If only people would read the Bible as it is rather than through the vista of Latin
fathers or Puritan reformers! We are still making the Word of God of none effect by the
traditions of men.

Yes, and I sense we are still, from a moral point of view, 'picking out gnats while
we swallow camels'. We engineer a whole host of discussion over liturgies and ministries
while we swallow, hook, line and sinker, man's exploitation of God's creation.

We fail to realise that what we sow as a race and species, we will undoubtedly reap. We
have failed utterly to learn that life is basically sacred and interdependent, that to harm a
part is ultimately to harm the whole.

God gave us human life and expects us to use it as faithful stewards within the
world for which He gave His Son. Yet we exploit and abuse the larger part of creation
using might as power.

We cram hens into cages where they are distorted into egg producing robots. We
might even feed them with pellets containing their own excreta, if not the remains of their
fellow creatures; and then we wonder why salmonella breaks out, why fresh killer
diseases are on the increase. We might even have the audacity to question the justice of
God in allowing us to suffer such retribution.

We perpetrate the horrific practice of vivisection and, paradoxically, expect
physical health to come from moral sickness, good to be the reward for evil.

Christendom's prayers are confined to human need. and as for the animals which
God cared for in His Ark and made two covenants, the churches have been unanimous in
booting them out Yet the prime analogy He gave of Himself so that others might
recognize Him, is in terms of the ways a righteous man cares for the helpless of another
species entrusted to his care.

Thankfully, a change is slowly coming. A newer generation which no longer
interprets 'immorality' solely in sexual terms but with far more relevant priorities is
rising; yes, to blacken today's hypocrisy as we blacken yesterday's which piously read its
family Bible, worshipped, condemned the illegitimate, concealed the imbecile, covered
each female leg and condoned children being sent up chimneys and down mines.

From similar blatant hypocrisy may the Good Shepherd deliver us!

Sentiment towards animal suffering is more than futile unless it leads to action. It's no
better than the Victorians who loved to 'weep buckets' over a melodrama in the music
hail — but then, on their way home, they'd pass the street urchins without giving them
a second glance.