Animal Rights and Imago Dei

Walter Kaiser Jr. has an interesting short essay on the Zondervan blog concerning the increased push for greater animal rights. He writes:

There is no question that we as human beings do have ethical obligations to not only our fellow beings, but also to those outside our species. That is not in debate, but the question is this: to what level and gauged by what standard of suffering, goodness, or pain do we express that ethical obligation?

Our practice as believers in the Gospel has been to go to Scripture for guidance on such questions. The Scriptures do note the influence of sin on the created order; so much so that the whole creation groans in travail waiting for the release that will come in the Second Advent (Rom 8:20 ff). So final help is one the way! But in the meantime, must we all become vegetarians? And who is to say that plants do not also experience some sort of pain if we are to attribute suffering and pain to all usage of animals for meat as well.

Even if the egg-laying chickens were free-range chickens (meaning not pened up), what about the taking of the male chickens for friers (as in KFC) so that the hens could begin laying with the expenses for their first fifteen weeks paid off by the sacrifice of their male brothers? Must we then give up eating all eggs too! And what about killing cockroches? Other insects? If the imago Dei does not set the boundaries, then where will they be set and by whom? Based on what standard?

Here is an area we must pay more attention to in the coming days, for the gap between mortals made in the Imago Dei and the rest of the creatures of creation continues to become so narrow that one will not be able to set any type of priorities or levels of importance among all the species except for the responsibility of one order of species (mortals) to be responsible to care for all the other levels of creation.

Towards this end I have tried to make an initial contribution in my new book What Does the Lord Require? Preaching and Teaching Biblical Ethics in a chapter on "Factory Farms" and the "Environment." Most of Biblical Ethics have been avoided in the preaching ministry of the Protestant pulpit, but surely here is an area that has been rarely if ever touched. What do you say?

Read the rest.

My comment:

I think the clearest recent example of this type of increased exposure of animal rights is the Michael Vick dog fighting case. Sure, he is a NFL celebrity and worshiped as an idol in our country but think for a second about the fact that Vick could have gotten his girlfriend pregnant and taken her to get an abortion and no one would have cared. Kill some dogs and it's on the national news for months. Am I in favor of killing dogs? Of course not, but I promise you this, if it's my kids or our dog Molly... well, let me just say that there would be way less dog poop to pick up in my backyard.

I wrote a bit about this when the story broke. You can read about it here if you like.