Life Requires Death (Joel Salatin Notes)

In Chapter 4 of Joel Salatin's book"The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs' he provides some powerful Biblical perspective on why eating animals is o.k. in light of the Christian's desire to honor animals and treat them with reverence.  I meant to post this a couple of months ago and it sat in draft form!   I'm basically just posting this section verbatim.  Please enjoy.  

"Perhaps a big issue we need to deal with at this point is the push back that if life is so special what gives us the right to kill and eat? 

How does killing the pig honor it's glory? How is the "pigness of the pig" reverenced when we enjoy bacon for breakfast?  That's certainly a valid question. 

First let's look at this Biblically.  Nowhere does the Bible even hint that eating animals is wrong. The Patriarchs ate animals.  The Prophets ate animals.  The kings and peasants all ate animals.  The feasts included animals. Jesus ate animals. The disciples and apostles ate animals.   

How does killing and eating animals add strength to their glory? Because life requires death. 

While it's true that killing a carrot in the big scheme of things is no different from killing a chicken; when the blood flows and the eyes go dim it's far more graphic and real. 

The typology of sacrifice preceding life occurs throughout the old testament and culminates of course in the ultimate sacrifice of God's son as the perfect lamb to take away the sins of the world.  Every time we kill something whether seed embryo (wheat) vegetable or animal in order to live, it should remind us not only of the sacrificial death of Jesus that enables us to partake of eternal life but also how precious life is. Life is so precious that it requires death. 

The goal of radical animal rightists working through research scientists to grow non-living meat like substances from human feces or primal slime in petri dishes is a denial of this foundational principle that life requires death. 

Jesus uses the principle of seed being planted and dying before sending forth the new shoot.  Unless it dies the new shoot can't come forth. Everything, everything, everything requires death in order to create life. And lest anyone think I'm skipping the Edenic period when nothing died -we're not in Eden anymore Toto!  We don't have perfect bodies.  We live in a fallen world in which bringing glory to God includes appreciating the cost of life in him. It is precious enough to require death.  Eating reminds us of that with every chomp of our jaws.  

Our sustenance is completely and utterly dependent on taking life; be it plant or animal.  That alone should drive us to appreciate the sanctity and precious value of life. That means we don't hurt people and things unnecessarily.   

We are all one step away from our last breath. Every breath is a gift borrowed or snatched from the hands of death. 

That's the biblical part.  Now let's go to the ecological part.....

...I would suggest that what makes the sacrifice of any being sacred is how it was honored in life. To take that one step further, I would even suggest that only when we've honored the life do we have the right to make the sacrifice.  In other words someone who has abused the life, disrespected the life, looked at it as just inanimate stuff does not deserve to kill and eat.  

The right to participate in that sacred act must be earned.  

Think about the worship surrounding Biblical sacrifices.  Every one entailed a hush -a God-centric demeanor.  Sacrifices were not a place to exalt the dominion of man but a place to humbly appreciate the cost of life.   And of course alter sacrifices show the cost of forgiveness which is the door into eternal life. Viewing life as mechanical like industrial farming does cheapens it, which in turn cheapens the death. 

Is it any wonder that our culture is wrestling with increased violence among humans when we cheapen life through CAFO's and a cheap food policy -which is actually a cheap life policy.  

Food is life.  Food must live in order to die. 

families who spend extra on high quality food, who emphasize sacrificial value in food  create a beautiful platform for explaining the cost of salvation. If our food goal is the cheapest stuff available, what does that say about the cost of physical life?  By extension what does it say about the cost of eternal life. 

Please don't construe my meaning beyond it's intent.  I'm not suggesting that we be careless about shopping and comparing prices but price is definitely not the number 1 criterion.  Glory. Does this food honor life's distinctiveness is the number 1 criteria.  After that's been met, then be frugal! 

Invention of the "Double Loco"

It's no secret that we really love Taco Bell.  It's our favorite restaurant....it's a part of our life.

5 years ago we moved to Ithaca.  We were tired and weary from an arduous winter road trip across the country.  We were actually not certain that Ithaca had a Taco Bell location -though in fact we had prayed that it did!  Driving thru the city on our first night, we decided to grab dinner at the Bell.  I still clearly remember Jack saying "Jesus loves us huh dad!?" when we saw the sign!

A few months back, we filmed our 'creation' of the "double loco."

King Size Grill!

Today we got things going on campus with the annual Fellowship fair BBQ!  We served over 700 hamburgers and hot dogs to hundreds of students.

This year we upgraded our grilling situation and rented two of these big dogs from Aardark Welding and Fabricating.

It was an excellent day!  Beautiful weather and the chance to meet and welcome tons of new students to campus!

Kicking off the Year

Classes start to day at Cornell. We kicked things off in a big way yesterday with the annual Christian Fellowship fair BBQ. At this event we join with all of the other evangelical campus ministry groups to host a large outdoor picnic event. Each ministry sets up a table and we serve tons of free hamburgers and hot dogs to students who are walking by.
The main point of this is to give new students the opportunity to connect with the Body of Christ on campus. That is why for the past two years we’ve hosted this event in a prime location up on North Campus where all of the freshman live. The second reason is to have fun! Our hope is that this event brings a sense of fun and community to the opening week of school.

Though not every student readily admits it, I think the first weeks of school here are pretty overwhelming. Most students show up here not really knowing anyone. It’s not like a typical state school where you see people whom you at least recognize from your high school or some state wide athletic event. Cornell students are from all over the world, so adjustment here is hard and community is not a plentiful commodity.
I’d estimate that we fed around 600 students. It’s pretty hard to get an accurate count, but we consumed 740 pieces of meat! We ran out, so if we had more we probably could have fed even more, but overall it was a great turnout.

The weather was amazing, and we were praising God for that! The past few days before, a lot of opening week activities were being canceled or seriously hampered by the rain! We were praying for clear skies and sun, and the Lord gave us a dry day!

Our older students were able to meet and get to know a lot of freshman and hopefully they can connect them with our small groups.

On another note……Last year I built some cornhole tables. Cornhole is a game that’s basically like Horse shoes or Ladder ball –it’s one of those games you can play in your yard with one hand while holding a drink in your other hand. It’s not hard, so it’s great for getting to know people. Cornhole is basically a bean bag toss and the bags are filled with feed corn. The game is super popular out in the mid-west for sure, but it does not really want to fly out here! We’ve been hauling our tables to events for the past couple of years, and it seems like our kids are the only ones who are getting into it! It’s a riot. But yesterday –at the very end of the time –there were 6 or so students playing corn-hole! It was great and I thanked them for putting our boards to use for once!

Here's a funny video about the game of Cornhole.

Cereal Party

We've decided that the thing Joe says most in life is "I'm still hungry." He's always been our best eater to be honest! But every night, the thing Joe wants to do before bed is have a "cereal party". If he had his way, we'd all sit down and munch some flaky goodness, but even if he ends up sitting alone -to him it's a cereal party!