I was brought up in a family that loves all kinds of animals. My husband came from a family that loves animals, too. As you may have expected, we raised our daughter Yumi to love them as well. It did not come as a shock when she told me she wants to be a veterinarian in the future.
My husband and I share two more similar things growing up – we both come from a religious family and we all love to cook and eat “good food,” meaning, “meaty” dishes.
Both of our families have their traditional special recipes that are really mouth-watering because they are prepared in a “labor of love” kind of way. On my side of the family, for instance, we have this spaghetti sauce that is cooked for eight hours. No more, no less. Period. That’s just one of our five traditional recipes. On the side of my in-laws, they have a ham recipe that needs three to four hours of preparation, 10-15 hours of curing, and two to three hours of cooking. They have many more recipes and a lot of them meat dishes. So you may say we are all carnivorous clans.
I grew up in a Roman Catholic family where everyday you are woken up at five in the morning to say the morning prayer. At noon and at six in the evening, you are reminded to pray the Angelus. At three in the afternoon, you are told to pray the Divine Mercy. After the Angelus at six in the evening, we would pray the Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Before you sleep, you are reminded to say your evening prayer. We attend Holy Mass every Sunday and try to have our confessions once every week. I have an aunt who was a nun. My husband has a priest for an uncle and his own mother is a discalced Carmelite sister. So, as you can see, we have pretty much the same background. I guess that’s why we clicked.
Having come from such a background, there’s this question that’s been at the back of my mind for a long time now: is eating animal meat ok with God?
Now we have Google to help us understand better. In my opinion, God prefers us to be vegetarians. If you go back to the readings in the Holy Bible about the time before the “fall of man,” before Adam and Eve first sinned, God did not say He is giving them animals for food. He told them to take care of them, not to eat them.
“Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” (Genesis 1:26-28)
God told them specifically what to have for food. The animals may have the greens for food.
“I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” (Genesis 1:29-30).
It was plants that He was giving for food. It was only after they disobeyed Him and they were sent out of the Garden of Eden that God mentioned that man would see animals as food. But from my understanding, He was simply telling them that all other animals will be fearful of man from then on because man will see most of the animals as food.
“The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you.” (Genesis 9:2-3).
This is the reason why I have resolved to lessen my consumption of animal meat until I can finally come to the point where I no longer have the slightest craving for it. I try to instill this same belief on my daughter.
I was nearly successful when she was in her elementary years. There was a time, I think around three years, that we rarely had meat with our meals. I intentionally cooked meat only twice a week. And I made sure that one of them was fish. It was easy to do this at that time because we were living in our own apartment. We only get to eat more meat when we are at somebody else’s house. Nowadays, it’s hard to keep this up because we no longer have our own place. We are staying with my mother-in-law. We eat the same food as her. Most of the time, we have meat.
If we do get the chance to have our own place again, we will surely go back to trying to lessen our meat cravings. For us, this is how we get to give more honor to God and all his creations. We hope more people will share our view. When most of mankind have this view of the world, I think we will get to see the Garden of Eden once again.
About the Author: Mariana Burgos is a freelance artist. She is a solo parent for 14 years now because she is wife to a desaparacido. She and her daughter are animal lovers and are active in advocating not only human rights but the rights of animals as well.