It incensed me when a first saw it, and reviewing it again after a month’s time didn’t do it any favors.
During a session at last month’s Commodity conference, Wes Jamison, a Palm Beach Atlantic University professor, presented his research and findings on the Humane Society of the United States. He’s spent a career studying the animal rights movement, and specifically the communication behind it. He revealed that HSUS in 2002 decided that they needed a moral component in order to be effective.
And so they began targeting Christians, at the rate of $1.2 million a year, in an attempt to convince them that eating meat is morally wrong. HSUS takes a smidgen of out-of-context scripture and tells folks God doesn’t want them to eat meat. They’ve targeted large and small pastors and televangelists nationwide. And in what Jamison calls our post-religious society, people want to believe something but don’t really understand what they believe. Or in other words, they don’t know their Bibles. That makes it awfully easy for HSUS to be successful.
Which brings me to what incensed me. Ever heard of Joel Osteen? Check out this YouTube video of him offering a “sermon” on unclean meat and why we shouldn’t eat pork. Bear in mind, he has a congregation of 48,000 people.
The guy doesn’t even know Scripture well enough to distinguish between the Old Covenant and the New. And he doesn’t know the facts about hogs. Jamison suggested he check out what the Old Testament has to say about stoning liars. I’d suggest he look up a biblical view of animals in Acts 10. And while he’s at it, flip to 1 Timothy 4:1-5 for a bit of a biographical sketch.
I’ll admit, I’ve never watched Osteen on TV nor read his books, but I’ve heard of his feel-good, power-of-me, self-centered, wishy-washy gospel. I sort of always suspected he was a chump and this just really confirms it.
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