God the Bad Shepherd

The fact that we don't live in an agrarian society probably hurts our understanding of a lot of Jesus' teachings.  We don't really understand livestock and agriculture, so we're forced to read our western understanding into Jesus' very eastern teachings.  The end result of this is that at best we miss some very subtle humor and revolutionary underpinnings, and at worst, we miss the point completely.  A good many of Jesus' parables existed to completely shatter our preconceptions of God.

In first century Palestine, people, especially the religious leaders, were pretty sure they had God figured out (sound familiar?).  The predominant view of God was totally punitive.  He loved those who followed his law and despised those who didn't.  If you did the right things, God blessed you.  If you did the wrong things, you're screwed.  Thank God we no longer think this way, right?  Right?  Is this thing on? 

Behold, a paradigm destroying view of God:

"Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them.  Doesn't he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?  And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home.  Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.'  I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent." (Luke 15:4-7)

Let's pick this apart.  "Doesn't he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?"  This is an instance where Jesus' original audience would have been laughing hysterically.  Don't you leave ninety-nine to find one?  Absolutely not!  That's horrible business.  They didn't have pens to keep sheep in.  It was a wide-open spaces kind of business.  If you leave the ninety-nine to find one and you'll be left with one at the end of the day.  It's horrible business.  A shepherd never left his sheep.  If one leaves, you let it go simply because it makes more financial sense to take ninety-nine to market than to worry about one and lose the ninety-nine.

Think about what Jesus is implying.  God is a horrible shepherd.  He's a crappy bookkeeper.  Keep in mind that right before this, the religious leaders were griping at Jesus for eating with bad people.  He was dining with crooks, thieves, and prostitutes, and the religious leaders hated it.  Jesus should have known better. Jesus then tells a parable about a shepherd who foolishly leaves the ninety-nine safe and secure ones to seek out the one who is lost.

The key to this parable is at the end when he says, "there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner (those who he was eating with) who changes his mind than over ninety-nine religious people who don't think they need to change their mind."  Kaboom!  In one short story, God obliterates the idea of a punitive God that operates on a bookkeeping system of right and wrong.  In fact, he says that ones who do it wrong are more blessed than the ones doing it right!  Jesus is telling his audience that everyone needs to change their minds about something. In this way, we're all lost in some fashion.  God's grace is there for everyone.  We don't earn it by doing all the right stuff.  All we have to do is admit that we don't have it all figured out and somehow God's ridiculous grace finds us in the wilderness.

The very thing that makes God a crappy shepherd makes him an amazing God.

Brad can be reached at awaken.oswego@gmail.com and awakenoswego.com.