Pass the Mint Jelly

All tyranny requires these elements to be successful.

• • Universal Guilt
  • Incompetent masses
  • Dictated Good
  • Abolition of Ambition
  • Collective Conformity

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A Shepherd and a three sheep walked into a bar

     The Shepherd stands at the door and says: “All manner of temptation is in this den of inequity. Don’t drink the beer, you might get drunk.”
     Sheep One says: “Baahhhhh!”
     Sheep Two says: “Baahhhhh!”
     Sheep Three got drunk.
     The Shepherd said: “Stupid sheep! I shall discipline you! ” He then struck the sheep with his staff and the sheep died. “We shall flee the temptations of this world. Follow me to the Promised Land.”
     The Shepherd and two sheep walked into a forest. The Shepherd says: “Beware of the wolf. He wants to eat you. He hates you. But I love you.”
     Sheep One says: “Baahhhhh!”
     The wolf says: “Sheep Two was very tasty. I love Sheep.”
     The Shepherd says: “Stupid Sheep. It should have listened to my wise counsel. We will flee the danger of the wolves. Follow me to the Promised Land!”
     The Shepherd and a sheep walk into a church: “I led you to safety. Here, in this place, temptation will not get you and the evil wolf will not get you.”
     Sheep One says: “Baahhhhh!”
     The Shepherd says: “I’m hungry. I have worked to protect the sheep. I am entitled to double portions. Let’s have a pot luck dinner.”
     The bartender says: “We have killed all the sacred cows; we are all out of meat.”
The Shepherd replies: “Well, this last sheep is mine; he has been predestined to sacrifice himself. We can eat him.”
     The Bartender says: “What sheep?”
     The Shepherd turns to see Sheep One running out the door. “Where are you going? The world is fraught with peril.”
     Sheep One says: “My epistemology prevents my cognition to successfully identify my own jeopardy, and my own propensity toward self-destruction. Though I have been told I cannot rely on my own judgment, the reality before me is my expenditure is imminent. In other words, I might be stupid but I’m not dumb. The question is not IF I am going to be eaten, but by WHOM.”
     The Shepherd says: “Heretic! Burn him at the stake.”

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The problem with expecting metaphors to be explicit truth (even if those metaphors are in the bible) is deciding when the metaphor no longer applies. The question is how much of the metaphor is explicit truth; the general sense of the word picture or is it an entire allegory?

Let’s try this metaphor. The bible says that the righteous are “…as bold as Lions…” and since Male Lions sleep all day, leave hunting to the lioness, and breeds with the multiple pride females, then a righteous man should emulate the actions of the Male Lion? Let the women work and keep the ladies haaaaapppppy!

Come on ladies…you’re good with this doctrine. It is in the bible after all.

>snicker<

You don’t like THAT metaphor as doctrine? Does that metaphor seem to dogmatize animal nature as human action?

Yeah, huh?

The popular starting place for establishing Church Governing authority begins with the ubiquitous commentary that Sheep are stupid and Shepherds protect sheep. God likens humans to sheep; therefore, humans are stupid. Since humans are stupid, they need someone to protect them from themselves. Enter pastor extraordinaire, crook in hand, to protect the stupid people from their own stupidity.

Alexander Strauch advances the Sheep/Pastor metaphor in his book Biblical Eldership: an Urgent Call to Restore Biblical Church Leadership, with these words (among others): “Protecting the Flock is vitally important because sheep are defenseless animals. They are utterly helpless in the face of wolves, bears, lions, jackals, or robbers. (Strauch page 18)

Why are they defenseless? Metaphorically speaking, the answer seems to be that sheep have no self-awareness. Phillip Keller describes sheep like this:

It reminds me of the behavior of a band of sheep under attack from dogs, cougars, bears, or even wolves. Often in blind fear or stupid unawareness they will stand rooted to the spot watching their companions being cut to shreds. The predator will pounce upon one, then another of the flock racking and tearing them tooth and claw. Meanwhile, other sheep may act as if they did not even hear or recognize the carnage going on around them. It is as though they were totally oblivious to the peril of their own precarious position.

(A Shepherds Look at the Great Shepherd and His Sheep. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981 page  25)

Sheep won’t fight to save their companion? Sheep turn away from carnage? Sheep are indifferent to injustice? Sheep are oblivious to Peril? Sounds like the Lutheran Church in the 1933 Weimar Republic.

Gotta LOVE metaphors. Or maybe that is a simile? Who can tell?

Ehem…

To humans, sheep actions appear inexplicable. We find such total passivity and irrationality … stupid. In defense of Ovis idiocy: this critique carries the same injustice as calling rabbits immoral because it breeds with a polygamist’s relentless intensity. How can one be condemned for their nature?

Sheep lack self-awareness. Sticking with the assumption that we live in a dispensation where there is no more revelation, this really isn’t a revelation. And neither is it a revelation that most all herd animals lack self-awareness. Virtually no animal can conceptualize beyond the momentary concretes of daily existence. Sheep behavior is not dramatically different from most herd animal behavior. With few exceptions, herd animals have limited capacity to identify dangers, or individually defend against those dangers. Who hasn’t seen the Discovery Chanel where the herd of Wildebeest runs madly about as a Lion or Hyena hunts the weak and young? And once the predator is successful, the herd will continue to graze within yards of the kill. Virtually no animal has the conceptual ability to extrapolate cause and effect, to identify personal danger in the mishap of another.

No animal but MAN.

And here is the rub. Man is not an animal. He is qualitatively and quantitatively above animals, so metaphors seeking to define human action (Even Bible metaphors) in animal terms are necessarily limited.

It seems strange that one should have to point this out to curtail the enforced implications of the Sheep/Shepherd metaphor. But hey… I do what is necessary.

Animals survive because they adapted themselves TO nature. Conversely, Man survives by adapting nature TO himself. If he fails to adapt nature to himself, man’s life expectancy is measured in days. The tool for adapting nature to himself is his brain; man’s capacity to THINK. Thinking REQUIRES self-awareness. Without self-awareness, man would not survive the daily rigor of his own life, let alone a threat from a predator, or successfully abstract the relationship between another person’s peril and his own precarious position.

Human survival requires two things: Man can think and reality is knowable.

Notice the foundational assumptions built into the 9th commandment: “Thou shalt not bear false witness…” While often interpreted to mean don’t lie against your neighbor, this command carries with it a profound epistemological foundation. God’s command presumes that reality is entirely within man’s grasp to know, measure, define, and represent. In a word, reality is objective. And Man has a divine injunction against hiding, subjectivizing, or manipulating reality by fraud.

This means man has a choice. He can choose to think about his existence and render it accurately or he can choose to forfeit his thinking by hiding, subjectivizing, or fraudulently witnessing that reality.

Sheep are by nature passive, oblivious, and defenseless against the swirling, abstract peril of the world.

Man, by nature, has a choice whether to be passive, oblivious, and defenseless against the swirling, abstract peril of the world.

Men think. Sheep need someone to think for them. The standard Brady Bunch bible interpretation says that shepherds watch out for the sheep’s own best interest. But the REALITY is a Shepherd keeps the wolves away so the sheep can be fleeced and turned into lamb chops.

So the choice before Men is: To think . . . or . . . Be served with mint Jelly.