TheOverAnalyzed

Elaine West, founder of the animal sanctuary Rooterville, was featured in this video by The Humane Society of The United States.

Here’s a quote from the video:

My brothers would bring home pigs, and we would raise them and eat them. I was always taught that that’s what God gave us the animals for.

Whether or not you eat meat, or whether or not you are an observant/religious person, this is a great watch.

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One regret I have from dental school was that I didn’t do enough to stir the pot while I was there.

Dental education is, for the most part, regurgitation of the same ideas year after year. Dentists have been learning the same thing for many generations. I’m not so sure what I learned in dental school is fundamentally different from what my parents’ generation of dentists were taught.

And, I suppose, that isn’t a huge problem.

People have messed up teeth, and the manner in which we tooth professionals go about fixing them isn’t exactly rocket science or novel: the methods we use are tried and true. They are time-tested. If ever there were a case for ‘doing things the old way,’ dentistry takes the cake. Occasionally a new material or a new technique will come about, and the profession slowly absorbs these new ideas accordingly.^[1] But really, not much has changed.

As a third-year dental student at Loma Linda University School of Dentistry, we were required to formulate a research project. My group’s research focused on something extremely mundane to normal humans. And to be fair, it was quite uninteresting even for dental people. Admittedly, the topic of our research was a recent ‘it-word’ in dentistry, and our group felt it would help us win at CDA.

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Years later,^[2] I wish we would have researched something better. Something with bigger implications. Something that would have inspired change. Interestingly, my wife did just that. Well, at least, she tried to do just that.

Her third-year research group wanted to explore how mostly Christian students at a Christian higher education establishment felt about testing dental materials^[3] on animals. It was an interesting question that was worth asking. And to my knowledge, no other previous study had focused on this particular population.^[4]

Problem was, higher-ups in the administration in both the School of Dentistry and the University as a whole thought Allison’s research might paint the school in a bad light.^[5] So, in one fell swoop of bureaucracy, her research project was stifled before even starting.

What to make of this?

A lot of the animal advocacy stuff that crosses my path comes from the progressive-leaning world. Indeed, this is unsurprising. Liberals are generally for movements and causes that increase the welfare and equality for all humans. Why wouldn’t they feel the same way toward animals?

When I read something by PETA, or watch a YouTube video from Mercy For Animals, I expect that the producers of the content are probably pretty liberal. I always assumed the same with HSUS publications as well.

What is interesting about this piece by The Humane Society of The United States is that there are Christian themes brought into the discussion.

This was weird.

Like many progressive ideas, animal advocacy is not particularly lauded by conservatives. Spend some time on your search engine of choice^[6] with queries like “big ag,” or “ag gag,” and you’ll find that the major proponents for the current state of affairs in the agriculture industry are Republicans and their constituents. Also recall that a large amount of Christians lean traditionally conservative.

So, to recap:

A large amount of conservatives/Republicans, either directly or indirectly,^[7] don’t tend to care much about the atrocities in the factory farm industry. And a lot of Christians are conservatives/Republicans.When I saw today’s featured video by HSUS, the irony of the reality rang loud and clear:

1. Christians are supposed to act like Christ.
2. Christ cared about animals.
3. Christians should care about animals too.^[8]
4. But Christians as a group typically align themselves with the conservative worldview.
5. Conservatives are proponents of big business, probably because they own a lot of them.
6. Big Agriculture is big business.
7. End result: a whole lot of Christians are ardent defenders of the current Upton Sinclair-esque industrialization of animals.
8. That’s not Christ-like at all.

This brings us back to Loma Linda University:

How can an institution of higher learning profess its observance to Christianity, while at the same time, neglect the opportunity to investigate alternatives to testing on animals?

Here’s quote from Greg Boyd, PhD, pastor for Woodland Hills Church:

You have a trajectory throughout the whole Biblical tradition of God caring for the animals. In fact, caring for the creation. And humans being mandated to work with God in caring about creation. It’s the first mandate in the bible.

[Our second] mandate: be fruitful in order that you can have dominion over the earth and the animal kingdom.

The dominion does not mean dominate [emphasis added].^[9] It’s rather more a concept of stewardship. We are to reflect God’s character to the earth and to the animal kingdom. The character he reflects towards us, we are to administrate on the Earth.

A couple of years ago, Mark F. Carr^[10] wrote an article^[11] for an Adventist publication, discussing the morality of testing on animals.

Here are a few pertinent snippets:^[12]

Parallel to the basic definition of human rights, that every person is inherently entitled to certain rights simply because of being human, an animal-rights definition asserts similar protections and freedoms for animals.

[Non]-human animals created by God have inherent moral value.

The intrinsic moral worth in animals should make us reluctant to conduct research that causes them pain and suffering or results in their death.

To Carr’s point, a number of institutions have elected to explore other means of conducting research, ones that do not involve the traditional means of testing on live animal subjects.

Here is a non-exhaustive list found in the Notes and References section of his aforementioned article:

• Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine^[13]
• Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing^[14]
• In the United Kingdom:
  • National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement, and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3R’s)
  • The Johns Hopkins CAAT Center lists 36 centers around the world whose goal is to carry forward the agenda to find alternatives for animal testing.^[15]

It’s far time the Christian world caught up with the secular world.

It’s far time Christians become the stewards that they profess to be.

It’s far time Christians start acting like Christ.

If you aren’t ready to give up meat and/or dairy, try more humane varieties of such. Skip the grocery store and get grass-fed, pasture-raised beef. Try cage-free eggs^[16] over the regular ones. Start small. In only takes a spark.