IF your life is RULED by Scripture, then no doubt it is not on a "Chinese Menu" basis where you just pick and choose those elements you want to honor and ignore all others. Yes?
If so, no doubt you will be enjoined to "love all others" (or something similar, in most religions), and since Zoologists call humans "mammals", you would recognize at least dogs, cats, horses, lions etc as relevant "others". Yes?
Alternatively, if you consider all scriptures as just so much
hogwash and myth, then you would not care in the slightest what the scriptures said, and would make up your own mind about how you treated animals. If like many, you saw all the world around you as just a succession of dollar signs, you would have no problem in hunting whales for dog meat and using dogs (particularly the very tasty yellow ones) as fitting items for your table (as in many better Chinese restaurants). Yes?
And if you had acquired a tract of Amazonian jungle you would not have the slightest qualms about clear-cutting it, killing all the creatures living therein and turning it into grazing land for beef cattle to serve up the necessary raw material for those 99 cent burgers. Yes?
OR, IF YOU HAVE A HEART (or at least you are slightly aware of your heart-feeling) you would have some reverence for THAT WHICH IS LIVING YOU (and everything else) RIGHT NOW, since you do not beat your own heart. Yes?
So you simple place yourself somewhere in this continuum and go out and meet the animals and living things of this world with an outstretched hand and open heart or a machete in one hand and an AK-47 in the other, and a tight-shut cold as near-dead heart. Yes?
Namaste!
Jim |
