I'm a Flexible Vegetarian

This will probably confuse everyone, but here goes. I'm a vegetarian...sort of. In my house, we don't eat any meat, don't let meat in the door, nothing like that. (We'd been toying with the idea of going back to a vegetarian house for a while and finally took the plunge about 5 months ago.) One person I know (who I respect very much) expressed her veganism as a part of her spirituality and I can relate to that. The reasons that I don't eat meat is based solely on decisions governed by my spirituality.

I posted before about being completely pro-life and what that means, including the humane treatment of animals. For me, that means among other things, not eating meat. Killing things just doesn't seem like humane treatment...call me silly. Genesis, specifically in the story of Noah, describes all animals as being filled with the breath of life, the same breath from God that filled Adam in Genesis 2. To me, that means we're really dealing with something special here, special treatment should be given to animals.

Another part of this spirituality, comes with the great weight that God puts on spilling animal blood, the blood of life. Eating anything with the blood still in it is a big no-no in the Bible (and in Judaism to this day). In fact, eating animals is a sort of concession God makes to humans. According to several other ancient texts and traditions the very reason for the flood was not sexual immorality as much as it was the polluting of the ground with blood. Animals were being slaughtered horribly and their flesh eaten, people were killing people and just leaving them to die and be picked clean by the scavenging animals. So God, seeing that man would inevitably eat meat, prescribed the proper way to kill the animal so that it would be humane (that's sort of a relative term) and respect the value of blood. God's original intent was for people to not eat meat (ala the Garden), so I strive to fulfill that original intent.

As anyone who grew up with me or has known me in person for any amount of time in the past, you probably know that I'm not really a veggie kind of person. When I was a kid (even to the present, really) I was a meat and potatoes kind of guy. I wanted big pieces of steak for dinner cooked as rare as you could get it and french fries on the side. A baked potato if I had to, but I would refuse to eat the skin. I tell you this because this gets to the flexible side.

I see vegetarianism as a higher level of spirituality. Something that is very difficult to maintain, especially in this culture of everything must have meat. (Do you realize every salad at Wendy's has meat on it except one? Does this seem weird?) I'm also very sensitive to the fact that many people are put out, can be judgmental, etc about vegetarians. Being vegetarian can be a dividing wall between us and the meatetarians. And I take very seriously the idea of not putting up walls when spending time with other people. Usually people don't even notice we don't eat meat and it's not an issue. But, if a friend doesn't know we're vegetarians and at their home all they offer us is meat, we eat the meat. It's not a big deal, because we're in fellowship and that's the higher goal. In every situation, we'll try to find ways to avoid meat (the vegetarian fajita at Chipotle, by the way, is the bomb), eating the cheese pizza, etc. but sometimes it just doesn't work out.

Anyway, I just thought I'd explain my spiritual pseudo-vegetarianism.