I am a Christian but I find it hard to forgive the slaughter of whales in Faroe Islands - Bird Lovegod

Last week the Faroe Islands perpetrated a crime against nature, and what can accurately be called an abomination. They slaughtered a wonder of the natural world, a super pod of 1,500 dolphins, male, female, juvenile, pregnant, it mattered not. They hacked them all to pieces. In the name of tradition.

If I were Prime Minister, and I thank God I am not, I would not have stayed silent.

As it stands, all I can do is share my sentiment and try to forgive them for this outrageous act. Even so, I find it impossible to understand.

Do they actually hate dolphins and whales? Do they despise them? Do they want to stamp them out? Kill them all? Would they kill them all, every last one on Earth, if they were able?

Why do they hate whales and dolphins? That’s what I can’t understand.

Whenever they detect any in their waters they rush out and slaughter them. I just can’t understand it. It’s beyond rational comprehension.

Part of me wants to talk with them, to engage in dialogue, to meet them and discuss.

They call it ‘tradition’, but human sacrifice also used to be tradition, as did burning women alive for being witches, and bear baiting, and leaving disabled babies to die.

Tradition is a historical description, not a modern justification. Do they see anything wrong in what they do?

It’s like an extreme blood sport, fox hunting, is that comparable?

It’s really impacted my thinking, maybe I should cease all meat eating, maybe I should just look at myself and what I do that is ethically abhorrent.

Maybe I’ll stop eating fish, I think so, that’s a tiny way for me to do something, but if everyone did the same, the seas would recover from our exploitation. Forgive them, they know not what they do. Although of course on some level they do know, they just don’t see it as wrong.

But perhaps this applies to all of us. We eat fish, causing the seas to be depleted and lifeless, and how many dolphins and whales are caught up in those nets? Who knows. We know not what we do.

It saddens me that a civilised country just a few hundred miles from the UK can be so barbaric towards nature, so overtly cruel. They’re people, like you and me, they have friends, and families, and pets, and jobs, and lives, and they love, and laugh, and dance, and sing, and then they hear about a pod of dolphins, and they race to slaughter them.

So strange, so alien and perverse. So out of keeping with the mindset of the civilised world.

As a Christian I know to forgive, and I do, I’m trying, but it’s hard, because I don’t understand. I just can’t understand how they could do it.

Are they consumed by hatred? Is their soul somehow poisoned?

I pray for forgiveness of myself for harbouring anger and aggression against them, and I pray for healing for the people of the Faroe Islands.

And I pray for the dolphins and whales.

That they can forgive us all. And I’m not eating fish from now on.