Further to the article Christianity and Boundless Love in Vegan Views issue no. 68 (Spring 1995):

It was Constantine and the Christian bishops who met at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325 who decided what was included in and what was excluded from the Bible.

Many of Jesus' original teachings were either adulterated or totally suppressed to court popularity and to make Christianity more acceptable to the masses.

The masses of the day were Pagan, and in the true spirit of Pan, they loved their meat, their hunting, their strong drink and their riotous festivals (This is the reason why the early Church adopted and "Christianised" the pagan festivals].

This is how it all came about and it was downhill all the way from that moment on. There are many in the butchery/livestock export trade, hunting fraternity etc. who we all too readily dismiss as 'evil', yet they are not really so. Rather they are 'products of the age', born of centuries of false spiritual teachings.

The great majority of people receive their spiritual and moral guidance from the Church, and if the Church has substituted the boundless love of true Christianity for the bloody teachings and indifference of Churchianity is it any wonder that the world is awash with cruelty and bloodshed.

Had the Judaeo-Christian tradition that has so influenced and shaped world history and humankind's social development been true to its original ideals (boundless love and the unity of all life), who can say what might have been?

Much of the savagery of the animal kingdom is merely a reflection of the savagery of humans themselves. [It should be remarked here that those animal species inclined to savagery on the earth plane do not retain that savagery in the after-life, where all animal species exist together in peace and harmony.]

Animals are not the cannonfodder the Church would have us believe. They are ensouled beings who incarnate primarily to advance their group soul further up the (spiritual) evolutionary arc. If humans were exemplifying love - as they should be doing - instead of exemplifying cruelty, this would slowly but surely impinge on the consciousness of the various animal species and much of the savagery of the animal kingdom would disappear, the animals returning to their original 'Edenic' state.

I'm sure many of your readers will have, at some time in their lives, befriended a wild animal and they will know, once trust has been gained, how readily they respond to the milk of human kindness.

This reminds me of a personal experience. A few summers ago, the tranquility of my garden was shattered by the arrival of a Jay, a ferocious "killing machine", ferocity the like of which I had never seen before, or since. One day I saw the Jay up in a tree. I sent him a thought of love and mentally said that if he stopped killing the birds I'd feed every time he came to the garden. You may be sceptical, but I kept my promise, the Jay kept his and from that day the killing stopped. The following summer, I witnessed daily the same Jay peaceably feeding and gathering food, side by side with the same sparrows he had been trying so hard to murder the year before. The Jay returned this year, ultimately bringing with him four young ones. So far at least, all peaceable.

Are we not the same? We know no different until we are shown a better, higher way. We cannot change the world single handed, but if we do our best, if we live harmlessly and as kindly as possible, and if we use the precious time allotted to us in giving 'Light' to those in darkness, then we will have rendered the greatest service we are capable of giving and our life will truly have been worthwhile.

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Cross-reference: Religion