conversation with a Born-again Christian

I went out to lunch with a co-worker in Nov 2007. I did not want to originally post this, but then I thought why not. It was an interesting conversation.

Nov 8 2007

I am back from my Indian lunch...i ate as minimum as possible to not be rude. I followed the acintya beda abeda tattva- i ate but also did not eat...may be in my next post i will share how i did it...

Anyways the lunch i had was with a co-worker who is a born-again Christian...no possibility of talking Hare Krishna philosophy…so this time I decided to listen and enquire more. We talked on different points, and I couldn't resist the classic argument "Thou shalt not kill". He flat out replied that the commandment specifically refers to humans simply because elsewhere in the Bible he says Jesus condones meat eating. So I asked him a hypothetical question that if Jesus Christ was living now, would he condone meat eating from mass slaughter houses taking into consideration the amount of cruelty? His answer was Christ may not accept it but he will if it is not cruel. He continued saying that he was not so sure if animals are treated cruelly in slaughter houses and he said and I quote "I know cows are stunned and in a state of shock they slit its throat and I am ok with that". He thinks that is less pain. Then I asked him, if you raise a dog and I come along and kill it without pain, will you accept? His answer was if I raise my dog for food, I have no issues, but if I raise my dog as a pet, then I would object. He extended his analogy to the cows, cows are basically raised for food and nothing else and hence he is ok with it and nothing wrong in eating it.

His basic conditioning is animals (especially cows and pigs) are raised only for food and hence only meant to be eaten and there is no harm in it.

The reason I am writing this is because we live in a place where 90% of the people think like this. The only way to preach Krishna Conscious philosophy is if we understand how people here think. To me, I was surprised how one person can call himself very religious and be completely callous about slitting the throat of an animal. It is practically impossible to impress anybody beyond the bodily conception of life. The only way is somehow we should distribute Srila Prabhupada books and let him do the magic!

Hare Krishna