Just when you thought PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) couldn’t get any sillier, they manage to pull it off. They already got all over president Obama for killing a fly. They have also used pornography to promote a vegan lifestyle, compared the killing to chickens to the holocaust, compared the American Kennel Club to the KKK, desecrated grave sites, handed out gory “unhappy meals” to kids at a McDonalds, and the list could go on and on. And to what end? To promote the idea that animals are equal to human beings as life forms.
Their latest stunt is to file suit in federal court against Sea World asking the court to grant constitutional rights to five killer whales who perform at their parks. They claim that the whales perform in conditions which violate the U.S. Constitution’s 13th Amendment ban on slavery.
I’m not making this up. PETA has spent 18 months preparing this suit. They really believe that animals should be afforded the same rights as humans in federal law. And what’s even more disturbing, there has been a trend over the last several years in legitimate law schools to entertain the idea that animals ought to have these rights. There are even actual law professors who promote this kind of interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.
Beyond just laughing at this kind of silliness, Christians really ought to take a lesson from it. This kind of thinking actually represents the worldview foundation of many people in the world. Naturalists truly believe that human beings are simply another species of animal and there is nothing special about them beyond other kinds of animals. Many Far Eastern Thought believers really believe that every living creature is a reincarnated form of the life force that should be left to live out its current incarnation.
What lesson should Christian’s take? We live in a truly lost world. Along with their wrong understanding of the value of animal life, they do not know Christ and are separated from God. We cannot effectively share a gospel message with people who hold this kind of worldview perspective if we don’t understand their worldview. After laughing at the craziness of the lengths people will go to promote animal rights, we need to cry and go out of our way to share Christ with them.