Two opposing gospels are fighting one another for the soul of our nation and, increasingly, the world: the gospel of consumption and the gospel of peace.
Leonard SweetIt would not do for the consumer to know that the hamburger she is eating came from a steer who spent much of his life standing deep in his own excrement in a feedlot, helping to pollute the local streams. Or that the calf that yielded the veal cutlet on her plate spent its life in a box in which it did not have room to turn around. Wendell Berry, "The Pleasures of Eating," What Are People For?, 1989 Jesus pioneered a relationship ethic based on compassion. Being a disciple means building relationships - with the Creator and with all creation and creatures.
Leonard SweetA billion homo sapiens are added every 11 years to the planet. The hypertrophy of a single species pushes other life-forms out of bed and into extinction. The decline of biological diversity is real and severe. The alarming loss of soil fertility, forest cover, and coral reef viability and the release of fossilized CO2 that nature put away 300 million years ago in its march toward greater diversity - all these "losses" and many others are the result of one life-form annihilating other life-forms in its immoral confusion of "dominion" with "domination."
Leonard SweetWhen I am engaging with people of other religious faiths, I find myself unable to commit to their conclusions or agree with their assessments. Yet at the same time I come away encouraged by spiritual truths found in their traditions, thrilled by new insights into my own faith, and more passionate than ever about being a disciple of Christ.
Leonard Sweet