Do Unto Others
Ever notice how the imagery of hell looks an awful lot like an eternal BBQ with humans on the spit? No but really. I am always struck by the imagery of church bbq’s: people joined together by the fact that they have been saved from the eternal torments of hell (commonly described as slaughter and the burning of flesh) participating in slaughter and the burning of flesh. You have to admit there’s a touch of irony there. Granted, most meat eaters don’t make the connection between meat and death, and they certainly don’t consider themselves killers. Between the euphemisms, supermarkets, and cellophane, we really don’t even realize anymore that ‘eating meat’ begins with violence – whether we pay somebody else to do it is irrelevant. Actually, it might make it worse ethically speaking but that’s another discussion. For example, earlier this year, the pastor at my church began a story by asking “how many of you have ever killed an animal?”. Of course, not one hand went up. My pastor admitted that he had killed a bird as a child, but then followed that with “I swore I’d never kill another animal”. Rightly, most people are not eager to participate in the killing of an animal, taking a life isn’t something you can ever undo. You can’t give life back nor can you erase that experience from your own heart. Further, he says “I am so happy … I was not a priest in ancient Israel … and that it’s not my responsibility to … get up in front of you and offer up some bloodied, gory animal in sacrifice … “. Indeed, I’m sure the congregation wouldn’t want that either.
That sermon was generally about sacrifice, and how the animal sacrifices of the OT, among other things, prefigured the death of Jesus on the cross. Oddly, some people use the OT sacrificial system to justify meat eating today. No matter what else there is to say about the sacrificial cult of the ancient Israelites, Jesus’ death on the cross ended the need for further animal sacrifices, vis-a-vie reconciliation with God. Second, even within this system, sacrificing animals was seen as acceptable to God only within the allowances of Mosaic Law, otherwise, it becomes like murder. Isa 66:3 ‘Whoever slaughters an ox is like one who kills a human being …’. The prophets had plenty of scathing words in reaction to the sacrificial system being reduced to empty ritual and being done just so people could eat meat. I don’t see how the sacrificial cult of ancient Israel, that Jesus ended over 2000 years ago, can be used as justification for anything about the contemporary agricultural-industrial-complex or unnecessary meat eating in general.
So back to the church bbq. As Steven Webb notes,
While heaven is the very image of growth and fertility, hell is an endless cycle of creatures who gnaw, vomit, excrete, and putrefy. To become meat – chewed, spit out, digested, defecated, and chewed again – for other creatures to feed on is the fate of all those who reject the grace of God. …. The mutilation and mastication of the human body, which reflects the horrors of the decaying body in the grave, is a fundamental image of the punishment of evil, as can be seen in Dante’s Inferno. Hell is a mouth that literally swallows the damned. … Revelation 19:17-18 pictures the wrath of God as a summons to the birds to dine on the flesh of the mighty. Such meals of destruction and violence are the opposite of the peaceful meals of the kingdom, as foretold by the prophets and as practiced in that most simple meal of all, the Eucharist. Good Eating, p.175-178.
Are we faithfully reflecting the image of God when we fervently cling to our ‘right’ to be hell on earth for other creatures? As my Pastor also says, “the resurrection of Christ invites and enables you to participate in the new Shalom between God and the fallen creation”. Amen to that.
