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TREATMENT OF GOD’S ANIMALS TODAY

Every day thousands of animals are systematically and mercilessly abused, tortured and exploited. Animals that have no means of defending themselves are being victimized by the ones that God called to care for them.

Animals are God’s creatures, not human property, nor utilities, nor resources, nor commodities, but precious beings in God’s sight....Christians whose eyes are fixed on the awfulness of crucifixion are in a special position to understand the awfulness of innocent suffering. The Cross of Christ is God’s absolute identification with the weak, the powerless, and the vulnerable, but most of all with unprotected, undefended, innocent suffering (Linzey, All Creation Liberation).

The current plight of animals is heart-breaking to me. Instead of being respected and protected by man, animals are being subjected to cruelty, suffering and oppression. And their suffering is rapidly increasing and is being largely ignored.

What should move our very hearts and sicken us,… is the realization that animals are morally innocent, that they have done no harm. Next they have no power whatever of resisting; it is the cowardice and tyranny of which they are victims which makes their suffering so especially touching... there is something so very dreadful, something so dreadful, so satanic, in tormenting those who have never harmed us and who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power …” (Linzey, Animal Gospel 65).