He also doesn't include non-human animal life, or his followers don't think he does. Many Christians contribute greatly to the mass slaughterhouse industry. Do you even love out of feeling empathy and concern for the things you're supposed to be loving, or out of a sense of righteousness?
Yet again, I cannot but disagree with what you say above. It just doesn't register with me or how I understand my religion.
Let us consider the New Testament to begin with. Nowhere, and I repeat
nowhere, does Jesus excuse or permit cruelty or lack of kindness to animals. Indeed he extols them as being
positive role models for human beings - which is quite extraordinary by any standards - and even compares himself to animals. One should note that the "
ideal" and most perfect example of self-sacrificial love outlined by Jesus, is not that of a human mother for her child (as with the Buddha in the
Amaravati Sangha:
Even as a mother protects with her life Her child, her only child, So with a boundless heart Should one cherish others (Sn 1.8)), but rather a shepherd for his sheep:
‘
Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, “Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.” (
Luke 15:3-7).
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13 The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. 14 I am the good shepherd." (
John 10:12-14)
And a
mother hen for her chicks, to which Jesus also compares himself:
“How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (
Matthew 23:37,
Luke 13:34)
In other words, the great Christian role models for compassionate love presented to believers by Jesus are exemplars taken either directly from the animal world (the mother hen) or in the case of the Good Shepherd, from human relationships with the animals under their care.
Moreover when he dwelt in the desert as a hermit for forty days and forty nights, to prepare himself for the start of his Galilean ministry, we are explicitly told in the earliest gospel account - the Gospel of Mark - how Jesus removed himself from the company of other human beings and made his home with the animals:
"
And the Spirit immediately drove Jesus out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days...and he was with the wild animals; and the angels waited on him." (
Mark 1:12-13)
As one scholar, Richard Bauckham, notes in his exegesis:
‘With’ is a little word but it suggests quite a lot. A couple of chapters later Mark tells us that Jesus appointed the twelve apostles to be with him. It’s not just a neutral term as though they just happened to be there. If Jesus was with the wild animals it was a peaceable and perhaps, in an appropriate way, friendly relationship.
In Mark 1:13, Jesus is depicted as the anointed messianic deliverer, who walks out into the middle of the desert, a hostile and inhospitable environment, and spends time with the wild animals. For Jewish readers, this significance of this statement and the allusion to Isaiah 11 is absolutely clear: Jesus is, before his ministry to the human world begins, beginning the story of creation’s healing and reconciliation. Jesus’ amiable relationship with the “wild beasts” is part of the package of the messianic deliverance, creating peace where there was once enmity.
Jesus’ companionable presence with the wild animals affirms their independent value for themselves and for God. He does not adopt them into the human world, but lets them be themselves in peace, as creatures who share the world with us in the community of God’s creation.
[Jesus raises] the possibility of living fraternally with wild creatures, experiencing the grace of their otherness which God gives us in the diversity of the animal creation, and which is missed when animals are reduced to merely usefulness or threat.
Mark 1:13 offers us a very significant image of how Jesus’ mission of redemption exceeded the bounds of the human world, and embraced all of nature, as St. Paul explains
Colossians (1:18-19):
For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, and through him God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.
Read that again: through Christ, God intended to "make peace" with
everything on earth, including the animals. Hence why these words are attributed to Jesus at the end of the Gospel of Mark:
"...And Jesus said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation." (Mark 16:15)
The early desert fathers of the third century AD, those monastics who fled from the urban Roman Empire into the Egyptian desert and attempted to order their lives exactly as Jesus had commanded, understood perfectly what his teaching meant for animals, as is made clear from their
logia (sayings). Here are examples from
The Apophthegmata Patrum:
“Abba Xanthios said, ‘A dog is better than I am, for he has love and he does not judge.” - Sayings of the Desert Fathers
“They say that Abba Theon used to go out of his cell at night and stay in the company of the wild animals, giving them drink from the water he had. Certainly one could see the tracks of antelopes and wild asses and gazelles and other animals near his hermitage. These creatures always gave him pleasure.” Paradise of the Desert Fathers
“While Abba Macarius was praying in his cave in the desert, a hyena suddenly appeared and began to lick his feet and taking him gently by the hem of his tunic, she drew him towards her own cave. He followed her, saying, “I wonder what this animal wants me to do?” When she had led him to her cave, she went in and brought her cubs which had been born blind. He prayed over them and returned them to the hyena with their sight healed. She in turn, by way of thankoffering, brought the man the huge skin of a ram and laid it at his feet. He smiled at her as if at a kind person and taking the skin spread it under him.”
- The Paradise of the Desert Fathers
Abba Theodore of Pherme asked Abba Pambo, ‘Give me a word to live by.' And with great reluctance he said to him, 'Go, Theodore, and have compassion on all. Compassion allows us to speak freely to God.’ - Sayings of the Desert Fathers
And of course the greatest example of all in the entire Christian tradition was the 13th century
St. Francis of Assisi. In the biography of his life written by his disciple St. Bonaventure, we find this charming anecdote recorded:
“When Saint Francis bethought him of the first beginning of all things, he was filled with a yet more overflowing charity, and would call the animals, howsoever small, by the names of brother and sister, forasmuch as he recognised in them the same origin as in himself.
Brother Francis came to a spot where a large flock of birds of various kinds had come together. When God’s saint saw them, he quickly ran to the spot and greeted them as if they were endowed with reason….
“He went right up to them and solicitously urged them to listen to the word of God, saying, ‘Oh birds, my brothers and sisters, you have a great obligation to praise your Creator, who clothed you in feathers and gave you wings to fly with, provided you with pure air and cares for you without any worry on your part.’…The birds showed their joy in a remarkable fashion: They began to stretch their necks, extend their wings, open their beaks and gaze at him attentively.
“He went through their midst with amazing fervor of spirit, brushing against them with his tunic. Yet none of them moved from the spot until the man of God made the sign of the cross and gave them permission to leave; then they all flew away together. His companions waiting on the road saw all these things. When he returned to them, that pure and simple man began to accuse himself of negligence because he had not preached to the birds before...
That true godliness which, according unto the Apostle, is profitable unto all things, had so filled the heart of Francis and entered into his inmost parts as that it seemed to have established its sway absolutely over the man of God. It was this piety that, through devotion, uplifted him toward God; through compassion, transformed him into the likeness of Christ; through condescension, inclined him unto his neighbour, and, through his all-embracing love for every creature, set forth a new picture of man’s estate before the Fall. And as by this piety he was touched with kindly feeling for all things...”
Thomas of Celano, who wrote an earlier biography of Saint Francis, told this same story of Francis’ sermon to the birds, including Francis’ admission of “negligence,” but Celano adds this sentence: “
From that day on, [Francis] carefully exhorted all birds, all animals, all reptiles, and also insensible creatures, to praise and love the creator…” (see
I Celano XXI)
So in summation: I don't agree with your interpretation of Christianity. In the legends of the Saints and Desert Fathers, wild animals frequently protect and nourish the saints and the relationship depicted is one of compassion and harmony.