Jonah and the Animals

This past Saturday I was standing with some friends on a sidewalk in front of a McDonald's, doing our part in the latest pro-chicken campaign, and chatting with one of the ladies in our group. She noted that so many people use the Bible as an excuse for the violence they condone and commit, and lamented that since she isn't a Christian she doesn't know how to use the Bible to respond to them. "Well there are some parts of the Bible that show animals as deserving consideration," I said. I then told her the story of Jonah, and highlighted the ending, where God says something like "Shouldn't I spare Ninevah, where there are more than 120,000 who can't tell between their right hand and their left, and also much cattle?" My point was that in this story God refused to burn up a city out of consideration for the many young children and the animals, and that this shows that God values animals as rights-possessing beings.

Of course, Jonah doesn't exactly work. God didn't spare Ninevah for the sake of the children and animals, he spared it because the whole city bowed down and repented. And if God actually valued children and animals as rights-possessing beings, he wouldn't have threatened to burn the city in the first place.

Just about the whole Old Testament, really, is a compilation of nationalist diatribes defending the Noachide Hegemony -- the hierarchy of God over mankind, of some men over others, and of mankind over animals. The thing is festered with twisted ownership notions. God repeatedly asserts his supposed right to dispose of human beings as if they were broken pots to be thrown away. God's chosen race is given license, and even duty, to exterminate several nations. And though the injunction to not eat any limbs torn from a live animal can imply a prohibition against abusing animals, the very fact that the Bible forbids eating live meat means that it sanctions eating some kinds of dead meat. You don't have to be an expert on Biblical Judaism to know that the Bible sacralizes animal slaughter and describes ritual killing as the payment of a debt. According to the Bible a calf is to be treated well. But the calf doesn't belong to himself; he belongs ultimately to God, to whom his owner owes a steep debt which can only be paid by sawing through the calf's neck while some bearded guy in a white robe and miter chants some things in a gluttural tongue.

The New Testament, too, is replete with twisted ownership notions, and should be read in the same way any man of conscience would read the Old Testament. Grace and love aren't the dominant themes of the New Testament. The dominant theme is Vicarious Atonement, which is an extension of the tribalist idea that one being can be seized and killed to pay for someone else's misdeeds.

If we are to embrace the most purified individualism (and we have the inherent duty to), then we must recognize that individual sovereignty does not depend on one's mental or physical capacities or stage of development, or on the convenience of others. The Bible doesn't mention this standard, and it doesn't come anywhere close to mentioning it. So give up hope trying to use "God's Word" as a tool of persuasion. You can't use it to defend the rights of animals, or children, or even human adults.