From Chains to Freedom: How Going Vegan Led Me to Christ 🌱
From Chains to Freedom: How Going Vegan Led Me to Christ 🌱
From Chains to Freedom: How Going Vegan Led Me to Christ 🌱
If I can do it. You can too! As my t-shirt says behind my roots: "Lets root for eachother!"
- Written by Natalia Magdalena Botvinjevs
I used to feel like I was in chains — physically, mentally, and spiritually. My body hurt, my mind was clouded, and my soul was restless and hurting. I was raised in confusion — a daughter of a woman who called herself Catholic in one breath and a witch in the next. I saw darkness dressed up as light. I lived a life of survival, pain, and numbness — a life far from peace.
But something started to shift when I went vegan.
At first, it wasn’t about religion. I didn’t even really believe in God yet. It began with something simple — a relationship with animals. I had a cat, a dog, birds… and I started to see that they had personalities, emotions, preferences, fears, and love. They weren’t just animals — they were someone. Even though life had made my heart more and more hard and bitter over time, God put mercy for the animals in my heart, that loved me, even when no human around me did, for most my life. Even when I was a big mess. God saved me threw that unconditional love animals showed me.
That connection opened my eyes. Soon I saw the pigs, cows, and chickens too. I saw their suffering. I saw the mutilations. I saw the separation of babies from mothers. I saw the insemination — done by force — and the seed collection from bulls. It wasn’t just farming. It was rape. It was violation. It reminded me of the sex industry I had known too well — the abuse of the helpless, the use of bodies as property, the silence that surrounds it, and how most of this wickedness is hitten behind walls too!
And I began to understand something: this isn’t just unkind — this is sin.
The more I studied, the more I saw how these practices come from pagan rituals — not from the heart of the true God. In some pagan traditions, it was even believed that the more the animal suffered, the more pleasing the sacrifice. They would bleed them, burn them, beat them, and mutilate them — all in the name of gods who fed on fear and blood. And while most people today may not chant over the bodies, we still mutilate animals. We burn them. We cage them. We fixate them. We strip them of dignity, and call it normal.
In Denmark and Europe, one of the most common ways to slaughter pigs is by gassing them to death in chambers. They scream, thrash, panic — and suffocate slowly in carbon dioxide. And yet this is seen as standard. But if we all agree that gassing humans was a wicked act of genocide, why is it suddenly not wicked when done to animals? Isn't that hipocracy? Isn't that injustice?
“The righteous care for the needs of their animals, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel.” (Proverbs 12:10)
I began to feel it in my soul: This is not God's way.
Like the Israelites in Egypt, I had been conditioned to believe that eating meat was normal, good, even godly, if God did exist. Most christian and Churches shure preach meat eating too in Jesus name. But the Israelites were born into Egypt, just like I was born into a fallen world. They spent generations in a culture where animal sacrifice and flesh were part of everyday life. It felt natural. So when God freed them, they still craved what enslaved them.
“We remember the fish we ate in Egypt… but now our whole being is dried up. There is nothing at all except this manna before our eyes!” (Numbers 11:5–6)
They rejected God’s provision because it wasn’t flesh. I did too most my life. Meny use these words against vegans, yet forget what came next...
"While the flesh was yet between their teeth, ere it was chewed, the anger of Jehovah was kindled against the people, and Jehovah smote the people with a very great plague." (Numbers 11:33 ASV)
But then something happened: I woke up. The veil began to fall. I felt like a sinner. And that hurt — because the truth always does at first. But it also set me free. The same year I went vegan, I came to Christ. And I understood… mercy isn’t weakness. It’s power. Compassion isn’t naive. It’s divine. And If God had Mercy for the lest his animals, maybe his mercy and Kingdom was for me too?
Becoming vegan dosn’t have to feel like a diet or a restriction. It wasn’t one more chain. It was freedom. Every food you once knew in the animal kingdom — there’s a vegan version of it today. You can still enjoy abundance. But this time, without blood on your hands. My body started to heal, my mind calmed, my soul softened. I started to walk like a person being made new.
Just like Daniel in Babylon — he chose not to defile himself with the king’s meat. He ate only plants, and he and his friends were found to be stronger, wiser, and healthier than all the others.
"At the end of ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food.” (Daniel 1:15)
Modern studies — like The China Study and the Game Changers documentary — confirm the same truth today. A plant-based life heals. A merciful life honors God.
The God I follow now isn’t the one who thrives on the blood of the innocent — human or animal. That’s the fallen god, the one who comes to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). The true God came to give life, and give it abundantly!
Now I walk differently. I live differently. I see both humans and animals as sacred creations, not commodities. And I know: when I chose mercy, mercy finds me.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” (Matthew 5:7)
“The hunters will be hunted.” (Psalm 10:2, spiritual interpretation)
