Jesus, the Lamb of God

Sheep are DUMB animals. Wild sheep are wary, graceful, and adept at traveling rugged terrain. But domesticated sheep have had all that bred out of them in favor of more desired traits like wool and meat quality. Domestic sheep will literally fall over on level ground, while their wild cousins dance on sheer cliff faces, unable to right themselves because of the weight of their own wool. They have a very narrow field of vision, narrowed even farther by their selective vision. Sheep literally see only what they want to see. If they spot a tuft of grace four feet ahead and to the right, they will utterly ignore the ravine edge on which that grass is perched.

Sheep are natural followers. Sheep always have to move because they eat all the available food to the root so it can't grow back. Sheep pasture will soon turn to inedible weeds if they aren't kept moving by a shepherd. They look around and spot another sheep moving. They then assume that that other sheep must know where the fresh grass is, and they follow them. If a sheep thinks you look like you know where you're going, it'll follow you.

So when the bible says, "We all, like sheep, have gone astray." It's an insult.

But aren't we like that sometime? Don't we lock on to things we want, like a sheep to a tuft of grass, and ignore obvious dangers and pitfalls? We gotta have that video game even though we don't have the time or $50 to waste on an ultra-violent, gore-fest. We want to date that gorgeous guy even though everyone knows his reputation for using his girlfriends and then dropping them like a rock the second someone prettier comes along. We gotta have that new car even though we don't have the extra $100 a month it will add to our car payment and the extra $150 it will ad to the insurance bill. We gotta have that last beer, even though we already feel that buzz and still have a drive home in heavy traffic.

And don't we blindly follow sometimes. Everyone has Pokemon stuff, so we have to go out and buy everything with a Pikachu on it. Everyone does it, is the catchall excuse for any misbehavior in our clique-driven, popularity-driven culture. To cite the extreme example, Hitler led a whole country into a devastating war and uspeakable atrocities because people believed he could get them the power and prosperity they wanted. Then, when the accusations of the world leveled against them, many declared they were innocent because they were "just following orders".

We have to admit we all have had our moments when we were as dumb as sheep and made stupid mistakes. For some of us, it's wiped out our whole life. Some of us are making the same stupid mistakes over and over again. And the guilt haunts us.

But we aren't sheep. Our life isn't meant to be characterized by the brainless things we've done. We aren't the sum total of our neuroses and psychoses. We're human beings. We're supposed to be smart, intelligent, and even wise. Yet here we are with our most sheep-like moments glaring in our memories.

How do we deal with that guilt?