A Footnote to Animal Stewardship

I feel compelled to give a footnote to my previous post on animal stewardship. I received a very interesting comment to that post, and it shows that I may have been a little missunderstood. And, if someone is going to quote me I would rather that they get a clear understanding of my motives, meaning and position.

Stewardship:
--Wikipedia:

Stewardship is a sense of personal responsibility for taking care of something that is not one's own. The term stewardship has different interpretations depending on the context of the word. It can apply to environmental resources, commercially-made products, finances, land claims, or organizations, among other things.

--Wiktionary:

Etymology: From Old English stiward, stigweard

Pronunciation: The word is pronounced "stew-urd".

Noun

steward (plural stewards)

1. A person who manages the property or affairs for another entity.
2. A ship's officer who is in charge making dining arrangements and provisions.
3. An attendant on an airplane. [syn: flight attendant]
4. A union member who is selected as a representative for fellow workers in negotiating terms with management. [syn: shop steward]
5. A person who has charge of buildings and/or grounds and/or animals. [syn: custodian, keeper]
6. In IT, somebody who is responsible for managing a set of projects, products or technologies and how they affect the IT organization to which they belong.

Therefore, animal stewardship is the taking of responsibility of the animals (and creation) that God has given to us; caring for them and managing them.

Why did God give us animals?

Genesis 9:1-7

1 So God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.^[a] 2 And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth, on every bird of the air, on all that move on the earth, and on all the fish of the sea. They are given into your hand. 3 Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you all things, even as the green herbs. 4 But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. 5 Surely for your lifeblood I will demand a reckoning; from the hand of every beast I will require it, and from the hand of man. From the hand of every man’s brother I will require the life of man.
6 “ Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed; For in the image of God He made man. 7 And as for you, be fruitful and multiply; Bring forth abundantly in the earth And multiply in it.”

Let me put this into perspective with animal stewardship.

It is, therefore, our duty, responsibility and honor to care for God's creatures so that we can supply the world with food. We must do it in a ecologically sound manner. It is not in our interest to be cruel, and slaughter every species into oblivion; when they are gone we starve!

Finally, let me put a footnote in about our local seal fishery. In the past, over 20 years ago, the hunt was extremely cruel, however, we have evolved the seal hunt into a very humane respectful fishery. Unfortunately, the opposition is using films, pictures and other propaganda, which is outdated! I didn't say that they were wrong, I said that it is outdated!
If we don't hunt the seals, the seal population will get so large that they will begin to hunt us! They are already eating most of the few cod stocks that are left!

So, in conclusion, I am an advocate for Animal and Environmental Stewardship. Am I perfect? No, I am trying in my small way to make a difference. Will I continue to eat meat? Yes, if I don't eat it eventually it will eat me. God understands that we must curb the animal populations so that they are manageable just read the story about Israel's gradual conquering of Canaan land.

Yours for understanding,
Pastor Fred

A Biblical Perspective to Animal Stewardship and Seals

Every year around this time we begin to hear trash about the need to abolish this fisher, that hunt, and save this animal. Most of the people who raise these feeble yet very noisy arguments don't really have any idea what they are talking about! They use information that is ancient, out dated and generally useless. However, they manage to convert "celebrities" over to their "side" all the time using this OLD information. Makes you wonder how smart some of our favorite stars really are if they can't even do some research of their own, but just take the word of some "joe" at face value! Anyway let's move on....

Before we break open the bread of life on this very controversial subject I would like to make a comment. If animal rights activists are truly working to make this world a better place for animals rather than humans, they all ought to be complete vegetarians! If they are not vegetarians then they are only out to make money, make a statement, get their names out in the headlines, and really truly don't care about animals!

That said, I personally am not an animal rights activist, and am not a vegetarian, but I am a preacher of God's Word, and am an animal stewardship activist. My voice is small in the wide world of idea's but none the less today I shall be heard, or rather God's Word will be heard!

In the Beginning God created the heaven and earth, and upon this wonderful earth God place mankind. God originally gave man some basic duties, among which included tending to, and maintaining the vegetation and tending to all the animals. God put us her and gave us command and stewardship over the earth. It is our responsibility to care for everything in this earth, and tend to it as if it was our own farm and cattle!

Genesis 1:26-31

26And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.27So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.28And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.29And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.30And 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.31And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Then after the flood God gave Noah another command concerning animals:

Genesis 9

1And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. 2And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered. 3Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things. 4But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.

Now we must except the command of God, and be stewards of His creation!

Over the past 110 years or so, we as humans have desecrated this planet we call home! We have made extinct many species of animals. We have over fished the wales, the fish, and many of the land beasts! Instead of advocating stewardship over animals, and tending to them and keeping them we have eaten everything up because of our greed!

Now we have a huge population of seals, just a few fish and we still are overfishing the depleted fish stock and asking government to lower our seal quotas!

Something is wrong here!

We should be lowering the fishing quotas, and raising the seal quotas!

Let's do a little math for a bit. I am no scientist, but I understand adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing....

6,000,000 (6 million) seals equals many millions of hungry mouths. What do seals eat? FISH! What do we eat? FISH! Therefore if there are 6,000,000,000 (6 billion) humans eating fish, and one of many species of seals, which has over 6,000,000 (6 million) residents eating fish, we have a problem!

I am not advocating the extinction of seals, then we would be over run with fish! Rather we need to sit down do the math, and figure out how many seals we need to keep in order to balance this equation out!

STEWARDSHIP! (Taking proper care of something given to you. Keeping it. Maintaining it. Preserving it. Prospering it.)

We have learned how to maintain and prosper our cattle such as cows, sheep, goats and other such animals, but we have eat to maintain the stocks of animals within our oceans, seas, lakes and rivers.

We must stop being greedy, and stop hording all the goods this world has to offer!
Rather we must turn this whole earth into a farm, and treat all animals with respect, and maintain a healthy balance of all species!

Many provinces and states have put legislation in place that maintain deer, moose, wolf and coyote populations. When either one is down they lower the licenses, and when either one gets to large they raise the licenses. This is a fair system, flawed but fair! We must do this type of thing with all species. Maintain the ecosystem, and maintain the animals within each!

Your's for animal stewardship,
Pastor Fred