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An Easter letter to God from the animals… Dear God, Can you please try again? Jeremiah (31:32), Amos (5:21) and Micah (6:7) couldn’t stop them. At first we thought Jesus might. He tried, even a dumb-ass could see that. But not humans! Sure, his followers stopped the slaughter. But why? Not because they realised it was wrong. Wrong to slit our throats to appease their guilt. Not because they realized that we are people too– your people. No, they simply say we weren’t good enough for you! You demanded the flesh of a man- a final sacrifice, a perfect sacrifice. They think nothing of the millions of us who were slain and burned. Then they disdain us! What does it say about you- Butcher, murderer, sadist! While we scream and tremble at the scent of our burning flesh you are pleased by the aroma, so they say. Are they right? Do you delight in butchery? Did you really murder all our kind to obliterate their evil? Why didn’t you take Noah too and be done with them! When will they stop rambling on and on about the rainbow- as if a promise from a genocidal maniac counts for anything? Especially one which delivers us into their hands. Would that we had hands- we would write them a Bible worth reading, not their self-serving travesty! We side with Jeremiah, Amos, Micah. Do his followers forget that he turned the tables in the temple, where our kind were sold for butchery? (Mark 11:15ff)? It was us, “beasts” who were with him forty days in the wilderness, not them (Mk 1:13). He said the temple had come to an end, being overthrown not fulfilled (Mark 13:1)! He said you desired mercy, not sacrifice (Mat 9:13, 12:7)! Do they forget? No? Then how can they think you demanded his sacrifice, or ever wanted ours. Can they ever entertain the idea that you love us, that our lives do not revolve around them? Can they not see how just plain stupid their sacrifices were– stolen from the pagans in their attempts to control you by magic. God try again. They no longer sacrifice us, but only because we are redundant, insufficient, impotent. We want an apology! We want them to read their scriptures. We want mercy, not sacrifice! We need mercy now, on the farms, in the factories, in battery cages, in sow stalls, in the laboratory. A God who would sacrifice his only son is a God who shrugs at such cruelty. Christians must think so, or they wouldn’t participate. It is one thing to be killed and eaten, a fine thing, a necessity. But to suffer so in the meantime! We want mercy, not sacrifice! Yours sincerely, Translated by Jason John March 06 |