Hugo has a reflective post on his journey “further up and further in” to the vegan lifestyle and contemplates the importance of gradual change. And here’s an insightful post on how the quest for moral improvement can become ironically self-absorbed.

The last point is an important one, I think. In our society, obsessed as it is with “self-help,” ethics can easily get confused with self-improvement. Someone who’s so concerned with their own moral purity is, not unlike the Pharisees in the New Testament, missing the point.

What I’ve always liked about the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith is that it leads, or ought to lead, to a kind of self-forgetfulness. D.M. Baillie identifies the distinctive teaching of Christianity as the “paradox of grace.” This paradox is that we are most free when God’s grace is acting in and through us, and that, though we are responsible beings, we can’t take credit for our good actions. “Not I…but the grace of God in me” is the proper attitude of the Christian. Luther, in his Freedom of a Christian, points out how justification by faith frees us from concern with our own standing before God and frees us for service to our neighbor.

That’s the key I think. Service to our neighbor (and I would include all of creation there), not self-betterment, is the test for our ethics. There have been movements within Christianity which have been at times morbidly introspective. But it’s hard to think of something more pointless than constantly taking your spiritual and moral temperature. Not that we should avoid self-examination, confession, and repentance, but that we should sit a bit lightly to our quest for “sanctification.”

For whatever reason, it seems that people sensitive to animal rights face a particular temptation to self-righteousness and self-preoccupation. This may be a result of what is ultimately an illusory quest for a kind of moral purity. If you have made significant changes in your lifestyle such as giving up animal products you may be inclined to look down your nose at others who haven’t. But, as Andrew Linzey, probably the most well-known Christian advocate of animal rights, has pointed out, there is no “pure land” where we can claim to have extricated ourselves from the system of animal exploitation:

[W]e need to dispel the myth of absolute consistency or ‘pure land’ theology. ‘Western society is so bound up with the use and abuse of animals in so many fields of human endeavour,’ I have argued elsewhere, ‘that it is impossible for anyone to claim that they are not party, directly or indirectly, to this exploitation either through the products they buy, the food they eat, or the taxes they pay.’ Vegans are right to prick the consciences of those who find some recourse to animal by-products inevitable, but they can mislead us if they claim some absolutely pure land which only they inhabit. Self-righteousness can be a killer not only of moral sense but also of moral encouragement.

Instead, he says

[w]hat we need is progressive disengagement from injury to animals. The urgent and essential task is to invite, encourage, support and welcome those who want to take some steps along the road to a more peaceful world with the non-human creation. We do not all have to agree upon the most vital steps, or indeed the most practical ones. What is important is that we all move some way on, if only by one step at a time, however falteringly. If someone is prepared to boycott factory-farmed foods, at least they have made a start. If that is all the humanity that person can muster at least some creatures have been saved from suffering. If someone is prepared to give up only red meat, at least some animals will suffer and die less as a consequence. If someone is prepared to abandon just meat and fish, at least some other creatures have a chance of living in peace. The enemy of progress is the view that everything must be changed before some real gains can be secured. There can be areas of genuine disagreement even among those who are committed to a new world of animal rights. But what is essential for this new world to emerge is the sense that each of us can change our individual worlds, however slightly, to live more peaceably with our non-human neighbours.

Connecting this with the point above about justification by faith: I don’t need to justify myself in the eyes of God by attaining some level of moral purity, which is impossible anyway. God has justified us by making peace with us through the Cross of his Son. But, this frees me to creatively explore ways in which I might live less violently, not in order to earn God’s favor, but out of gratitude for what he has done.

And, it’s important to recall, we live in a fallen world. There won’t be an end to suffering, death, predation, competition for resources, and violence until the Lord returns in glory (whatever that’s going to look like!). Moral perfection isn’t an option in such a world. But we can witness to the hope and promise of a new heaven and new earth. What that looks like for each of us will, as Linzey says, vary from person to person. The point is to leave behind our self-preoccupation and to serve others in the liberty of the children of God. We can “sin boldly” knowing that that by God’s grace we are accepted and cherished.