The Gospel of John

Sheep: Designed for Shepherding

Sheep have a bad rap. Well, yes, they are dumb as a box of rocks, they can't fight off anything more serious than rabbits, and they have no idea what's good for them. But where would we get that very useful material, wool, if not for sheep? And what else could God use to model human behavior? He had to make sheep for the metaphor.

There's a sort of pejorative component to discussions of sheep. All through the years people use sheep as examples, and this is accompanied by head-shaking and laughter.

Sheep can't really be faulted. Their design isn't baaaad, and they're woolly, woolly good at producing useful material. There's nothing like wool, in fact. It's naturally water-repellent, springy, tough, and without it the kilt never would have been invented. So, lay off sheep for a time, will ya? They were designed to be incompetent, so that they could be competent in other things.

Our lives are much more complex. We're more capable than sheep. For one thing, we've figured out how to get the wool off the sheep without killing it. Then we figured out how to weave it, dye it, sew it, and how to use it for that marvellous all-purpose protective garment, the Great Kilt, from which the modern kilt is descended. And yet, when it comes to matters of the spirit, we really are, like sheep, dumb as a box of rocks.

We might even be dumber, because we think we know what to do. We think we know God, when all we've done is listen to his patient knocking at the door and respond by saying, "Yah, I know you. Been there, done that, don't need it."

God gets a bad rap, too. He's banging away on the door, and none of us really knows what a shepherd is. I certainly didn't. God had to wait until I was so thoroughly entangled in brambles that even I, lordly manager of my own life for most of my years, had to yell for help or die. There are very few examples that we can look at to see how a shepherd behaves; we get lots of examples of God as the vengeful one, or God as the distant, disinterested manager, but when was the last time you heard Christians meeting to talk about how God continues to shepherd them through life? This is moderately embarrassing. We're supposed to outgrow the direct need for God, or at least not lean so hard on him.

We were designed to have a shepherd. We never were intended to make decisions on what's right and what's wrong. The daily need to make such decisions wears us out and makes life a long struggle with little reward.

Sheep may safely graze when they have a good shepherd, one who is watching out for the things the sheep were never designed to resist. If we just keep our eyes on our shepherd, his guidance will get us through all those sticky situations. He'll tell us where the brambles are, when I'm about to go over a cliff, but he has to have his way with me. I have to trust his guidance and learn to depend upon it. He sees farther than I do, in more detail, and in all its relationship to the rest of the world. He's a good shepherd, and has proven to be far better at guiding my life than I've ever been.

Is it possible for a sheep to feel pride? We'd say that they have little to be proud of, but why not? A really good sheep is being itself. In some regards, I'm a sheep, helpless to fight off the world's bad influences and subject to being tossed out the window or run over. I wasn't designed to resist. I was designed to live every second with God, the Holy Spirit guiding my steps, following Jesus on a path marked out before I was born, and knowing that whatever fight comes along the issue isn't in doubt. Doesn't matter how big the lion is, my shepherd is bigger. The lion is toast.

posted by Larry @ 1:31 PM