Sheeple

 
In high school, we had to read Animal Farm for English. My teacher, always the jokester, spent the last five minutes of class calling us sheep; claiming that we were, “sheeple”. And, obviously, this was meant as an insult; to mean people who just constantly repeat what was said over and over again and had no brains of their own. And, while I disagreed then (I mean, I ended up going to UVA...and my teacher was from Tech), now I find it near impossible to say that I’m not, especially when considering the story of Exodus. 
 
In that story, it is the Lord who wanted to lead the Hebrews into the desert, into the wilderness, to worship him. Why? Because in their daily lives the Pharaoh, through their enslavement and harsh work, had prevented them, and so they needed to be removed to fully worship God. It seems that it is in the wilderness that God wants us to find him. And, I hadn’t really thought of the significance of that until, in the first week of Lent, I had my Bible Study. The passage for that day was the exact same passage that I had already read in my “Bible in a Year,” was the same passage in my Lenten Bible Study, and was the Gospel reading for that Sunday. Four times I would’ve read the same passage and, when expressing my frustration, a certain member shouted at me ever so passionately, “That’s because it’s important!” With his face becoming a brighter red than the hair on his head. 
 
“Yeah, whatever.” I so geniusly replied, being the free-thinking intellectual I am. And now I have to revert into a sheep, to repeat what he said to me. It’s important! For, what was the wilderness if not the meaning of a place savage, untamed, disunion? For the Hebrews, was it not their enslavement? For Jesus, was it not the desert? Yet, where is our modern wilderness; our world connected, developed, and civilized: outer space?
 
The answer: wherever we are faced with the temptation to sin. Think back to the Pharaoh, who wouldn’t allow the Hebrews to worship God, and thus, sin. So too do we when we don’t allow ourselves to worship when we give in to the wilderness of daily life. For what was the reason that one sheep went astray? Perhaps it saw some grass that looked rather scrumptious; perhaps it saw a similar herd and got turned around; perhaps it stumbled on a rock and got too far behind to catch up. Or even in Animal Farm, was it not the sheep that had been so greatly deceived by the lies of the pigs? Where the Pigs not acting as Pharaohs, claiming that all they were good, and to stray from them, evildoers in it of themselves, would be to ruin the farm, the ruin of the whole world.
 
Sheep are pretty dumb; it could’ve literally been anything.
 
And so what are our reasons, our temptations? How many times have we been fed anything, like news or a game or a show, that it becomes so distracting it consumes our minds? How many times have we been told an alternative, that we’ve been shared some “new thought” to what will gain us true happiness and comfort? How many times have we slipped up once, only to find that God seems so far gone out of sight and that we are so impossibly behind?
 
Yet the Shepherd found his sheep. The Pharaoh eventually “let his people go,” so to speak. And while even more Jesus said, "but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea" (Matthew 18:6). Whatever the high and mighty wilderness we face, remember that they are truly small when compared to our Lord and that God overlooks no child who is faced with injustice; God will drown the pigs. For, truly, if the Lord is the Shepherd than we are his sheeple.