By: Liesl Stewart

I began my Christian faith in a U.S. parachurch organization that had a heavy focus on evangelism. When we were taught how to “share our faith with non-Christians,” John 3:16 was often the centerpiece of our persuasive efforts. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”(NIV). The recipe for a secure afterlife for eternity was distilled into this one verse.

My understanding of this verse was that God’s big love was laser-focused on me, Liesl, the human — and for you and every other person of the billions who now or ever have lived. It’s a wonderful truth to be so loved by God! But it’s a very human-centric understanding that I now believe ignores the full scope of exactly who and what God loves so much.

The Greek New Testament word for “world” is kosmos, and it means the wholeness of creation or the universe.¹ It has been argued that, in John 3:16, kosmos refers to humanity; but the word also holds the vastness of the universe in its meaning, as well as every bit of Creation’s textured detail. God’s love surrounds and holds not only humans but all of the created kosmos. This includes the material heavens and earth and the living creatures with whom we share the world.

For God so loved the kosmos…When God chose to reveal Self to Creation, God lived among our material kosmos as a fully embodied person. Jesus interacted with people, animals, plants, and soil, and he lived within the natural systems of the world. He ate with his disciples, he walked and went on boats, and he knew what it was to feel physically tired. It’s a mistake to disembody Jesus from his Creation. As followers of Jesus, we need to make sure we have a fully-embodied theology that doesn’t ignore the material kosmos.

As Christians, do we go about life respecting and loving the Creation that God so loves? For most or all of us, I’m sure there are times and ways that we do. But as a collective, humans are falling down on the job.

Some of the worst destruction is done in the name of food production. Our prevailing globalized, industrialized food systems oppress the earth, soil, people, and animals — including orangutans.

Years ago, I wanted to spoil my family with a worthy Easter dessert. I settled on a fluffy confection and decided to crumble a well-known mass-produced cookie for its base. When my kids discovered the cookies in the cupboard, I got an outraged earful about buying a product made with palm oil. Ok, yes. They’d grown up in a home where together we interrogated our food choices, so I was in large part responsible for nurturing their food justice ferocity. Even in my own home, I was no longer safe to make food choices that went against our family’s values! But, they were right. We’d learned that palm oil is used in many foods — from crackers and ice cream to cakes and potato crisps. (Also, incidentally, it’s used in many kinds of toothpaste, cosmetics, and cleaning products.) Because of its shelf-stable properties and relatively cheap extraction methods, it’s a reliable, affordable oil for highly processed foods that sit for long periods in warehouses, cargo ships, or shop shelves.

My family had learned that palm oil production destroys orangutan habitats in Indonesia (as well as those of tigers and other creatures). ² Slash-and-burn methods are used to clear tropical forests, making space to grow oil palm trees.³ Aside from driving orangutans from their land and destroying old rainforests, this deforestation contributes to climate-impacting greenhouse gas emissions. The good news is that advocacy efforts have helped to greatly reduce the destruction of forests, but deforestation continues.⁴⁵ So, our family has worked to reduce our consumption of palm oil. This means scrutinizing labels because so many foods use palm oil in their production.

We also are part of a food club that buys food from ethical producers. When we learned that the peanut butter we were buying was made from peanuts roasted in palm oil, the producer agreed to put away the palm oil and dry-roast the peanuts for us.

For God so loved orangutans…

It’s not only orangutans that are suffering under the oppression of industrialized food systems. Today, billions of animals are raised and killed in industrialized factory-farming operations for food. Animals are farmed by corporations in settings where they are treated as production units, bred to fulfill their food purposes as quickly as can be profitable. They live crowded in spaces that don’t allow them to live naturally or peacefully. In this way, farmed animals are subjected to lives of suffering, what journalist George Monbiot describes as a “grotesque cruelty” that “we have somehow normalised and accepted. If you treated dogs or cats in the same way as we treat these animals, you would be sent to prison.”⁶

If we look at how cows live and die in factory-farming systems, we see this cruelty clearly. In a more humane system, cows would spend their whole lives grazing, but those raised for meat only do that for a part of their lives. The rest of their lives, which only last for about two years in total, are spent in feedlots where they're fattened up for slaughter. Feedlots are overcrowded, unhygienic, and incredibly stressful for these smart and highly social creatures. Dairy cows are pushed through cycles of pregnancy abnormally quickly to ensure they continue producing milk. This is so very hard on the cows’ bodies that they are considered unproductive and therefore sent for slaughter by the time they’re four or five years old. (Keep in mind that cows live fifteen to twenty years when they aren’t killed prematurely!) Some male dairy calves are farmed to produce veal (the rest are shot soon after birth); veal calves will only live four-five months in small pens so their meat remains tender. Regardless of gender, calves are often separated from their mothers within a few days after birth, which is very distressing for both and goes against their strong maternal-child bonding instincts.

For God so loved cows…

Cow farming causes the destruction of forests as well, to make space for grazing or growing feed.⁷ In fact, the use of land to feed cows causes four times the amount of deforestation that palm oil production does. The earth and our shared environment are damaged terribly in order to satisfy global appetites for beef, dairy, and other consumer goods.

For God so loved the forests…

The systems that dominate food production today do seem mighty and unrelenting. It’s easy to get lost under the size and weight of the problems and feel like there’s nothing we can do or no way to overcome the harm done to our common home and fellow creaturekind. But, what small or big practical steps can we each take in our eating to reflect God’s love for the kosmos? At CreatureKind we’d love to help you think through ways to engage with this. Our DefaultVeg program helps individuals and communities embody the interdependence of God’s whole Creation to combat these exploitative systems. DefaultVeg can help you begin to make some changes that are good and right for your community’s context.

I’m grateful that my understanding of God’s love for the kosmos has expanded to include not only humankind but also orangutans, farmed cows, and the forests of our world. This way of understanding God has been transformative for how I live – and especially for how I eat.

Let me end with a prayer.

Gracious God,
We are reminded that your amazing love extends beyond just humanity, encompassing the whole of the creation.
As followers of Jesus, we don’t want to ignore the material kosmos but rather have a fully embodied theology that loves and respects all of your creation.
May we be mindful of our consumption choices, seek to reduce the suffering caused to our fellow creatures, and care for the earth and all its inhabitants.
Amen.

^{1. Robert G. Bratcher, “The Meaning of Kosmos, ‘World,’ in the New Testament,” The Bible Translator 31, no. 4 (1980): 430-434, Links: https://doi.org/10.1177/026009438003100406 or https://sci-hub.st/https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/026009438003100406?journalCode=tbtd.↩}
^{2. Gabriel B. Snashall & Helen M. Poulos, “Oreos Versus Orangutans: The Need for Sustainability Transformations and Nonhierarchical Polycentric Governance in the Global Palm Oil Industry,” Forests 12, no. 2 (2021): 252, https://doi.org/10.3390/f12020252. ↩}
^{3. David L.A. Gaveau et al., “The Future of Forests and Orangutans (Pongoabelii) in Sumatra: Predicting Impacts of Oil Palm Plantations, Road Construction, and Mechanisms for Reducing Carbon Emissions from Deforestation,” Environmental Research Letters 4, no. 3 (2009): 034013, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/4/3/034013. ↩}
^{4. Benji Jones, “Palm Oil is Actually Not That Bad (Anymore)”, Vox, last modified February 2, 2023, https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2023/2/2/23568192/palm-oil-deforestation-sustainable.↩}
^{5. If you would like to read more about the important advocacy work, this article will interest you: Nathanael Johnson, “48 Hours That Changed the Future of the Rainforests,” Vox, April 12, 2015, https://www.vox.com/2015/4/12/8367267/palm-oil-wilmar-rainforests.↩}
^{6. George Monbiot, “Be Warned: the Next Deadly Pandemic Is Not Inevitable, But All the Elements Are in Place,” The Guardian, Feb 8, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/08/next-pandemic-bird-flu-mink-farms-transmission.↩}
^{7. Benji Jones, “Palm Oil is Actually Not That Bad (Anymore)”, Vox, February 2, 2023, https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2023/2/2/23568192/palm-oil-deforestation-sustainable.↩}