And John Baird, when he came to show the first television camera to the Royal Society, they laughed at him and though that he was conning them.

William Harvey’s discovery of blood circulation caused the scientists of his day to doubt him too.

Lots of things we now take for granted were once considered a little mad. Probably, indeed, all of them, and sometimes more than just a little. That alone should make us cautious in our judgements regarding anything really. Humility is probably the first lesson the history teaches us.

It is always incredibly hard to see ourselves as others see us. It is almost impossible to step outside our own cultural conditioning, though a few people do; it is equally almost impossible to step outside of our time in history and see how others who come later might regard us. Aristotle was a genius, but even he, according to Marx, was a man of his time – he took slavery for granted.  And lots of people, and I include myself to be honest, are a bit vague or at least inconsistent in their concern for animals.

It is the fate of every truth to be the object of ridicule when it is first acclaimed.

So I should, when I come to think about my position on animal welfare, exercise not only caution, but humility. The future might well say I am wrong.

And every good idea was once considered by many to be a bad or whacky idea; every new thought, every radical vision, was once scoffed for its lack of realism and pragmatism; or dismissed as idealistic and unworkable, or simply judged insane and possibly demonic.

They scoffed at Jesus’ idealism, didn’t they, when he too said the impossible was possible, the absurd was true:  ‘You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!” But just three days later…..

If we think of animals and how human beings have regarded them, we see too that it is the case that at different points in history great thinkers – but thinkers of their time – have often had very little regard for animal welfare; and others, who tried to swim against the tide, were mocked. Every truth has been ridiculed.

Thomas Aquinas thought it was right and proper to use animals because they could not, he said, reason. For him, and many of his time, the only problem with mistreating animals would be if they belong to someone else – the sin is not against the animal, but against its owner, a bit like the code of slavery. He thought, again, like many others, that the only danger to mistreating animals was that it might somehow desensitize human beings and make them more inclined to mistreat their fellow humans.  In defence of this kind of view that gives animals no intrinsic value, Aquinas, like many before and since, quoted the Bible, Genesis – specifically chapter 9, verse 3.

“Everything that moves and lives shall be food to you.”

For him the Godly principle of dominion meant very much the human idea of domination. Humans remained at the very centre of his reasoning.

There have been some incredible exceptions of course. Once St Francis was considered a madman for his humble regard for and affinity with all of God’s creation.  – nowadays most I think would regard him as someone who was way ahead of his time.

But generally, as we look back through the history of animal welfare, human beings – Christian and non-Christian alike – have placed themselves as categorically at the centre of the moral universe as astrologers, before Copernicus, placed the earth at the centre of the physical universe.

In short, we treat animals as though we were God; as though we rightly had the power of life and death over creation. And in part that is due to a fundamental misunderstanding of the key Genesis principles of stewardship and dominion; stewardship means to care for something or someone on behalf of someone else and to be accountable for the quality of that care; we have often forgotten the element of accountability to God. And dominion means right use of power within the context of responsibility; it does not mean throwing our weight around, which is the idea behind domination.

Sometimes, as I have said, we human beings have acted as though we are God – as though we see so clearly, understand so completely, we could not possibly be wrong; I would say that is never more so than in our relation to the created order, including animals. Andrew Linzey powerfully argues this point in his book, Animal Gospel. He puts it this way – in order to see animals differently, in order to better comprehend our obligations of stewardship and dominion, we need to see the Gospel more clearly and see ourselves differently.

He says simply: ‘Sometimes I think the most important contribution the Gospel can make to our thinking about the world is the simple fact that we are not God’

We are servants of God, stewards of his creation, we are not here to exploit or, as Linzey puts it, to usurp God’s role as Lord of creation, thereby giving ourselves the power of life and death over all; we have to shed the idea that it is our creation, that we can do what we wish with it, that it is entirely for our benefit. We are stewards and we are answerable to God.

Now I said the Bible tells us clearly how we should honour and care for animals. Yes it does. Christ is God revealed to the world. And Christ came to speak and to embody God’s love for the poor, the dispossessed, those who cannot, for whatever reason, defend themselves. Any indifference to animal suffering is an indication that we have not, as Linzey puts it, allowed the Gospel of Christ to speak to us as we should. He says, ‘we have failed to see the face of the Crucified in the faces of suffering animals. We have not allowed the Gospel of Christ to interpret the world of innocent suffering and so have helped to create the very climate in which the Gospel is dismissed as irrelevant to the messy and tragic world of suffering, both human and non-human’

Put another way – if we fail to see the face of Jesus in the suffering of all creation, both humans and animals, then we Christians; we, not secular society, make Christ and the Cross irrelevant.

Remember the famous passage from Isaiah – it embodies the potential of all creation to reflect and embody God’s grace and goodness.

The wolf will live with the lamb,
    the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling^[a] together;
    and a little child will lead them.

It is idealistic. But we are called to idealism.

Integrity requires that if we are presented with an ideal, we don’t just shrug it off as beyond our grasp but we do everything in our power to live up to it if we can. We may fail, we may make mistakes, but the crucial point is that we own the ideal and we try. And the Gospel demands that if we are presented with a vision of love, and compassion, we should aspire to it. Not simply pay it lip service.

Linzey argues that this is what it means to follow Christ, to be fully committed to the true principles of Christian service and sacrifice as Jesus was; to be obedient to God the creator and recognize the Lordship of God the Creator, as Jesus did, to speak up for, as Jesus did, the parts of God’s creation that cannot speak for themselves, be they human or animal.

What does this mean for us – well, I suspect most of you here have a quite high regard for animals. You treat your pets incredibly well, and you would never I know be unkind. But do we honour all animals as belonging to God, not just the ones we have adopted? Do we care equally about the wellbeing of those in the wild, those that are less appealing to our human sensibilities, those we farm, those that are out of sight and out of mind; those that don’t share our homes? Do we see the face of Christ Crucified in every oppressed and marginalized, every enslaved creature of God, human or not?

That is what we need to do; and when we do, we will be true stewards of this world, and better for it:

Martin Luther King,

‘One day the absurdity of the almost universal belief in the slavery of other animals will be palpable. Then we shall have discovered our souls and become worthier of sharing this planet with them.’ (MLK)

Finally…

If only animals could speak what would they say? Thank you for all you do; thank you for caring about all of God’s creation; thank you for not judging me because I don’t have big doleful eyes, or opposing thumbs, and I can’t be trained to shake hands or write poetry. Or would they say why? Why have you let me become extinct, why do I matter less because I am not a favoured pet? What would God say?

The famous Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said if lions could speak we would still not understand them. He had a view of language which was that it was a kind of game – he called it the language game. Communities learn shared sounds for shared experiences. If you didn’t have the same experiences you wouldn’t know or need to know the same words. His point was that the experience of life of a lion or any other species is so removed from the life of a human we could never communicate in any meaningful way.

Perhaps he had never read The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe. In that series Aslan speaks in a mighty way and we all understand – Aslan represents Jesus.

But in the normal course of things, away from Narnia, Wittgenstein said the experience of life for animals and humans is so different they could never share any real information. They would speak different languages. I find that a very powerful insight. Because, if the experiences of life for human and other species are so far removed from each other, then this role God has given of stewardship, – of dominion rightly understood as – of speaking on their behalf suddenly requires a great deal of humility and self-awareness. So do we have that?

Andrew Linzey he put it brilliantly, in an interview February 1996

‘We know so little about animals and creation. One of my pet peeves is hearing people pontificate about what animals are or are not capable of – because the truth is we really don’t know. All the stuff about animals not having language, not having rational souls, not having culture, not being persons – all of these are human constructions and I’m not sure how far any of these things matter to God even if they are true. Part of me wants to ask how we can know that God does not fundamentally value some parts of creation, or regard them as much more intimate with herself than human beings? All uniqueness-spotting on the part of humans is bound to be self-serving. Christians have been fiendishly good of course at drawing lines between humans and the rest of God’s creatures.‘

Part of us thinks what nonsense; it’s a fact animals can’t reason, or build, or create, the way we do, but Linzey’s point is why should that matter? We humans have decided what we value in ourselves in others, in animals, in creation, then nurtured or destroyed accordingly.

All creatures are crying out for the liberty of God to be extended to them, it is their birth right too. And they are speaking to us. Every time a species dies, or we put our own needs ahead of the nurture and care of habitats; every time we say we care but not that much, creation groans.

The fundamental calling of every Christian it seems to me is to stand beside, to speak for, the marginalised, the oppressed, those who cannot speak for themselves; that is what God asks of us; when I was hungry you fed me, when I was a prisoner you visited me.  There is a noble history  –  of  standing up for women, for slaves, for refugees, for all manner of marginalised groups of people. And now, God willing, most of us, would say we are all equal as human beings because we all have the spirit of God within us. It doesn’t matter that we look different, that we have different needs, different skills; it doesn’t matter if we can reason or not – we are all God’s creatures and it is a given that he loves each of us and wants the best for us. Equality has come a long way with people; there was a time when women were deemed not to have a soul by some philosophers – when we too were considered incapable of reason, no more than an animal (irony intended).

We should be careful not to make the same mistake with animals; the Spirit of God is in all of creation – and we who have power, not least the power of speech, are charged with the sacrificial care  of all creation, after the example of Jesus. We must speak for that which cannot speak for itself. All of creation. Read the Animal Gospel – it’s amazing!

Animals are God’s creatures, not human property, nor utilities, nor resources, nor commodities, but precious beings in God’s sight. …Christians whose eyes are fixed on the awfulness of crucifixion are in a special position to understand the awfulness of innocent suffering. The Cross of Christ is God’s absolute identification with the weak, the powerless, and the vulnerable, but most of all with unprotected, undefended, innocent suffering.

Andrew Linzey

Genesis 1:26-28 NIV – Then God said, “Let us make mankind – Bible Gateway