In this deeply personal and thought-provoking reflection, Dr Daniela Rizzo, Lecturer in Systematic Theology at Alphacrucis University College, explores how childhood concern for a beloved cat became the starting point for a wider theological journey. Challenging visions of salvation centred on escape from creation, she argues for a richer Christian hope rooted in the healing and renewal of all that God has made.
In The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien imagines a world of hobbits, wizards, forests and ancient powers. Among its most memorable creatures are the Ents: tree-like beings who act as shepherds and guardians of the forests.
The most famous of them is Treebeard. When the hobbits Merry and Pippin encounter him, they meet a being whose speech belongs to an older, slower world. His words are not efficient. They do not rush towards usefulness. They grow, like roots beneath the soil, from memory, place and long attention. To speak too quickly, in Treebeard’s world, is almost to fail to speak truthfully.
This is part of what makes the Ents so compelling. They are not voiceless, but their voices do not fit the pace of those around them. They require patience. They require humility. They require listeners willing to be slowed down.
When we look into the frightened eyes of an intensively farmed animal, what do we see?
Speaking at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Humanities Forum, the philosopher Slavoj Žižek gives an unsettling answer. We might assume that the question concerns animal consciousness: what does the animal feel, know, fear or understand? But Žižek turns the question around. The deeper question is not only what we see in the animal, but what the animal’s gaze reveals about us. In the gaze of the frightened animal, Žižek says, ‘you see your own monstrosity.’
In Blade Runner 2049, there is a quiet, unsettling scene in which a replicant, an engineered being designed for labour, is told that his memories are not his own. They have been implanted. Manufactured. He is, in every meaningful sense, a product. And yet, as the film unfolds, it becomes increasingly difficult to sustain that description. He feels. He longs. He suffers. He hopes.
The world of Blade Runner 2049 is built on a contradiction: beings who are treated as things, yet cannot help but appear as lives.
A similar tension runs through Ex Machina. Ava, an artificial intelligence embodied in a humanoid form, is confined behind glass, observed, tested, evaluated. The question posed by her creator is clinical: can she convincingly simulate consciousness? But the question that emerges for the viewer is far more troubling: what kind of person can look at a being like this and see only an object?
These films are not really about the future. They are about us. They ask, with disarming clarity, what it is that allows human beings to recognise, or to refuse to recognise, life.
And that question is not abstract. It presses urgently upon us, here and now.
On Easter morning, church bells ring and Christians greet one another with ancient words: Christ is risen.
We gather in light after darkness. We speak of life after death. We proclaim hope stronger than the grave.
Yet on the same morning, in the same country, slaughterhouses are operating as usual. Lambs are processed for seasonal demand. Chickens move along mechanised lines. Bodies become units. Units become products. Products become part of the Easter table. For most of us, these realities never meet. Resurrection belongs to church. Slaughter belongs somewhere else.
But what does resurrection mean in a world of slaughterhouses?
Christmas is a season of abundance. Tables groan under food. Kitchens fill with the familiar smells of roasting, herbs and spice. Families gather, traditions are honoured, and we reassure ourselves that this is what celebration looks like.
And yet Christmas tells another story.
It is the story of a God who enters the world quietly and without excess. A child born among animals, not above them (Luke 2:7). A saviour whose first bed is a feeding trough, whose arrival is announced not to the powerful but to shepherds keeping watch through the night. Christmas does not begin with triumph, but with vulnerability.
Which raises an unsettling question, one we rarely ask amid the festivities:
What would Jesus eat for Christmas?
Every November, millions of people around the world take part in World Vegan Month — a time to celebrate plant-based living and to reflect on our relationship with animals and the planet. For Christians, it offers more than a dietary challenge or lifestyle trend. It’s an opportunity to rediscover a deep current of compassion running through Scripture — a call to live in greater harmony with all God’s creatures.
Created for peace: animals in God’s story
From the very first chapter of Genesis, animals are not an afterthought but integral to creation’s goodness. God delights in the living world, blessing the animals and calling them “good” before humanity ever arrives on the scene. When humankind is created and given dominion over the earth, the same passage also sets a boundary — humans are to eat from the plants and trees (Genesis 1:29). Dominion, therefore, cannot mean domination. It is stewardship rooted in service, responsibility, and reverence.
After the Flood, God renews His covenant not only with Noah but with “every living creature of all flesh” (Genesis 9:12). The rainbow covenant is striking in its scope: it embraces sparrow and serpent, ox and whale, as well as humankind. God’s promises extend beyond the human family, revealing that animals are included in the moral and spiritual concern of the Creator.
The prophets envision the same truth in the language of hope. Isaiah imagines a time when “the wolf shall dwell with the lamb” and the earth shall be “full of the knowledge of the Lord” (Isaiah 11). This peaceable vision — echoed in Hosea and Revelation — portrays creation restored to its original harmony. In that kingdom, predation and fear are no more. To live toward such a vision is to align ourselves with God’s ultimate will for creation: reconciliation, not exploitation.
Christ and the creatures
Jesus’ ministry embodies that reconciling love. When challenged about healing on the Sabbath, He reminds His critics that anyone would rescue an animal fallen into a pit — for mercy outweighs rule-keeping (Matthew 12:11). His teaching assumes compassion for animals as natural and obvious. Elsewhere He points to God’s care for even the smallest of birds: “Not one of them is forgotten before God.”
The Lord’s frequent use of animal imagery — sheep, birds, vines, foxes — rests upon the real worth of those creatures. His description of Himself as the Good Shepherd presupposes that shepherds are meant to love and protect their flocks. A metaphor that comforted His listeners only makes sense if compassion for animals was itself a moral good. The shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep reflects divine love that extends through all living beings.
Throughout Christian history, this theme of compassion has never been lost. St Francis of Assisi spoke tenderly of “our brothers the birds” and called the sun, moon, and animals his kin. St Isaac the Syrian wrote that a merciful heart “burns with love for all creation: for people, for birds, for animals, even for demons.” More recently, C. S. Lewis condemned needless cruelty to animals as a betrayal of Christian conscience, reminding his readers that sentience itself demands moral regard.
In all these voices runs a common conviction: to follow Christ is to grow in mercy, and mercy cannot be confined to our own species.
Naming the wound
If the biblical and spiritual vision is one of harmony, the reality of modern animal agriculture reveals how far we have strayed. Each year tens of billions of land animals — and far more fish — are bred and slaughtered in industrial systems that prioritise profit over compassion.
Hens are confined to cages so small they cannot spread their wings. Pigs are kept in metal crates where they cannot turn around. Chickens are bred to grow so rapidly their legs buckle under their own weight. Many animals endure painful mutilations without anaesthetic and suffer immense stress and illness before slaughter.
Even those who rarely think about animal welfare instinctively recoil from such scenes. As philosopher Alastair Norcross once noted, if any neighbour were discovered keeping puppies in such conditions, the community would be horrified. Yet these same methods are routinely accepted when the victims are chickens or pigs.
Factory farming also harms people: it damages the environment, spreads zoonotic disease, and leaves workers traumatised by the conditions they witness. As Christians called to love both neighbour and creation, we cannot turn away. To inflict suffering on sentient creatures, when alternatives abound, contradicts the very heart of the Gospel.
Practising mercy this World Vegan Month
World Vegan Month offers a simple invitation: to align our daily habits more closely with our faith. Mercy can begin at the table.
Personally, you might try a vegan month as an act of discipleship — a spiritual discipline that joins compassion with gratitude. It needn’t be about perfection, but intention: choosing foods that honour life, seeking nourishment without harm, and discovering that plant-based meals can be joyful, abundant, and good for body and soul.
Within households and churches, November can become a season of creative hospitality:
- Host a plant-rich bring-and-share lunch or fellowship meal that celebrates God’s provision from the earth.
- Share vegan recipes through church newsletters or social media.
- Offer prayers of thanksgiving for creation and blessings for animals, echoing the covenant with “all flesh.”
- Encourage sermons or study groups exploring the biblical vision of peace between species.
Such practices can help Christians see that food choices are not trivial but deeply spiritual — expressions of love, justice and hope.
At an institutional level, churches and Christian organisations might review catering policies or move towards “default-veg” events where plant-based options are the norm. They can champion sustainable food systems, support local growers, and speak prophetically about compassion in agriculture. In a world where the poor are often most harmed by environmental damage, these steps also serve human justice.
A witness to the peaceable kingdom
Christianity has always proclaimed that creation is not ours to consume, but God’s to cherish. Each act of mercy, each choice to eat or live more gently, is a small sign of the kingdom Christ proclaimed — a world where every creature has its place and none are forgotten.
This November, as the wider world celebrates World Vegan Month, the Church has a chance to bear distinctive witness: to live out the covenant of peace with all living things. Our plates can become altars of thanksgiving; our meals, signs of God’s future. In turning away from unnecessary cruelty, we turn toward the One whose mercy is over all His works.
As the psalmist writes, “The Lord is good to all; His compassion is over all that He has made.” (Psalm 145:9)
May this compassion guide our hearts, our tables, and our witness — not only this month, but always.
St Francis of Assisi has long inspired Christians to see animals not as lesser beings, but as beloved fellow creatures—brothers and sisters under God. In this timely and thought-provoking article, Dr Daniela Rizzo, Associate Lecturer in Systematic Theology at Alphacrucis University College, Sydney, invites us to rediscover the radical implications of St Francis’ vision in the face of environmental crisis, mass extinction and theological neglect of non-human life.
In glossy adverts and sizzling billboards, meat is rarely just food. It is sex, power, and desire on a plate.
Fast-food chains, steakhouse commercials, and celebrity chefs sell meat through the language of lust: dripping juices, flesh torn apart, women seductively holding burgers.
As Carol J. Adams observes in her seminal work The Sexual Politics of Meat, meat advertising often sexualises both the flesh and the act of consumption itself, portraying meat-eating as an assertion of dominance, virility, and entitlement. This is no accident. Adams argues that meat is marketed to stimulate lust—not only for the food itself, but for what it represents: power, conquest, and status. In this light, our culture’s insatiable appetite for meat is not simply about satisfying hunger—it is about craving, addiction, and fantasies of dominance over others, both animal and human.
Modern fast food culture further fuels this dynamic by engineering products to reach the so-called “bliss point”—a calculated balance of animal fats, salt, and sugars that maximises desire and suppresses satiety. The result is not just nourishment, but a deliberately addictive form of consumption.
This modern phenomenon might seem far removed from the ancient world of the Bible. Yet when we turn to Deuteronomy 12, we find something remarkable: the Bible itself uses the language of lust, craving, and disordered desire when speaking of meat-eating. Far from celebrating the consumption of animal flesh, the Hebrew Scriptures frame it as a reluctant concession to human lust—a dangerous craving that must be carefully regulated, not enthusiastically indulged.
This ancient insight speaks with unsettling relevance to our flesh-obsessed, consumption-addicted culture today.
The Edenic Diet: Before Lust, There Was Peace
To understand Deuteronomy 12, we must first place it within the broader sweep of biblical narrative.
The Bible begins not with slaughter but with peace. The opening chapters of Genesis depict Eden as a plant-based paradise. God’s provision for both humans and animals is clear: “I give you every seed-bearing plant… They will be yours for food” (Genesis 1:29–30). There is no death, no bloodshed, no butchery. As Martin Luther once wrote, in this Edenic world, the killing of animals would have been considered an “abomination.”
This original harmony is shattered by human rebellion in Genesis 3. As sin enters the world, violence and death become part of the human condition. Only after the Flood, when arable agriculture had been destroyed, does God extend permission for humans to eat animals (Genesis 9).
Even so, the tone of the permission is sombre and laced with warnings: “The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal… for your own lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning” (Genesis 9:2, 5). Notably, this permission lacks the divine affirmation that it was “good,” let alone “very good,” which accompanied the plant-based diet of Genesis 1.
Deuteronomy 12: The Meat of Lust
It is in this context that Deuteronomy 12 must be read.
At first glance, the passage appears to give Israelites wide freedom to slaughter and eat meat outside the sacrificial system, avoiding its strict welfare regulations. They are told: “When the Lord your God enlarges your territory… you may eat meat whenever you desire” (Deuteronomy 12:20). On the surface, this seems generous—even celebratory.
Yet beneath the English translation lies a darker current.
The Hebrew text repeatedly uses forms of the verb ’avah (אָוָה), connoting lust, craving, and unruly desire. This is no neutral term for appetite. It is the same root used in Genesis 3:6 to describe Eve’s desire for the forbidden fruit, in Numbers 11 when the Israelites lusted after meat in the wilderness, and in Psalm 78:30 where their craving provoked divine judgment.
Indeed, Numbers 11 offers the most sobering parallel. When the Israelites cried out for meat, God gave them quail in abundance—but followed it with a deadly plague. The place was named Kibroth Hattaavah—“the graves of lust”—a stark reminder of where disordered desires can lead.
Many Jewish commentators recognise this theme running through Deuteronomy 12. Richard H. Schwartz, quoting Torah scholar Nehama Leibowitz, describes the passage as a “barely tolerated dispensation” to slaughter animals if we cannot resist temptation. Some Jewish communities still refer to such meat as b’sar ta’avah—“meat of lust”—a telling phrase that casts such consumption in a morally ambiguous light.
Far from celebrating meat-eating, Deuteronomy 12 offers a regulated outlet for a dangerous human craving—meant to prevent even worse consequences, such as idolatrous sacrifices or violent rebellion.
Biblical Restrictions: A Curb on Human Appetite
The broader Torah reinforces this sobering picture. The sacrificial system itself was highly restrictive. Slaughter could only take place at the central cultic site, overseen by priests. The blood—representing life—was never to be consumed but poured out in recognition of life’s sanctity. Fat, the most flavourful part of the animal, was forbidden to the people and reserved for God alone.
Even the method of cooking was regulated. Boiling, not roasting, was prescribed—producing a gristly, unappealing stew. Roasted meat, which melts fats and produces sugars through caramelisation (creating the bliss point exploited by modern fast-food chains), was viewed with suspicion. The sons of Eli were condemned for demanding roasted meat—an act that revealed not only greed, but sacrilege (1 Samuel 2:12–17).
These laws served not only to ensure ritual purity and minimise cruelty, but also to curb human lust for animal flesh. It may have been necessary to slaughter animals to maintain a balanced herd, but eating their flesh was carefully regulated—to reduce harm to animals and to humans alike.
A Pattern of Concession, Not Celebration
Throughout the Old Testament, we see a pattern emerge: certain actions—kingship, slavery, divorce, war brides, and indeed meat-eating—are permitted by God not because they are good, but because of human hardness of heart.
Jesus himself identifies this pattern when he tells the Pharisees that Moses permitted divorce “because your hearts were hard”—but it was not so from the beginning (Matthew 19:8). The same could be said of meat-eating.
Even within Deuteronomy, the permission to eat meat is framed by language of lust, desire, and rebellion. It is a tolerated practice within a fallen world—carefully controlled to limit the damage it causes to animals, to people, and to the covenant community.
From Concession to Compassion: A Prophetic Trajectory
The trajectory of Scripture moves beyond these reluctant concessions toward a vision of peace, harmony, and reconciliation with all creatures.
The prophets envision a world where swords are beaten into ploughshares—and, significantly, not into slaughter knives. The wolf lies down with the lamb (Isaiah 11:6). The New Testament speaks of creation groaning for liberation (Romans 8:19–21), and Christ’s work is described as reconciling “all things” in heaven and on earth (Colossians 1:20).
In this eschatological light, the Bible’s reluctant permissions are not the last word. They point instead to God’s accommodation to human weakness—while gently urging us toward mercy, compassion, and peace.
A Forgotten Theology for a Hungry World
In our age of industrial animal agriculture, climate crisis, and unprecedented violence against animals, the ancient warnings about meat of lust feel tragically relevant. Unlike the subsistence farming of the Bible, slaughter is no longer necessary in wealthy nations.
Our culture’s voracious appetite for meat is rarely framed as lust—yet the parallels to biblical warnings are hard to miss: mass suffering, environmental devastation, and the commodification of life itself.
Far from outdated, this neglected thread of Scripture may offer the Church a prophetic voice in our food-sick, consumption-addicted world. It may call us not to judgment or legalism, but to humility, restraint, and a rediscovery of animals—not as meat, but as fellow creatures of God’s love.
Perhaps it’s time the Church dared to question the products on supermarket shelves and ask: Is this ‘meat of lust’? And if so, is this really what God desires for his people?
About the Author
This article was written by a member of the Sarx staff team, with grateful acknowledgment to Dr Philip J. Sampson FOCAE for his scholarly insight.
Dr Sampson is a writer and lecturer on animals and animal ethics. His publications include Animal Ethics and the Nonconformist Conscience (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); “The Ethics of Eating in ‘Evangelical’ Discourse: 1600–1876,” in Ethical Vegetarianism and Veganism, eds. Andrew Linzey and Clair Linzey (Routledge, 2018) and “Evangelical Christianity: Lord of Creation or Animal among Animals?” in The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Animal Ethics (Routledge, 2018).
Dr Daniela Rizzo, Associate Lecturer in Systematic Theology at Alphacrucis University College, Sydney, explores the presence of the Spirit within the animal world in this beautifully reflective piece. Drawing on her research in animal theology and pneumatology, Dr Rizzo invites us to reimagine the creatures around us as vital participants in God’s living world, animated and sustained by the breath of God.
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