Summary: Love of Christ is the underlying reason we are to keep the Ten Commandments. Jesus said, “If you love Me, keep My commandments” (John 14:15 NKJV). Non-vegans violate not just the Sixth Commandment "Thou shalt not kill" but also all the other Commandments. E.g., in regarding humanity as superior to all other creatures of God, non-vegans deify themselves and break the 1st Commandment; in sacrificing animals to one's belly-idol, one breaks the 3rd Commandment; in eating God's creatures, thus failing to recognize that Sabbath is a reminder of creation, non-vegans break the 4th Commandment; in eating animal flesh and damaging themselves physically, mentally and spiritually, non-vegans disgrace their parents and break the 5th Commandment; in forcefully and artificially inseminating cows and other female animals in order to get their milk, non-vegans break the 7th Commandment; in robbing animals of their food like honey, their skin, their hair, their feathers, their eggs, etc., non-vegans break the 8th Commandment; in misinterpreting "dominion" in Genesis 1:26 and speaking unjustly about their animal neighbours, non-vegans break the 9th Commandment; in occupying and/or destroying animals' habitat for animal farming, for land development, etc., non-vegans break the 10th Commandment.
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Introduction: God is love (1 John 4:7 NIV); God loves the world (John 3:16), including ALL His creation (Psalm 145:9); Christ is compassion (Matthew 12:6-7). This is the core of the Christian faith. Anybody who goes against this golden principle of love by abusing, enslaving, torturing, raping, murdering, consuming innocent creatures, not out of absolute necessity, breaks all Ten Commandments at the same time and not qualified to be a Christian.
1. Violation of the 1st Commandment
By regarding humans as superior to all other sentient creatures of God and by seeing other animals in an instrumental way as objects, machines, tools, and commodities, rather than fellow creatures, non-vegan humans deify themselves (cf. Linzey 1995; Linzey 2011), thus breaking the First Commandment "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."
Equally importantly, eating animal flesh means sacrificing innocent animals' lives to the idol god of the belly (Philippians 3:19), or to gluttony (Proverbs 23:20-21) (cf. Hicks 2018; Chen 2022a), thereby worshipping a false god in place of the Almighty God.
2. Violation of the 2nd Commandment
When you follow Paul the apostate's advice "Eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience" (1 Corinthians 10:25) on the ground that “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it” (1 Timothy 4:1-5 NIV), and give thanks to God for a non-vegan meal, you are breaking the Second Commandment "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain", for you are using God's name to endorse rape, torture, abuse, enslavement, and murder of His innocent creatures. As argued by Sion (2013), Paul was the AntiChrist or fake apostle who replaced Jesus Christ's true Gospel with his own distorted version of it. In fact, as pointed out by Chen (2022b) and Chen (2021), Jesus has made four prophecies about Paul's treachery and corruption of Jesus' vegan church.
2.1 The First Corrupter of Jesus' Vegan Church
According to US President Thomas Jefferson, St. Paul was the "first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus" (Washington 1854). As pointed out by Albert Schweitzer (1910) in The Quest for the Historical Jesus, Paul perverted the discourse of Jesus and "displace[d]" it. The perversion involves at least seven domains, namely, eating food sacrificed to idols, eating animal flesh, denigration of women, slavery, justification by faith alone, submission to the authorities, and debasement of Moses' Law. Here, we will confine our discussion to the first two domains only (For more details, see Aribisala 2016 ; Chen 2021):-
2.2. Eating Food Sacrificed to Idols
In I Corinthians 8:4-13, Paul argues that eating meat offered to an idol is not immoral, because “an idol is nothing at all” (I Cor. 8:4 NIV). “Food,” he asserts, “does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do” (I Cor. 8:8 NIV). "To the pure, all things are pure" (Titus 1:15 NIV).
On the other hand, in the letter to the church of Thyatira, Jesus rebukes them for tolerating a prophetess who "seduce[s] my servants to ... eat things sacrificed unto idols" (Revelation 2:20 KJV). And The Jerusalem Council led by James the Just, Jesus' natural brother, wrote to Gentile converts the Council's "decision that they should abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals" (Acts 21:25 NIV).
2.3. Eating Animal Flesh
Eating anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience" (1 Corinthians 10:25 NIV), advises Paul. For two thousand years, this has (mis)led numerous Christians to think that it is alright to slaughter innocent animals and eat their flesh.
Paul even defames vegans as weaklings in terms of faith:- "One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables" (Romans 14:2 NIV).
In contrast, Jesus warns against meat-eating:- “Be on guard, so that your hearts do not become heavy with the eating of flesh" (Luke 21:34, Evangelion Da-Mepharreshe — Old Syriac-Aramaic Manuscript of the New Testament Gospels). And He admonishes the Pharisees, quoting Hosea 6:6, "Go and learn what this means: I desire compassion rather than sacrifice" (Matthew 9:13 NASB).
And in Saying 87, the Gospel of Thomas, as translated and edited by Steven Davies (2002), Jesus said, "Wretched is a body depending on a body". Now, how can a body be dependent on another body? Only if the body eats the other body. Hence, Davies (2002) comes to the conclusion that Thomas is not stating that all bodies are "wretched", just bodies which are dependent on other dead bodies, in other words, meat, for food.
In the Gospel of the Ebionites, Jesus condemns animal sacrifice in the Temple of Jerusalem:- “I have come to abolish the sacrifices, and if you cease not from sacrificing, my wrath will not cease from you” (Panarion 30.16.5). Jesus also rejected the Passover meal :“I have no desire to eat the flesh of this Paschal Lamb with you” (The Gospel of the Ebionites 22.4).
Throughout His human life, Jesus cared about animals, like sparrows (Matthew 10;29-31 NIV), "fowls of the air" (Matt. 6:26-33 KJV), sheep (Matt. 12:11), chickens (Matt. 23:37 KJV), yoked animals in general (Matt. 11:29-30), a donkey and her colt (Matt. 21:1-3 NIV). He even rescued and healed a badly beaten mule (Linzey and Dorothy 1998: 38-39; Linzey 2010: 60-61; Chen 2021).
Whilst Jesus showed compassion for animals, Paul sneered at exploited and downtrodden oxen:- "For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen?" (1 Corithians 9:9 KJV)
2.4. Paul Turned Jesus into a Sacrificial Lamb
Prior to the Last Supper, Jesus, in order to protest all bloody sacrifices, and liberate animals, emptied the Temple of oxen, lambs, pigeons etc. about to be slaughtered for sacrifice, called the Temple-turned-butcher-shop "a den of thieves", thereby debunking the business fraud of animal sacrifice and disrupting the high priests' and scribes' lucrative revenue stream. Immediately afterwards, those high priests and scribes conspired to destroy Him (Mark 11:15-18), eventually leading to His arrest, trial, crucifixion, and resurrection on Easter (cf. Akers 2000). Paul, however, turned Jesus into the very thing He was protesting -- a sacrificial lamb (Hebrews 9:12-15, 22, 26; Ephesians 1:71; Corinthians 5:7)!
3. Violation of the 3rd Commandment
In being non-vegan, one breaks the Third Commandment, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image", i.e. the prohibition of idol worship. For meat-eating is a kind of animal sacrifice dedicated to one's belly as an idol while both God and Jesus Christ have explicitly said, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice" (Hosea 6:6 NIV, Matthew 9:13 NIV, Hebrews 10:8) (cf. Chen 2022a). So much the more, according to Andrew Linzey (2011), "By 'idolatry', I mean the attempt to deify the human species by regarding the interests of human beings as the sole or exclusive concern of God the Creator. "
4. Violation of the 4th Commandment
In being non-vegan on the Sabbath day, one breaks the Fourth Commandment "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy". Sabbath is a reminder of creation. Since God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh day, so we too work for six days and rest on the seventh day. as it is said, "For in six days the Lord made the heaven and earth, and on the seventh day, He rested" (Exodus 1:11). The observance of Sabbath is an example of the imitation of God; when God created the animals, he was able to say, "It is very good". We are supposed to emulate God's attributes of mercy, for "His tender mercies are over all of His creatures" (Psalm 145.9).
Also, according to Barbara Wegner (2018),animals are supposed to rest on the Sabbath day. We, as the caretakers of some other them, are supposed to make sure those creatures in our care do rest on the Sabbath. For Deuteronomy 5:14 (KJV) states, "But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou." When we purchase animal products from the companies who don’t let the animals rest on the Sabbath, we’re breaking Sabbath. We are paying for work to be done on the Sabbath, and not letting our animals rest on the Sabbath.
5. Violation of the 5th Commandment
In being non-vegan, one's body becomes a disgrace to one's parents who gave birth to one, and one's soul a dishonor to them, thereby breaking the Fifth Commandment, "Honour thy father and thy mother". For according to T. Colin Campbell's (2005) China study, a meat-eater is much more susceptible to cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease than a vegan. And by being non-vegan, one breaks the other commandments as aforementioned and as argued below, and becomes a spiritual shame to one's parents.
6. Violation of the 6th Commandment
In eating animals, one breaks the Sixth Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill". As put by Reuben Alcalay (1981), one of the greatest contemporary linguists cum author of The Complete Hebrew-English Dictionary, the 6th Commandment "Thou shalt not kill" (Exodus 20:13 KJV; Matthew 19:18 KJV) means "any kind of killing whatsoever." The original Hebrew, he points out, is לֹא תִּרְצָח Lo tirtzakh, which requires us to stop ourselves from killing any sentient beings altogether (see Rosen 2004:87).
6.1. Kill vs Murder
Admittedly, the Hebrew word for "murder" is רָצַח ratzakh, whereas the word for "kill" is הָרַג haroq. The commandment, in the original Hebrew, indeed states: "Lo tirtzakh" (a form of ratzahh), not "Lo Taharoq." But still we submit that Reuben Alcalay is justified in asserting that tirtzakh means "any kind of killing whatsoever" on two grounds.
(The primary definitions of "to kill" according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary are "to deprive of life", "to slaughter an animal for food", "to put an end to", and "to destroy the vital or essential quality of". "Murder" as a noun, is primarily defined in legal terms by Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary as "the unlawful and malicious or premeditated killing of one human by another"; as a verb, it is primarily defined as "to kill (a person) unlawfully and with malice." Secondary definitions include "to kill inhumanly and barbarously, as in warfare" or "to destroy; to put an end to.")
6.2. Jesus Expands on "Thou Shalt not Kill"
Firstly, Luke (18:20), Mark (10:19), and Matthew (5:21-22) all urge adherents to transcend conventional understandings of this prohibition. For instance, Jesus expands on the formal definitions of "Thou shalt not kill" as follows:- “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment;" (Matthew 5:21-22 ESV)
6.3. Beyond Legalistic Principles
Secondly, the primary definitions of "murder" and "kill" are given by human linguists, mostly meat-eating, and animals who do not enjoy equal rights as humans are naturally omitted from the formal definitions so that it will not be unlawful for humans to take innocent animals' lives. However, provided that we consider murder in a practical manner and look at what it in reality is, beyond just legalistic principles, we are met head-on with the secondary designations of "murder" abovementioned, both of which are for sure applicable to animals (cf. Rosen 2004). As a matter of fact, "He that killeth an ox is as if he slew a man" (Isaiah 66:3 KJV) puts forwards a closer connection betwixt "kill" and "murder".
The (mis)interpretation in the West, and the (mis)translation in Chinese-speaking communities, of "Thou shalt not kill" as "Thou shalt not commit homicide", such that non-human animals are excluded, reveals anthropocentrism according to Revd Prof. Andrew Linzey (1995:33-34) and Prof. David Clough (2011:88), or speciesism according to Peter Singer (1975:6), in other words, megalomania, self-aggrandizement, self-worship, and self-deification, on the part of homo sapiens.
7. Violation of the 7th Commandment
In consuming animal products, including dairy products amidst others, one breaks the Seventh Commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery". For coercive impregnation or rape is involved in the dairy and/or beef industry, where the cow is restrained in a cattle crush and an arm is inserted into her anus to hold the cervix in position, before a long rod called an ‘AI gun’ is stuck into her vulva, to inject her with bull semen. Similar methods are used for turkeys and pigs too, which involves molesting males for their semen and sexually violating females to impregnate them. These animals are all incredibly young when this process first happens to them and they literally can’t understand the concept of consent (Carbstrong n.d.). In other words, "if you are not vegan, you are a rapist", to borrow the words of Tash Peterson.
8. Violation of the 8th Commandment
In consuming honey, dairy products, eggs, bird's nests (a kind of "delicacy" in China), in wearing leather belts, wool garments, fur or down jackets, in cutting down trees, non-vegans steal bees' food reserve, cows' nourishments for their kids, swallows' homes, animals' skins and feathers, and billions of animals' habitats, thereby breaking the Eighth Commandment, "Thou shalt not steal".
9. Violation of the 9th Commandment
When Christians interpret "dominion" in Genesis 1:26 to mean "man's superiority" (Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges) and that "The relationship of man to the rest of creation is now defined to be one of rule and supremacy" (Pulpit Commentary), such that humans can abuse, exploit, rape, murder, torture other animals at will, they are breaking the Ninth Commandment "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour" by "speaking unjustly against our neighbour[s-- animals], to the prejudice of [their] reputation" (Benson Commentary on Exodus 1:26). For "dominion" in the context means stewardship rather than dictatorship. And animals are our neighbours by reason of the commonality of possessing a living soul, the shared ability to suffer, and their physical proximity to us.
9.1. Misinterpretation of "Dominion"
"Dominion" in Genesis 1:28 KJV means neither domination not despotism but "stewardship" (Linzey 2016) and "protection" (Halteman 2007), because 1. In Gen. 1:29, humans were given a vegan diet; 2. In Gen. 2:15 NIV, humans were instructed by God to "take care of" the Garden with all the animals in it; 3. God made His covenant with not only humans (Noah and his descendants) but also animals (Gen. 9:8-17); 4. God has compassion for all creatures (Psalm 145: 9). 5. Animals are our folk (Gen. 1:30). 6. Christ always sided with the marginalized (Matthew 25:40 NIV); 7. Jesus died at least partly for animal liberation. (Mark 11:18); 8. Via Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection, God reconciled himself to all groaning creatures and offered them hope of redemption (Colossians 1:19-20).
9.2. Animals are our Neighbours
In the first creation story man and woman are created in God’s image. But it also tells us that animals have a soul. In Genesis 1:30 (KJV) it reads, "And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so."
Hebrew for the phrase "life" in the verse above is " נֶ֣פֶשׁ חַיָּ֔ה nephesh chayyah", which is mistranslated as "life" in most English versions of the Bible. נֶ֣פֶשׁ Nephesh means soul and חַיָּ֔ה chayyah means living. In other words, God did give the animals a living soul when He created them.
Thus the animals are sentient, i.e., able to look for physical pleasure and to stay away from physical pain; to yearn to go on living, endeavoring to shun death and to able to experience various emotions. Subsequently, God created man and breathed into his nostrils the same “breath of life”, “nephesh chayyah”, (Gen.2:7) which is the living soul. By reason of this commonality of possessing a living soul the animals are also our brothers and sisters to be loved by us (Farians 2009).
Moreover, both non-human animals and humans have a central nervous system, which make both of them susceptible to pain, fear and joy. As pointed out by Jeremy Bentham (1789), it is animals' ability to suffer rather than their rationality which made them our neighbours:-"The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?"
Also, animals are apparently proximal to us. They live side by side with us. They are literally neighbours of us, just that we frequently destroy their homes and chase them out of their living habitats.
10. Violation of the 10th Commandment
In coveting or destroying animals' homes, labour, clothes, food, flesh, etc., as mentioned above, non-vegans break the Tenth Commandment, "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house.... nor any thing that is thy neighbour's." In particular, the destruction of wild habitat for animal farming, logging and development by non-vegan humans has resulted in the start of what many scientists consider the sixth mass extinction of life to occur in the Earth’s four billion year history (Ceballos et. al. 2017). About half the Earth’s animals are thought to have been lost in the last 50 years (Carrington 2014).
11. Conclusion
"Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:19 NKJV). Being non-vegan surely is a shortcut to Hell for what else can violate all Ten Commandments at one go? Non-vegans had better keep the Ten Commandments and go vegan in order to "receive eternal life” (Matthew 19:17 NLT).
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