Christianity,Friday, October 20, 2006
Today, we find an emphasis on the sensual. Through advertising and many other means of communication, people are emphasizing feeling over thinking. The churches are being effected by this trend.
Many churches adjust by mimicking modern communication styles. Providing video clips and sound bites to produce emotional responses in the viewers. The idea is that by moving peoples emotions, they will be moved to embrace the deeper truths. However, there is such an emphasis on producing feelings in the attendess that the thinking portion is often poorly delivered. The emotions may experience a push, however, without the corresponding, thorough convincing of the mind, the emotions soon fade and behaviors remain the same. Only when our minds are transormed, will our behaviors begin to follow. This is not easy work, because it is best done with rigorous thinking. Meditating on God’s word, and the truths is holds, which carries the power of God to transform our minds.
Christianity,Friday, October 06, 2006
Some of you may already know that I’ve been very interested in ethics and health surrounding the food my family eats. Activism in the area of food has long been associated with wacko liberals. Organizations like PETA are well known for their crazy tactics. This has caused a negative reaction to the very mention of animal rights, etc. However, I think there is a new breed of conservative in the making. Richard Dreher wrote a book Crunchy Con that coined a category for a new brand of conservatives. I have yet to read the book but I think I probably fit into that category. I think there will be more Christian minded people who care about being good stewards of the gifts that God has given them. This worldview includes proper stewardship of all the resources God has given us. This includes land, money, animals, and people. Each area is a struggle and each area has room for improvement.
If we prioritize our efforts, people would be of highest importance, followed by animals, land and finally money. I think this priority is also modeled biblically. God created man to rule over all creation. Animals have numerous laws in the Old Testament that show God’s heart for the health and treatment of animals. They are even given rest on the Sabbath day. Land of course is a blessing in so many ways, able to sustain both man and animals. Finally, although we should wisely manage our money, wealthiness is not a virtue and is depicted in the Bible as a spiritual burden.
In our lives, we often think of animals as those creatures we see on the discovery channel or the family pet. However, animals have an even more intimate part in our daily lives. They come to our dinner table nearly everyday, their lives sacrificed to help sustain our health and provide energy for us to do our daily work. Yet, we don’t think much about where that animal came from, the life it lived, how it was treated or how it was killed. We have become complacent, unkowing and uncaring about such things. Fortunately, I have become interested in knowing about these things.
Let me take a step back and explain how my family came to this point. It all started with the rental of a movie called “Future of Food” from Netflix. We became aware of the corporate corruption in the food industry. Suddenly, we were acutely aware that we could not trust the corporations that were feeding us. The movie directed us to http://www.localharvest.org where we learned about a local CSA called Live Earth Farm (http://www.liveearthfarm.com) where we can get organic fruits and veggies. We were not only concerned about the pesticides on our food, but we were wanting to take part in a farm that would depend less on oil, pesticides, chemicals, and the corrupt corporations. We have been extremely pleased with Live Earth Farm and they are doing so well, that they have 200 people on the waiting list for next season and only 500 slots available.
In addition to fruits and veggies, I wanted to explore the options for getting chicken, beef, poultry and seafood. Through the www.eatwild.com website we were able to find Morris Grassfed Beef and TLC Ranch for pastured chicken, eggs and pork. Finally, Poppy’s poultry and seafood in Morgan Hill is also an excellent place to get wild fish at good prices. Beef is purchased in split halves (~100 lbs), chicken is purchased whole, and hogs are purchase either half (~100 lbs) or whole (~200lbs). We purchased a large chest style freezer that holds all the meat for use throughout the year.
I pretty much jumped into purchasing organic, grassfed, pastured meat from local farmers believing it was the right thing to do. Recently, I’ve discovered a wealth of information supporting the decision. It’s not only healthier us, but it is better on the animals, the environment, the workers and the local communities. The alternative is to buy from the large CAFO’s (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) and slaughterhouses that have been compromising our health with food-borne illnesses and higher levels of bad fats, mistreating the animals, polluting the environment, mistreating the workers and shutting down family farms that have been running for generations. Read more about CAFO’s at www.factoryfarm.org. You can also learn about the health benefits of Grass Fed products at www.eatwild.com
It is more expensive to buy local organic, however, I don’t see how we have an option. Putting the health benefits aside, mistreatment of the animals, workers and the environment is enough reason to stop buying their products.
God has revealed in the Bible that we should be good stewards of his creation. I found an excellent study of biblical passages on this subject at www.all-creatures.org. (The site is vegetarian, but if you follow the link, it has an excellent bible study for understand scriptures position on stewardship of animals) As a Christian, I don’t see how I can continue to purchase meat from these large corporations and have a clear conscience.
I’ve also found Fast Food Nation to be an eye opening book that reveals the darker side of America’s current food system. A Fast Food Nation movie is soon to come out.
I encourage you all to learn more about this since, as consumers, we are responsible for making wise choices about the products we purchase and the places we put our money. Choose fruits and veggies that are grown locally and organically. Choose meat that has been grassfed and pastured. Support your local farms.
Health,Thursday, October 05, 2006
Here’s a short article that will summarize some key things to know for making a decision to buy Organic milk, or at the very least, milk that is from cows that were not fed the rBGH growth hormone. Be careful of some of the deceptive labelling practices. Some milk is labelled “Does not contain rBGH”, however, that’ is misleading. The problem isn’t with the milk containing rBGH, it’s with the cows being fed the rBGH.
Read this article and learn a little more. Click Here
Here’s an exerpt of the list of reasons not to drink rBGH milk.
# rBGH makes cows sick. Monsanto has been forced to admit to about 20 toxic effects, including mastitis, on its Posilac drug label.
# rBGH milk is often contaminated with pus, due to mastitis commonly induced by rBGH, and also with antibiotics used to treat the mastitis. This poses risks of nationwide antibiotic resistance to life threatening infections.
# rBGH milk is chemically, and nutritionally different than natural milk. These differences include increased levels of milk fat, posing cardiovascular risks.
# Milk from cows injected with rBGH is contaminated with the hormone, traces of which are absorbed through the gut into the blood, and provoke foreign antibodies.
# rBGH milk is supercharged with high levels of a natural growth factor (IGF-1), which is readily absorbed through the gut. These levels are further increased following pasteurization.
# In numerous published scientific studies over the last two decades, excess levels of IGF-1 have been incriminated as causes of breast, colon, and prostate cancers.
# IGF-1 blocks natural defense mechanisms, technically known as apoptosis, against the growth of early submicroscopic cancers.
Perhaps more shocking, is that in 1999 the European Commision report, with a body of well recognized international experts concluded that avoiding the rBGH milk in favor of organic milk “would appear to be the most practical and immediate dietary intervention to . . . achieve the goal of preventing cancer.”
Unfortunately, with Monsanto, the maker of rBGH, also deeply intrenched in the FDA, the power to make a change is in the hands of consumers instead of policy makers. So I encourage everyone to make the choice to buy organic milk.
As a side note, in California, Clover Stornetta farms makes an Organic brand ($6.00/gallon) and a regular brand of milk ($3.50 /gallon). Both are from cows not raised on rBGH, however, the regular brand is much cheaper. The organic brand goes one step further and completely organically certifies each step of the process and uses a different farm for that process. Currently we purchase the regular brand of Clover Stornetta since we usually drink about 2 gallons a week and couldn’t justify purchasing the organic brand.
Read the labelling carefully and make sure that the cows are not fed rBGH. Preferrably the cows should come from a farm that treats the cows humanely and allows them to graze in pastures. Clover Stornetta farms allow for the cows to graze during the months that the grasses are available and it’s not too wet (4-5 months of the year). Clover Stornetta Farms
