I know a man who says he loves animals. He really believes he does. Unfortunately, he is very much like millions of people around the world. I used to be a lot like him, too. I’ll call this man Jonathan.

Jonathan loves dogs. They’re wonderful to pet and play with, and he likes to keep them chained up outside for protection and security.

Jonathan loves deer. After all, they’re beautiful creatures. So beautiful, in fact, that Jonathan has a nice big deer’s head mounted on the wall in his living room.  

Jonathan loves cows and pigs. He loves them so much he has given them new names: beef and pork.

Jonathan loves monkeys. Without them, upon whom would our scientists perform hellish, bizarre and cruel experiments?

Jonathan hasn’t yet figured out how to love mice, so he buys mouse traps.

Jonathan sincerely believes he loves animals.

If animals could speak, which of them – the dog, the deer, the cow, the pig, the monkey, the mouse – would say they feel loved by Jonathan? With so much love like Jonathan’s around, is it any wonder that the world is so brutal?
 
“I’m not a vegetarian because I love animals; I’m a vegetarian because I hate plants.” – A. Whitney Brown

Being humane, and loving animals (and people), means to care about what is good for them. It means to avoid exploiting them for one’s own greed, gluttony, need for control over others and other wanton needs. It means to love them for who and what they are, not for what they can do for you. John F. Kennedy had a good premise, but even that was to serve his purposes. A minor variation on the same theme is called for: Ask not what God, His creatures and the world can do for you, ask what you can do for God, His creatures and the world. This is the basis of proper stewardship and dominionship and love.

I beg you, please, not to think the point here has much at all to do with animals. It was Saint Francis of Assisi who said, “If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.”

From almost the beginning of time, it is the people who eat animals – and love them – who have taken paradise and obliterated it for all of us. It is imperatively important that love be a behavior and not simply an emotion. If you say (and think) that you love animals, referring simply to the emotion without the proper behavior, you are contributing the cycle of dysfunctional love rampant in our world today. If, however, you love truly love animals, you would apply that love as a behavior and couldn’t possibly eat them, experiment on them or wear them. It’s your call.

This article is excerpted from Jeff Popick’s book “The Real Forbidden Fruit: How Meat Destroys Paradise And How Veganism Can Get It Back.” If you like this article you will love the book!