"I do agree with your first comment there, we should never feel we are in a situation where we have to kill another person... God is always there, omnipresent and can intervene according to His purpose. As believers we should not fear death, as those that do not understand God's plan do, we know that this age is just the beginning. Certainly we would want to preserve our life or the life of another if we could, life and living is precious. But maybe it's not so much how long we live, but more about what character we do develop while alive?
But using the word 'murder' to describe the killing of animals is just not the right application for that word, murder : the crime of unlawfully killing a person esp. with malice aforethought. Animals have been given to mankind for food and it is not wrong to harvest/slaughter them for that purpose.
Gen 1:30 Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food"; and it was so.
Animals can certainly be abused and that is a disgraceful thing, but they cannot be murdered.
mercy, peace and love."
With all due respect Kat, I didn't say that murdering animals if necessary is wrong, of course in certain situations and hostile habitats murdering animals with forethought is necessary and given to us by God but, and it's a big but.... most of us in the affluent West today do not need to farm and harvest on mass livestock solely for the purpose of binge eating. Livestock cause pollution and damaged rain forests, it is also horrifically cruel and brings out the worst in those humans that work in the trade at abattoirs. It always makes me laugh, (not) when people are outraged by Asians eating dogs by boiling them alive in huge pots, dropping a door over the top to stop them jumping out as they yelp and writhe in agony... while obliviously chewing through their dead fried chicken drumstick that no doubt lived a life in total darkness with no room to move, breathing the sulphur from it's own feces, but because a chicken isn't a pet called 'Rover' that's alright then. There's killing and there's murder, and then there's the meat trade!!!