How can so many professed believers be so strongly convinced that animals are just here for us to eat or to harm or to do whatever else we want to them?

Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13:13 “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” Prior to his conversion, Paul felt he was doing God’s work by exterminating the early followers of Jesus. It wasn’t until he was literally blinded and Jesus came to him asking him why Paul is persecuting him that his eyes were opened to the truth of what he was doing (Acts 9:1-9). I see so many Christians today holding up faith as the highest virtue, while failing to even leave a place at all for love. But the scripture is clear that love is not only necessary but even more important than faith! If only people could see themselves as the church of Ephesus mentioned at the beginning of Revelation 2 (the one referred to in NKJ translation as “the loveless church”), the church that God says is in dire need of repentance. Instead I see people doggedly using faith as justification for excluding love from their actions, just as the teachers of law in Matthew 23:23 were doing. How backwards their thinking is!