(The Nationalist, 9 June 2000)
I used to feel embarrassed at that Gospel in which Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd, and us the sheep. I was bothered by its implication that we human beings are like sheep. After all, everyone knows that sheep are not too bright. In fact, they’re at the back of the slow learners’ class. I used to work with sheep some thirty years ago and they are indeed a very stupid lot. If there was a flock in a large field and there was one small bog-hole in it, they’d find it and fall – no, jump – into it and have to be pulled out. Humanity couldn’t be that dense, I thought.
Now I’m not so sure. Some twenty five years ago, when I was living in New Zealand, there was a sea-quake which created a tidal wave off the coast. No one knew in which direction the wave was going to move, but scientists warned that if it came ashore it would be a wall of water about 5 metres high and moving at a speed of about 650 km. an hour. It would sweep all before it and no building could withstand its force. What did people do? Instead of heading for the hills as advised by radio they went down to the sea-coast to watch it coming. Police drove along the beach pleading with them to go to high ground for safety but instead they went in even greater numbers to see what would happen. Fortunately, the tidal wave ran parallel to the coast and didn’t come ashore. Those sheep jumping into the bog-hole begin to seem less stupid.
And think of what happened very recently when a fire began in a warehouse storing fireworks in a town in the Netherlands. What did people do? They went to watch it; the warehouse blew up, killing fourteen people and burning some four hundred houses. Woolly thinking!
And just a few weeks ago the Ethiopian government berated the Western world for not coming quickly enough with food aid to help its people suffering from famine. But the same government spends $1 million a day on a war with its neighbour, Eritrea. And what’s the war about? It’s about personal animosity between the president of Eritrea and the prime minister of Ethiopia, who hate each other heartily. That appears to be the issue. Mutton heads!
And did you see on TV the antics of government soldiers fighting in the civil war in Sierra Leone? To me, they looked like armed thugs. They were dancing in the streets, firing streams of machine-gun bullets in the air to celebrate some local victory. They said they could have done more but for lack of ammunition. Whoever said sheep were stupid?
You’ve heard of wars to end all war. Well, since the end of the Second World War in 1945, and the setting up of the UN to promote world peace, there have been over 200 wars in the world, according to the Swedish International Peace Research Institute. Why do people fight in them? Aren’t there young men who are swayed by nothing more than the stirring music of a military brass band, or the sight of fine-looking uniforms, or the rabble-rousing rhetoric of a jingoistic politician while the flag waves in the wind? Slow learners?
Come on, wake up, switch on the head and think! Most of our problems are self-inflicted, pure DIY jobs. My apologies, Lord, for raising a questioning eyebrow at your simile. And, while I’m at it, apologies, too, to the sheep.