"Human consciousness is both a gift and a curse. The gift: a sense of self that is unique among all living things. The curse: a sense of time and the knowledge that one day we will be no more."
-- Pierre Gilbert, Associate Professor of Bible and Theology at
Recently, a good friend of mine chose this Advent season to live vegan. The initial inspiration was a move toward a holistic health discipline. However, his motives expanded after watching a documentary about the amount of resources (especially water and grain crops) required to raise beef.
Suddenly, an Advent diet choice thrust my friend into research revealing the world's hunger for meat reduces essential resources for people, especially those in developing countries. Added to this knowledge, the process of raising slaughter animals is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. The more he learns the more holistically hopeless it all seems.
The silver lining? What started as a personal health choice has inspired a community awareness and advocacy for justice and global food safety.
If or when our global consciousness finally awakens and we secure food for all and reduce our greenhouse emissions,... we all eventually die, both humans and beasts. "Suffering and death find their source in the spiritual realm," Pierre Gilbert reminds us. This world is broken and few would deny that evil forces are at play within each of us, within our communities and within nations. At all these levels we recognize the seed of our rebellion against God. The cure to rebellion is spiritual.
We will die, but there is also promise for life, spiritual life. Jesus came to announce the year of the LORD. This has two aspects to it; now and then.
Now. There is a cure to sin: God welcomes all of his rebellious children because of Jesus' death and resurrection! As forgiven, adopted, redeemed and empowered children, we are co-workers with God in healing the world.
I hope for "God's Kingdom come." I imagine the Kingdom will be more of a kin-dom, a family. Once again we will be gardeners and shepherds who walk with God in the cool of the evening as we read in Genesis. Maybe everyone will be vegan? This kin-dom will have urban expressions as we read in Isaiah 62 and Revelation 21, a place of honest and mutual exchange of goods and services that bring glory to God.
Then. Once our bodies, vegan or not, succumb to entropy, we join the great cloud of witnesses for whatever our holy and just God of all creation has for us to do next.
What are your hopes?
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