Sheep and Goats

by ctrwtf 10 Replies latest jw friends

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  ctrwtf

  I'm lucky enough to live in a part of the US that many would call "pastoral." True to the label, I pass a small farm on the way to talking my daughter to school each day. The other day I notice the owners had their small flock of sheep out to pasture along witha black goat.

  For some reason I had a flashback to all the references the society uses re sheep, other sheep, sheeplike and goatlike etc. It really made me mad to think that anyone who disagreed with the society was immediately labeled a "goat." And conversely a "sheep" was anyone virtuous and honest-hearted.

  How simple minded can you be? With very few exceptions humans are not farm animals. To label someone with a derogatory term because they want to use critical thinking skills and common sense to judge for themselves what is true is the height of arrogance. On the other hand to praise someone for "going along" ignores the fact that we are supposedly made in god's image. Aren't we abandoning our divinity if we put someone on a pedastal because they blindly follow directions? What does it say about a god that prefers dullards?

  I've been inactive for five years now. Mentally out for ten or more. It still enrages me that I sometimes can't escape these thoughts.
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  Rip

  The society is misusing Jesus's metaphors and parables when it takes the respo of deciding who is goat and who is sheep and when it is done.Simply this responsability is for JEsus. The time is the end day. There no hidden reading or prophecies attached to Jesus's parables, he was simply a keen obsever and gave pedagogical lesson in conclusion, to take as they are. Otherwise you go beyond what is written.
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  Mum

  Another aspect of the "sheep and goat" mentality that is usually overlooked is that it stigmatizes left-handedness. The sheep are at the right-hand side, and the goats are on the left. Many members of my family, including my daughter, are left-handed, so I'm a little sensitive about prejudicial comments that suggest a connection with evil or inferiority.
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  fulltimestudent

  How simple minded can you be?

  True, ctrwtf! If Jesus really knew everything about the world (because of his pre-human existence-whatever role he played) he would have known that :

  A goat-antelope , or caprid , is any of the species of mostly medium-sized bovids that make up the subfamily Caprinae (as treated here), part of the Bovidae family of ruminants . The domestic sheep and domestic goat are both part of the goat-antelope group by its widest definition, but some taxonomists [who?] prefer to use the term only for members of the Caprinae that are not members of the tribe Caprini (caprines). The term "goat-antelope" does not mean that these animals are true antelopes: a true antelope is a bovid with a cervid -like or antilocaprid -like morphology.

  And, in translating the bible into Chinese you meet a problem - there is only one word for both sheep and goats, and that is yang.

  So you have Jesus separating yang from yang. Not quite the same, is it?
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  Bobcat

  FTS:

  And, in translating the bible into Chinese you meet a problem - there is only one word for both sheep and goats, and that is yang .

  I posted some similar research about sheep & goats in my post # 711 on this thread.
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  braincleaned

  Haha! Priceless... no wonder they took so long to preach in China! :D
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  Shanagirl

  I think the sheep and goats get the bum wrap. The poor sheep are thought of as simple mindless, clueless, blind followers, and the goats seem like the evil mean subborn disobedient Jehovah killers. Actually, being involved in the equestrian world wih my horses at horse shows and barns I got to know that sometimes when a rider had a "hot' difficult horse, the trick was to keep a goat in the stall with the excitable horse, especially before a jumping show, because something about the goat kept the horse calm and content to be in teh same stall with the goat. anyway, goats are cool.

  Shana
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  Bobcat

  A number of commentaries point out that referring to the parable as 'the parable of the sheep and goats,' that this is somewhat of a misnomer since the sheep & goats metaphor is dropped after verse 33.
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  Black Sheep

  If you think the sheep and goats get a bum rap, what about pigs? Jesus chases them off a cliff .... and not as a parable. Mark 5:11-13. What do pigs do wrong?
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  Apognophos

  Black Sheep (!): The pigs made the mistake of leaving their minds open for the deemunz.