16 The heavens are the LORD’s heavens, but the earth He has given to the children of man. ~ Psalms 115:16
I recently saw a video of a girl eating out at a restaurant, showing that she refused to drink her drink with a plastic straw in order to save sea creatures. When she put her drink down, she pulled her plate of food in front of her and started to eat. What was she eating? Louisiana Seafood Boil. Crab Legs. Shrimp. Crawfish. There were so many comments and reaction videos to this video, making fun of her. And in all honesty, I thought the same thing when I first watched the video, but then I started to think about it. And I actually get her point.
See, she isn’t against fishing and/or catching sea life. She’s against the pollution of plastic killing off, injuring, and hurting sea life. We were put on this earth to take care of the earth and the animals on it, yet the LORD told Noah and Peter to kill and eat. There was never a point in time when the LORD set a law not to kill and eat.
See, fishing isn’t the issue. Hunting isn’t the issue. Overdoing those things is. Pollution is. Think about this, more than one hundred thousand sea mammals and approximately one million seabirds die from plastic pollution each year. An estimated 8 to 14 million metric tons of plastic enter the ocean annually, with projections suggesting this could triple within the next two decades. Recent research indicates that as few as six pieces of rubber can kill 90% of seabirds, while 29 pieces of plastic are often lethal to sea mammals. Plastic has been found in the digestive tracts of nearly 1,300 sea species, including all sea turtle species and every family of seabird and sea mammal. Discarded fishing gear, known as “ghost gear,” kills hundreds of thousands of animals annually, with 640,000 tonnes of such gear entering oceans each year. In fact, scientists warn that by 2050, the weight of plastic in the ocean could exceed the combined weight of all fish in the seas.
This isn’t how we should treat the home the Good LORD above gave us. This isn’t how we should treat His creatures. Eating seafood isn’t the problem; how we treat the earth and the sea is, though. It’s easy to quickly cast a judgment and not really think about what’s being said or what’s happening. We have to learn to think deeper and contemplate more.
Peace. Love. Go Forth and Look Deeper Than The Surface.