Every year, I look forward to the celebration of Easter Sunday: the music, the joy in the air and, most of all, the hope that the holiday represents.
But as a Christian, it has always seemed incongruous to me that after this glorious celebration of life _ of Christ's victory over death and the new life that we can have by placing our faith in Him _ many families go home and eat a meal whose centerpiece represents terrible suffering and death.
The message of Easter is one of mercy: Instead of treating us as we deserved, God chose to send His son to save us. As we read in Titus 3:4-5, "When God our Savior revealed his kindness and love, he saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy."
As people who've been shown great mercy, shouldn't Christians respond by showing mercy to others whenever we can? Paul calls us to live this kind of life in Colossians 3:12 when he writes, "Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience."
In this broken world, every day offers plenty of opportunities to grow in mercy and kindness _ from forgiving the person who cuts us off in traffic to befriending an elderly neighbor.
But sometimes, we overlook the simplest and most obvious opportunities, like the ones that are placed before us three times a day. We can show mercy to the "least of these" at breakfast, lunch and dinner by choosing vegan foods.
People who've grown up eating meat may never have considered it, but when we dine on animals' flesh, eggs and milk, we're eating the bodies and bodily secretions of sentient beings who, like us, were created by God with the capacity to feel pain and to suffer and who were likely shown no mercy during their brief lives.
To produce the ham that ends up on many Easter tables, mother pigs _ whom God designed to root in the soil, cool off in the mud, play together and nurture their babies _ spend most of their lives locked in "gestation crates" so cramped that they can't even turn around. When their piglets are as young as 10 days old, they're torn away from their mothers so they can be fattened up and killed for meat, and the sows are re-impregnated, starting the cruel cycle all over again.
Other animals used for food are similarly exploited. Turkeys are crammed by the thousands into dark sheds, where each bird has no more than 3.5 square feet of living space. Portions of their toes and beaks are seared off with a hot blade in order to keep them from scratching and pecking each other to death in the unnatural, stressful conditions.
Instead of roosting in trees, taking dust baths and protecting their chicks under their wings, as God created them to do, hens used for eggs are confined to wire cages, stacked one on top of another in massive warehouses. Millions of male chicks _ whom the egg industry views as worthless _ are ground up alive.
Cows on dairy farms are repeatedly impregnated, only to have their beloved calves torn away from them within a day of birth so that humans can sell the milk that God intended for their babies.
As Christians, we're called not to copy the behavior and customs of this world but to let God transform us into new people by changing the way we think (Romans 12:2). What if we let God transform us into kinder, more merciful people by changing the way we think about what _ and whom _ we eat?
Perhaps it's time to embrace a new tradition _ one that celebrates life and delights in showing mercy to all creation, just as God does _ by filling our plates with delicious, healthy vegan foods this Easter Sunday and every day.
