Gabriele Letter No. 4
The Word of God, the Law of Love and Unity
and Those of this Earth Without Right
Reading Sample 3
The »Christian« churches have brought only suffering need and death to humans, nature and the animals
Many a reader may ask: Are the churches really those certain accomplices, the calamitous power, which is to blame for everything, including the suffering of animals?
For as long as they have existed, the churches, which consider themselves to be a Christian authority, have brought only suffering, need and death to mankind, nature and the animals. We only need to think of the Crusades, of the Middle Ages, of the burning of so-called witches; we only need to think of slavery and the last massacre of Orthodox Serbians by Catholic Croatians in Yugoslavia between 1941 and 1943.
<<<<<<< pict >>>>>>>>>>
The fascist dictator Ante Pavelic (right) and the Papal Nuntius Marcone
(middle) understood each other very well and worked closely together.
(picture: Ahrimann Verlag, Freiburg)
The church institutions also condone so-called defensive wars and war on the animals, the murder of animals. They have betrayed the teachings of Jesus by doing the opposite of what Jesus taught. They mixed the clear teachings of the Nazarene with pagan rituals. In the teletext of a German public television company, ARD, the following could be read under the heading From All Over the World:
"In Haiti Voodoo is recognized as a religion. About 200 years after Haiti became independent, Voodoo was recognized as an official religion. President Jean Bertrant Aristide issued a corresponding decree. Voodoo was to be made equal by law to the Christian denomination. Three fourths of Haiti’s eight million inhabitants are considered adherents of the Voodoo cult. It is a polytheistic religion, which the ancestors of present-day inhabitants, abducted as slaves from Africa, brought with them in the 18th century and mixed with Christian elements."
The teachings of Jesus have truly nothing at all to do with the "Christian elements" in Voodoo! They are elements from the church institutions that mixed and blended their pagan cult rituals with the teachings of Jesus, the Christ. The Brockhaus Encyclopedia gives the following information: "In Voodoo, elements of the religions brought by the black slaves from West Africa since the 16th century are melded with Catholicism ... Worshipped are ... divine beings from African conception, which were transferred in part to Catholic saints as their character traits."
The whole combination of rituals is then partially carried out under the
name of »Christian«. Such and similar
statements as those that say that the Voodoo religion contains Christian
elements show how the teachings of Jesus, the Christ, have been twisted.
That the churches are perpetrators of the misery, the suffering and the
killing of animals was also determined at the beginning of the 1990s by
theology professor Dr. Erich Gräßer, former professor of New Testament
theology at the University of Bonn and presently a member of the theology
faculty at the University of Greifswald. In a lecture, he refers to a
statement made by the former President of the German Animal Protection
Society, Dr. Andreas Grasmüller, in which he said that animal protection is
no ground for joy, but rather reason to feel ashamed that we need it at all.
This shame, according to the theologian, is not shared by the Christian
churches. "What about church and animal protection? When the history of
our church is written one day, the topic of ‘church and animal protection’
during the 20th century will present just as black a chapter as the topic of
‘church and the burning of witches’ once did in the Middle Ages. And just as
the churches failed in the 19th century regarding social questions and drove
the workers out of the churches, so do they fail today regarding the
protection of animals and nature and drive animal protectors out of the
churches. For the churches do not consider themselves responsible for animal
protection".
Professor Gräßer then goes into the history of this church contempt for
animals: "Where does this forgetting of animals in the churches come
from? Well, it is based on the fact that ethics, theological as well as
philosophical, thinks it has to concern itself only with the behavior of
people toward people and toward society". Professor Gräßer cites Albert
Schweitzer, who once said that Europeans thinkers are like persnickety
housewives who "watch that no animals run around in their ethics".
Gräßer added to this: "What it brings out in the way of foolishness, in
order to uphold traditional pettiness and make it into a principle, borders
on the incredulous. Either it leaves out compassion for animals entirely, or
sees to it that it shrivels up into a meaningless residue. What we are
experiencing today is a precisely calculated, cleverly developed and
terrible, infernal game that degrades into animal machines the animals meant
for slaughter in factory farming. The excess of eggs, meat and butter that
western prosperous societies produce in this way is paid by the torture of
animals that is unworthy of human beings. In contrast to this atrocity that
is practiced everywhere without punishment, Albert Schweitzer’s ethics of
reverence before life reads like a message from another planet. And a church
that remains silent in the face of all this is thus declaring the bankruptcy
of its sermon of mercy!" (Source: Work Group Against Vivisection,
Interlaken, Switzerland)
Clear words by an independently thinking Christian, who understood what Jesus, the Christ, wanted, what He taught and what responsibility every true Christian faces!
Furthermore, Prof. Gräßer poses other critical questions, which also give every contemporary as well as many a church Christian impetus to think on their own or could even let them see the light. For example:
"What do we know of the historical Jesus? What kind of sources do we have? ... Should we pay no attention to history but merely to testimonials of belief? Will the believer even turn into the non-believer when he depends on historical knowledge? Moreover: Is the historical Jesus the measure of all things, or with His pronouncements does he merely belong to the prerequisites of theology of the New Testament?"
The results of the historical-critical research regarding the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth are not known to me. But there is a work, in which He, Christ, who walked over this Earth as Jesus, reports about this Himself in great detail. It is called "This Is My Word. Alpha and Omega. The Gospel of Jesus. The Christ-Revelation which meanwhile has become known to true Christians the world over".
Gräßer also tosses out the interesting question:
"What is valid: Jesus and Paul, or Jesus or Paul?"
Back to the topic of animal protection in statements made by representatives of the churches. It has meanwhile begun to dawn on some of them that the contempt of animals introduced by their institution crassly contradicts the commandments of God. An example of this is the Protestant-Lutheran church councilor Helmut Breit, who in a program of the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation entitled On a Word, pointed out the sad fate of the animals, as takes place daily many times on our roads:
"The car’s headlights hardly pick it up. In the middle of the road lies a small hedgehog* that has been run over. Flattened by countless tires, one can no longer recognize its cute shape. I am reminded of the story of the hare and the hedgehog, in which the hedgehog, being the cleverer one, tricks the hare and in the end is the victor. But he has no chance against human beings.
What in nature can stand up to human beings at all? ‘Did it die immediately?’ I ask myself. Did it, the hedgehog, know what hit it? Does it have a family, perhaps children? Do they even notice that a parent is missing? You might say strange questions. A hedgehog! How many people are dying in traffic accidents all the time?
Is a human being worth more than a hedgehog? Of course, in self-estimation everyone will affirm this. But that is our mistake, our mistaken way of thinking. Life is always equal in value. Christians should know this. God is my Creator and he was the Creator of this dead hedgehog. Reverence before life, as Albert Schweitzer once said. He was right. Reverence before life. In the Bible, it says that nature sighs under mankind and longingly awaits redemption, including this hedgehog." (from Igel Bulletin (Hedgehog Bulletin), No. 9, May 1993)
The thoughtlessness with which man interferes in the life of his fellow man and his fellow creatures, the animals, is truly amazing. Impassively, he uses his neighbors and his second neighbors for his own purposes. According to what is needed, he takes pieces of their bodies, for example, to artificially prolong the existence on this Earth of a human being who is approaching his end – paying no attention to whether this was foreseen for his life plan and whether the patient can meaningfully and gainfully make use of his additional years on Earth at all, when considering it in view of his eternal life.
At this time, complaints are being made that more and more pathogens, viruses that trigger severe epidemics in mankind, have been transferred to people from certain kinds of animals – a development that leaves medicine and science helpless and worried. But let us remember: Who was it then, who began to override the natural barriers between the organisms of humans and animals, for example, through organ transplants?
The churches condone organ transplants. How much this approval violates the laws of God is meanwhile beginning to occur to many a theologian. And so, Doctor of Theology Erhard Meier, lecturer for religious science at the Universities of Hildesheim and Kiel and instructor at Catholic and Protestant-Lutheran academies and adult education centers, who has intensely explored the ethics of animal protection, determined in a lecture:
"The Vatican (Academy for Life) has no fundamental reservations against the transplantation of organs from animals to human beings.” In the following position taken by Meiers, it says: “I reject as unconscionable the transplantation of an organ, (for example, a heart), from a dead pig to a sick human being. Human beings may not encroach upon the life of other fellow creatures in a blinded pose of power, just simply because animals are defenseless. This is forbidden by the Holy Scriptures, which also call for the protection of the respectively weak and weakest.
The fundamental spiritual feature of the Bible can be seen in the event of Christ: birth, life, works, death, resurrection, ascension and return as the Son of God, Jesus, the Christ, that is, as the Messiah, the return of the Lamb of God, that we will worship. Here, an encompassing story of salvation is revealed by God to us, which holds true for the salvation of all creatures. In Romans 8:18ff, as well as in the Apocalypse, is plainly expressed what the fundamental spiritual feature of this revelation is, namely, the observation of the mysteries of life in and of themselves – and the turn of this condition of need, so that living creatures bow to one another in loving conviction.
As a human being, I have no right to claim the organ of an animal (or of another human being) for myself, since every single creature bears the mystery of life, in which we all have an EQUAL share. Particularly in view of the endless far-reaching and dark transgressions of human beings (terrorism, etc.), it is now time to look within and to become clear as to WHO WE HUMAN BEINGS ARE: with a dignity that we do not have of ourselves, but by the grace of God alone ..."
The résumé of the religion scientist: "I plead for reflection, analysis, meditation, asceticism, prayer, vegetarianism ..."
Meier’s closing words are worth thinking about: "True quality of life and joy bring our eyes to the already present beauties of the creation of God."
* He is referring to a very small and cute European animal which has quills like American hedgehogs or porcupines, but is nowhere near as large. We know the story referred to as the “Tortoise and the Hare.”
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