Weekly Newsletter from Christian Vegetarian Association CVA - May 16, 2025
From Christian Vegetarian Association (CVA)

In Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank writes about her experience hiding from Nazis during World War II. She and her family were found, and she died at age 15 in a concentration camp. Her diary includes the following passage:

"In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again."

In the next several essays, I'd like to reflect on this passage, which I find heartbreaking.

Anne knew that her family was in great danger, and indeed the chaos and violence destroyed her and her family. So, how does a teenager who should be focused on teenage concerns find a degree of equanimity in a world of deprivation, fear, and anticipated early death?

This question, I think, is relevant today. Many people see humanity on the brink of disaster due to one or more of the following: disintegration of democratic institutions that protect personal freedoms, economic collapse (due to factors such as resource depletion and massive debt), nuclear war, and ecological apocalypse (with climate change being a principal concern). Even if there were no significant threats to human civilization, from the perspective of nonhumans a world dominated by humans has been, is currently, and will likely continue to be a tragedy of incomprehensible proportions. Industrial animal agriculture tortures and murders tens of billions nonhumans annually, and humans abuse many more for science, "sport" hunting, fur, entertainment, and for many other self-serving (and often trivial) ends.

Anne had the misfortune of being born Jewish in a world that despised Jewish people. Similarly, countless nonhumans find themselves in the bodies of creatures who are despised and cruelly exploited by humans. What good is Christianity if it does stand against such blatant, massive injustice? Perhaps Anne's thoughts about human nature offer reasons for hope for both Christianity and humanity-at-large.

Stephen R. Kaufman, MD

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