Gxg (G²);62212202 said:
Cool to know that the discussions blessed you - and I'm glad to know you were blessed by them. What did you happen to enjoy in them?
First, I liked hearing people say that they concluded that Adam was a vegetarian. It seems right to me, and leads me to believe that since God's original creation was very good, and a diet based on it should probably be very good for us. And I occasionally hear these stories of carnivorous animals such as cats who have chosen vegetarian diets and seem to do well.
It makes sense to me that even the animals were vegetarians because of prophecies such as lions laying down with lambs, carnivores eating straw, etc. I understand those passages are meant to point to a restoration of the creation. So I conclude the original creation didn't originally have carnivores.
Being a Gentile, I see Jewish believers bringing a sense of history when they speak. Besides the NT, my Protestant tradition pretty much consists of anything written after the 15th century. It's sufficient, but I know there's more to be had. So I enjoyed the back-and-forth in the Messianic Judaism forum. I might lurk there a bit.
I've seen the discussion of animal death before the Fall being a touchy subject. The YEC point of view is that it didn't happen. I'm not so sure. I'm no theologian, but I don't see the animals being given access to the tree of life. So if they were immortal there was something else supernatural going on. And I don't see that something else in the text, so I conclude that animals may have died of old age even before the Fall. I brought that up in feedback to an article on creation.com and received a firm but gentle "no" from the author. Maybe animals were immortal, but I don't see an exegetical necessity for it.
My beliefs as a YEC may be considered kinda funky. I think even pre-Fall Adam could've died if he fell out of a tree and broke his neck, or swam farther into a river than he could swim back. I even agree with Aquinas that Adam needed to eat from the tree of life on a regular basis to keep aging and eventual death at bay.
Gxg (G²);62212202 said:
Also, as I'm loving vegetarian - especially Indian food - what is your favorite?
I'm big on fresh fruits. They're easy to find here in Pennsylvania, even in the winter. In particular, there's a Mennonite produce store that just opened last year. I go there weekly, and today came home with melons, bananas, clementines, tomatoes, sweet peppers, sweet onions, cucumbers, blueberries, and a zucchini. It's incredible that I can purchase that kind of food in January.
On weekdays about half of my breakfast & lunch calories come from fresh fruit. I'll also do up veggies the night before, roasting potatoes, string beans, or peppers, steaming sweet potatoes, carrots, or peas, or frying zucchini, potatoes, or mushrooms.
I'll make salads from cucumbers, tomatoes, or shredded carrots. There are a lot of Mennonites here and they have about a zillion ways to do up produce into salads. This week I'll be making up a cucumber salad and a three-bean salad.
And I like Mexican food. I have a pretty good Mexican cookbook and I'll make salsas, tacos, enchiladas, or beans. Sometimes I'll snack on fried tortillas and fruit salsa.
I'm not completely vegetarian, and probably never will be, but the amount of meat I consume has dropped dramatically over the past year. Fortunately my wife likes fresh food as well, and never ate much meat herself, so she's very encouraging to me.