with, even here in the south, that are adamantly opposed to hunting. You’ll even meet the occasional person who has clearly never given more than 30 seconds thought to the whole concept, who will say something startling ignorant like, “Hunting is inhumane. I only eat meat from the grocery store.” Right, because apparently meat found in the grocery store came from unharmed animals?

These thoughts and a few others were going through my head as the young men of Three Circles crowded around to watch a chicken be changed from a living, moving, breathing animal into sections of meat. If you’ve ever killed an animal to eat it, I imagine you recall that feeling of remorse that to get this food, you had to kill something. In my experience, it’s an unexpected feeling that catches you by surprise, sears itself into your memory, and resurfaces from time to time to remind you not only of the value of life, but also of your own eventual end.

Hank Shaw put it well,

Again and again and again, I see my own death in the eyes of that jackrabbit, or duck or deer. And I am afraid. I know not what lies beyond, nor does the animal I stand over. All I know is that someday, the dying eyes will be mine, staring at a doctor, or a lover. Or the unblinking sky. It is a searing moment that feels like staring at the sun in a windstorm. It leaves me gasping.
 But then it passes. The rabbit moves no more. I inhale. I notice the birds are still singing. There is a fly buzzing somewhere. Life continues, at least for me. And at my feet is an animal that will soon feed me and my friends and family.

I believe that that feeling of sorrow is also a reminder of how things used to be, how far we’ve fallen, and is intertwined with a longing for us and the world to be restored again.

It’s a good thing to explain to young people the cost of their actions – whether it be a careless word, breaking a law, acting impulsively, or abusing their power. As I’ve worked with youth, that cause & effect relationship seems to be one of the harder concepts to grasp but it is crucial. I wish that everyone who chooses to eat meat would take the chance to participate in it’s harvesting. Seldom is the picture of life and death, actions and consequences, need and sacrifice so stark and apparent.