False Teachings About Eating Meat

After reading Exchanging Truth for a Lie, which addressed people worshiping animals (Romans 1:22-23), a professing Christian wrote to tell me he’d unsubscribed from Bible Love Notes because he was “angry and heartbroken” that I would approve eating meat.

I asked if he'd read Genesis 9:3 where God told Noah he could eat both plants and animals.

He believed that God's offer in Genesis 9:3 was an offer God wants us to refuse because it came after the Fall of mankind. He claimed that since Adam and Eve were vegetarians in God's perfect world, Christians also should be vegetarians.

There are so many errors in this man's theology, but let's start with this one: God doesn't tell us to do something He doesn't want us to do. If we discard His command to eat meat, we can discard any command God gave us.

Secondly, if we are supposed to live as Adam and Eve did before the Fall, we must be nude, vegetarian farmers. 

This "before-the-Fall" reasoning is one of many ways that false teachings distort or discredit the clear messages of Scripture. I've even heard it used to claim that since submission was commanded as a result of the Fall, it's no longer relevant for born-again Christians.

If we carried that line of reasoning to the end, we could do away with repentance and forgiveness which also were commanded after the Fall.

But aside from these obvious errors in reasoning, we also have Biblical proof that eating meat is godly. The Old Testament dietary laws always included meats. And part of the Old Covenant was killing and sacrificing animals. God would never command us to do something sinful. 

In the New Testament, Jesus ate fish and served it to large crowds (Matthew 14:13-21). In Luke 5 Jesus tells the disciples where to cast their nets in order to catch fish and in John 21 after telling them where to cast their nets, He cooks fish for them to eat. Christ even ate fish in His resurrected body (Luke 24:40-43).

And after Christ's resurrection, in Acts 10 God commands Peter to kill and eat meat, warning Peter, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” This command was given to the early church as part of the New Covenant, ending the dietary laws.

There is nothing wrong with being a vegetarian for dietary purposes, but we can't use the Bible to claim that eating meat is wrong or sinful. The only time Scripture shows disapproval of eating meat is when it was sacrificed to idols. 

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