We heard God’s covenant with Noah and all living flesh today in our reading from the Hebrew Scriptures. And at first I was contrasting, as I read about how Noah was given all flesh to eat (excepting the blood, the life, which belongs to God), I was contrasting this in my mind with the garden, where Adam was given all the plants to eat. It was only after the fall that people were no longer vegetarians. Eating meat was not part of God’s original plan for us.
And even here, the blood, the life, belongs to God. Human life blood, if taken, is singled out for special retribution. But all life blood is God’s. It is all talked about together in the same context. And God’s covenant is made with all flesh, Noah and his descendants and all living creaatures.
So, we can eat animals. But their lives always belong to God. They are in this sense sacred. And their welbeing is part of our care as God’s stewards of creation. They are not just for our use (and abuse) as we see fit. They have their own place with us in our covenant with God.
The Sunset Juggler (formerly The Dragon's Mouth) 
January 19, 2010 at 8:26 pm
…Human life blood, if taken, is singled out for special retribution…. John, can you say more what you mean by this statement?
January 19, 2010 at 11:01 pm
Susan, I’ll have to look at the passage in the morning to verify this. But my recollection is that there was a specific mention of something like “blood for blood” to be taken from the transgresor if human life was taken.`My memory is not that specific. Other than that (and of course the fact that animals were given to humans to be eaten, so long as the life blood was left for God), as near as I recall, the terms of the covenant were pretty equal for the animals and the humans.
January 20, 2010 at 8:27 am
Ok Susan, I’m looking at the reading now (Genesis 9:1-17 RSV). After talking about the anhimals that can be eaten, God says, “Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.” And then God adds (differentiating people in my mind), “For your lifeblood I will surely require a reckeoning … of every man’s brother I will require the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.”
So there is no retribution for killing and eating animals (only the lifeblood is not to be eaten). But there is retribution (to man and to beast) for taking the lifeblood (killing) a human being, made in the image of God.