Understanding Kṛṣṇa and Christ
115
God? If you do not follow the orders of God, then where is your love? Therefore we have come to teach what it means to love God: if you love Him, you cannot be disobedient to His orders. And if you're disobedient, your love is not true.
All over the world, people love not God but their dogs. The Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement is therefore necessary to teach people how to revive their forgotten love for God. Not only the Christians, but also the Hindus, the Muhammadans, and all others are guilty. They have rubber-stamped themselves "Christian," "Hindu," or "Muhammadan," but they do not obey God. That is the problem.
Visitor:  Can you say in what way the Christians are disobedient?
Śrīla Prabhupāda:  Yes. The first point is that they violate the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" by maintaining slaughterhouses. Do you agree that this commandment is being violated?
Father Emmanuel:  Personally, I agree.
Śrīla Prabhupāda:  Good. So if the Christians want to love God, they must stop killing animals.
Father Emmanuel:  But isn't the most important point . . .
Śrīla Prabhupāda:  If you miss one point, there is a mistake in your calculation. Regardless of what you add or subtract after that, the mistake is already in the calculation, and everything that follows will also be faulty. We cannot simply accept that part of the scripture we like, and reject what we don't like, and still expect to get the result. For example, a hen lays eggs with its back part and eats with its beak. A farmer may consider, "The front part of the hen is very expensive because I have to feed it. Better to cut if off." But if the head is missing there will be no eggs anymore because the body is dead. Similarly, if we reject the difficult part of the scriptures and obey the part we like, such an interpretation will not help us. We have to accept all the injunctions of the scripture as they are given, not only those that suit us. If you do not follow the first order, "Thou shalt not kill," then where is the question of love of God?
Visitor:  Christians take this commandment to be applicable to human beings, not to animals.
Śrīla Prabhupāda:  That would mean that Christ was not intelligent enough to use the right word:  murder . There is  killing , and there is  murder .  Murder  refers to human beings. Do you think Jesus was not intelligent enough to use the right word— murder —instead of the word  killing ?  Killing  means any kind of killing, and especially animal killing. If Jesus had meant simply the killing of humans, he would have used the word  murder .