For Lent

Happy Give-Up-Your-Favorite-Item Eve (AKA Happy Lent)! P.S. Is it appropriate to say “Happy Lent” when Lent represents the forty days Jesus spent in the desert being tempted by Satan?

If being tempted by Satan means gluttony and debauchery, then yes, I think this does represent a very happy time. Especially if said gluttony and debauchery represent things like free beer, reality television and teen pop music.

On a serious note though, I find it curious that people avoid meat every Friday during this time, but still eat fish. Whenever I’ve asked someone who participates in this ritual the meaning behind it, they’ve been unable to articulate an answer. Enter my trusty sidekick, Wikipedia.

I’m still clueless why only Fridays are meat-free and why fish (living, breathing, feeling animals) don’t count as “meat,” but my sidekick explained that not eating meat is a symbol of abstinence and sacrifice, which replicates the way Jesus sacrificed for humankind.

So if people want to follow Jesus’s lead, doesn’t that mean we should practice compassion toward all beings? There is nothing compassionate about factory farms or slaughterhouses where billions of animals live miserable lives and are killed in violent, bloody ways.

Also, wouldn’t Jesus’s compassion extend to fish? Fish feel pain, just as we do and lead complex intellectual lives that rival those of dogs and some other mammals. Methods used in commercial fishing to catch and kill the animals are as cruel as those used by factory farmers or slaughterhouse operators. In fact, the methods used to kill fish indicate that commercial fishers see their prey as no more sentient than rocks on a mountain—and the horrible cruelty that they inflict on hundreds of billions of fish is completely unregulated.

During Lent (and during every other day of the year), we have a choice when we sit and eat. Our food choices can either add to the violence, misery and death in the world, or we can decide to extend compassion to all of God’s creatures by refusing to support their torture. And by refusing to eat them.

What better way to model Jesus’s compassion then to stop eating animals? For more information, visit goveg.com.

Now, since it’s still technically Fat Tuesday, back to drinking and exposing our bodies in exchange for beads!