For Our Friends the Animals: Cultivating a Reverence for Life (ePub)

For Our Friends the Animals: Cultivating a Reverence for Life.

This little book will change how you regard animals from live pawns to be exploited and abused by humans, to our brothers and sisters, deserving of our compassion and care with an equal right to exist! This book is needed at all times, as in order to save our world we humans must alter our view of other life forms, other creatures on this planet. But right now with so many viruses stemming from abuse of animals, it is critical that we make that alteration immediately. It can only happen through the spirit of Jesus. The audience is anyone who cares about life on this planet, but the audience also includes people who are only concerned with their own lives, as our own survival hinges on how we treat all of God's creatures who live on earth. It is time for churches and all religions to come to the realization that we humans are not the be all and end all of existence; rather, we are but one species, with incredible intelligence and linguistic and organizational skills, that must change our ethical approach to animals, indeed to all life. A new voice is needed to help bring these concerns to the fore, a voice of one who has worked with mistreated animals and who has also worked with human ethics.

This book is dedicated and beholden to the spirit of Jesus Christ. As Albert Schweitzer wrote in The Quest for the Historical Jesus:" But the truth is, it is not Jesus as historically known, but Jesus as spiritually arisen within men, who is significant for our time and can help it. Not the historical Jesus, but the spirit which goes forth from Him and in the spirits of men strives for new influence and rule, is that which overcomes the world...." As far as the author knows this is the first book to be published that attempts to link a biblical/religious underpinning for compassion to animals with the ethos necessary to make that compassion universal: a reverence for life. As stated given that the recent virus and so many others have stemmed from human abuse and misuse of animals, this book is more than timely. It is sorely needed.

The book is at the same time spiritual and didactic. Our goal is to reach out to everyone, including but not at all limited to animal rights groups and animal lovers and religious groups and individuals by demonstrating the linkage between a reverence for life and its biblical and prayerful underpinnings. Our fervent hope is to educate and make clear to all readers and people that a spiritual life and a reverence for life are not mutually contradictory but are rather two sides of the same coin, each one reinforcing and energizing the other. That coin is a love and respect for all God's creations, human and otherwise.

The first portion of the book will provide training and background on the meaning and applicability of a reverence for life. Once that instruction has been received and comprehended, at the conclusion of part one we will provide a pledge for all readers to sign and follow. This signed pledge will afford the reader a bridge to move on and participate in the second part. The second part, while still predicated on passages, prayers, quotations and analysis and argument, will be more practical in outlook, will outline several issues confronting us regarding animal rights and treatment, and will provide ideas and proposed solutions to those problems.

The ultimate aim of this book is a concerted change in how we view animals (adopting a reverence for life as our ethos) followed up with an equally concerted change in our behavior towards animals based on our new ethos. It is our belief that while Dr. Schweitzer's philosophy is indeed the ideal towards which we must strive, it is our acceptance of the underlying spirituality that will provide the impetus to reify that philosophy into habitual action. We humbly invoke the spirit of Jesus to make this happen.