"The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. " - Isaiah 11:6-9
"O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. Yonder is the sea, great and wide, creeping things innumerable are there, living things both small and great. There go the ships, and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it. These all look to you to give them their food in due season; when you give to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. When you send forth your spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of the ground." - Psalms 104:24-30
"For in [Jesus] all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross." - Colossians 1:19-20
The following is the long response, and please know that I in no way intend judgment upon any reader in my convictions. They are, after all, my own, and I offer them for whatever you would do with them...
The impetuses for why I am considering such a drastic life change are numerous. Yes, I want to be healthy, but I know that veganism is not necessary for this, and I certainly don't mean it to replace exercise. Yes, I have seen some videos on the matter, but nothing full length. The PETA video on factory farming was thoroughly enlightening, and I can now no longer think of it as anything less than barbaric and demented...but their perspective fits in nicely with my already Socialist proclivities: if the vast majority of humans are cogs in our industrial complex, it is no surprise to find animals therein as well.
Yet, I do not approach the matter simply in terms of health or morality. The majority of our ethical discourse, philosophically and practically, centers on the question of what we can get away with. And since we can get away with whatever we keep hidden, it is no surprise that the dominant culture quickly squelches the repulsive images of our own brutalities--and the voices of those who oppose them--since we have come to depend on them so vehemently in our myopic notion of the American Dream.
It is largely because of this moral laziness, this minimality, that I shy away from philosophical ethics and even the theological ethics based on the philosophers' god. The question of what we can get away with, what we can legitimately tolerate as a concession for the welfare of the masses (as it could be articulated in this instance), is in my reading, never a Biblical question; that is, it seems quite out of place for the Reign of God (and here, I confess, is my primary point of combustion).
Rather, the Kingdom is, as Jesus illustrates, "like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches [Matthew 13:31-32]."
And again: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened [Matthew 13: 33]."
And again: "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field [Matthew 13:44]."
And again: "The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it [Matthew 13: 45-46]."
The social economy of the Kingdom of which Jesus speaks is a travesty and a scandal to the ethics of minimality. God does not ask you for your least, for whatever you can comfortably give...God asks you for your all, in every imaginable sense.
And precisely here is the rub: this calling, this leading, this divine begging is the fruit of a shatteringly Infinite love.
Consider Jesus in another context: "What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray [Matthew 18:12]?"
Even the one lost sheep, Jesus is saying, is irreplaceable. Such is the love of God for the creature, human and otherwise, that we are bestowed with a dignity and value which demands respect, compassion, patience, gentleness, mercy, and privilege.
We live in an abnormally inconsistent cultural time. So many of those who protest abortion also promote execution. Many of the greatest lovers of animals are fearful and spiteful of humans. Many who openly worship God, ignore the homeless and oppressed. Many who hate God love the nature God created. The preference we give to one group of God's beloved, we deny to others...and that, however much we all share in that, will not do.
What's more, sadly, we deny even this preference to ourselves on a pandemic scale. Thomas Merton, a Catholic monk, wrote nearly fifty years ago that the reason so few people believe in God, is because they can't believe that even a God can love them. It is no wonder that we have lost a public notion of human dignity; that we think abortion is merely about women's rights; that we think justice is about getting what's coming to you; and that we think it's acceptable to enslave and torture innocent creatures out of convenience.
If Paul is correct, in the passage from Collosians quoted above, that God reconciled to himself all things, this must mean, really, truly, all things...all finite reality, all beasts of the field and creatures of the sea and birds of the air and things that crawl on the ground...and all human persons...all atrociously imperfect and exactly, beautifully therein, lovable.
We are each irreplaceable, like the lost sheep. There is only one of you, only one...and what we all have in common, if nothing else, with each other and with all our swarming, barking, meowing, climbing, flying, pecking, burrowing, swimming, mooing, shitting brothers and sisters, is that we are all creatures for whom Christ died...and that, more than anything else, is at the root of my conundrum.