Wandering Sheep X: Goats

The Parable of the Lost Sheep contd.  

Don: This may be the final session in our study of the Lost Sheep parable, based on Matthew 18.

Who are the goats? How do goats differ from sheep? Can goats become sheep and vice versa? How much can we gain from the metaphor? What does it tell us about Judgment? Matthew 25:31-46 gives us a framework within which to discuss these questions:

“But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left.

“Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.’ Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink? And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.’

“Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.’ Then they themselves also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?’ Then He will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

There are at least two things in this passage that define goats: First, they are not sheep. They are a different species, a different animal. Second, the goats end up in an eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels (along with anyone whose name is not written in the Book of Life — Revelation 20:15 — And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.) There are many more references in the scriptures, e.g., Leviticus 16, where one goat is used as a sacrifice and another is made the “scapegoat,” loaded with all the sins of Israel and taken to the desert and left to die. The scapegoat seems to be the type of goat identified in Matthew 25.

Goats are capricious, impulsive, unpredictable, devious, and contrary. They are never content with what they have, hate to be confined, are not good followers, have weak herding instinct, and always want to be the leader.

Biblical scholars differ about whether the scapegoat is a metaphor for Jesus—bearer of the sins of mankind—or for Satan. Still, sin seems to be a hallmark of goats. Both the sheep on the right and the goats on the left [in the division of Matthew 25] seem surprised at why they are put where they are put. Why are they surprised?

And why are goats apparently excluded from salvation? Sheep seem to be born sheep, and goats to be born goats. They are just different species. So goats don’t fit into the Kingdom.

Harry: In historical context, a more pastoral people knew their sheep from their goats. Verse 31 talks about “all the nations” coming to watch the judgment and division into sheep and goats. But both goats and sheep have been around forever. They were born what they are. We are what we are, and are going to be what we are going to be.

Don: The separation, the division, seems to have been “from the foundation of the world.” So it pre-dates history.

Emma: Sheep want to be comfortable, to be led by an authority. Goats don’t need an authority. They are what they are.

Don: Why are both sides surprised to be on the side Jesus puts them, and why are they surprised by the criteria of selection (as they appear to be)?

Alice: The godly wheat and the Luciferian tares (Matthew 13:36…) couldn’t help being made the way they are. It doesn’t matter what they do in life; their die was cast, their fate sealed, before they were ever sown as seeds.

As far as goats are concerned, they look pretty much like sheep, so perhaps on that basis they are surprised to be treated so differently. Maybe the goats represent fallen angels living inside human bodies.

Harry: The group on the left perhaps thought it was pious and doing the right things, hence its surprise.

Robin: Jesus, the lamb, had to become a goat to save us. We, who are naturally born goats, have to learn to be sheep and to want to follow the shepherd. We have the choice of remaining as goats or becoming sheep. It is not easy.

Mr. Singh: This is a time for all the world to repent. Time is running out.

Harry agrees. Both groups are god-created, but they have different motivations. Both know about the people they should be helping, but one group ignores it if it is not within their religious culture.

Mr. Singh: There are many ways, but only one true Way – God’s way, through Jesus, not through other religions.

David: This whole chapter seems to me to be a case of over-exuberant scripture writers who have embellished Jesus’s teachings and put into his mouth words that are inimical to his teaching. Matt 25 is all about divisiveness, when Jesus’ teaches unity. His salvation is all-inclusive—there are no outsiders, there is no eternal fire.

One could argue that Adam and Even became goats the instant they ate of the forbidden fruit. So we are all predestined goats.

The attributes of the goat are exactly the attributes we aspire to as Americans!

Harry: In historical context, Matthew was written for an historical Jewish audience and is an attack on Judaism. It was telling the Jews that they only looked after their own, whereas God looks after everyone.

Rimon: God does not separate people one from another; rather, he separates the good and bad within each of us. [I like this! –David]

Alice: The Bible makes clear that there is Judgment, and that there is eternal fire for the fallen angels to show us that he loves us (the rest of his creation) by showing us the contrast between heaven and hell, very clearly.

Harry: People lay down their lives for liberty, but that is not particularly noble, since one’s freedom implies another’s enslavement or destruction. Think of native Americans, and African Americans.

Alice: True liberty is about being liberated within, from sin.

Don: In Genesis 3:14-19, after the Fall, God talks with the serpent who caused the Fall:

The Lord God said to the serpent,

“Because you have done this,

Cursed are you more than all cattle,
And more than every beast of the field;
On your belly you will go,
And dust you will eat
All the days of your life;
And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her seed;
He shall bruise you on the head,
And you shall bruise him on the heel.”
To the woman He said,
“I will greatly multiply
Your pain in childbirth,
In pain you will bring forth children;
Yet your desire will be for your husband,
And he will rule over you.”

Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’;

Cursed is the ground because of you;
In toil you will eat of it
All the days of your life.
“Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you;
And you will eat the plants of the field;
By the sweat of your face
You will eat bread,
Till you return to the ground,
Because from it you were taken;
For you are dust,
And to dust you shall return.”

What this implies is that since the Fall, there is a seed of evil containing the DNA of the serpent, which is in contrast to the good seed of the woman. In Romans, it is suggested that Cain is an offspring of evil seed, while Abel is of good seed. Psalms 58:3 also implies that some people are born evil:

The wicked are estranged from the womb;
These who speak lies go astray from birth.

The notion that evil is predestined goes against the Christian notion of turning over a new leaf, of being born again.

Harry: Immediately before that, Psalm 58 says:

Do you indeed speak righteousness, O gods?
Do you judge uprightly, O sons of men?
No, in heart you work unrighteousness;
On earth you weigh out the violence of your hands.

Don: Somehow the root of evil is in the DNA, and the DNA of sheep and goats is different.

David: The core nature of the evil imparted by the serpent is divisiveness. It started at the Fall. It seems to be the most fundamental evil. And what we have studied so far in this parable is that God wants unity—he wants to put things back to where they were before the Fall. So the evil that is visited upon us is temporary, while we are on Earth, and there is not much we can do about it (though we can and should try) but at the end of the day there will be unity and there will be no fire and brimstone. So in my opinion all the bits in the bible that talk about fire and brimstone must be either human embellishment or based on some local historical context that has no relevance today (or both). We should instead look for the things in the bible that speak to our inner voice, to our conscience. Surely, our inner voice tells us that treating others kindly is a good thing, that unity not divisiveness is a good thing. These seem to me to be Jesus’ core messages.

Don: In the parable, we see the contrast between the community spirit of the sheep and the isolationist spirit of the goats. Next week let’s discuss how this relates to our own standard Judeo-Christian thinking. It seems to take an axe to that root.

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