Sheep, wolves and spiritual fathers

  • Greg sent me a long post some time back from this blog, and I am just get­ting around to read­ing it now. Buried sev­eral screens into it (did I say it’s a long post?), is a soldier’s metaphor that seems to me to have some pure wis­dom in it.

    This appar­ently comes from an intro­duc­tion to a sem­i­nar called “The Bul­let­proof Mind”:

    One Viet­nam vet­eran, an old retired colonel, once said this to me: “Most of the peo­ple in our soci­ety are sheep. They are kind, gen­tle, pro­duc­tive crea­tures who can only hurt one another by accident.”

    This is true. Remem­ber, the mur­der rate is six per 100,000 per year, and the aggra­vated assault rate is four per 1,000 per year. What this means is that the vast major­ity of Amer­i­cans are not inclined to hurt one another. …

    “Then there are the wolves,” the old war vet­eran said, “and the wolves feed on the sheep with­out mercy.” Do you believe there are wolves out there who will feed on the flock with­out mercy? You bet­ter believe it. There are evil men in this world and they are capa­ble of evil deeds. The moment you for­get that or pre­tend it is not so, you become a sheep. There is no safety in denial.

    “Then there are sheep­dogs,” he went on, “and I’m a sheep­dog. I live to pro­tect the flock and con­front the wolf.” Or, as a sign in one Cal­i­for­nia law enforce­ment agency put it, “We intim­i­date those who intim­i­date others.” …

    Let me expand on this old soldier’s excel­lent model of the sheep, wolves, and sheep­dogs. We know that the sheep live in denial; that is what makes them sheep. … The sheep gen­er­ally do not like the sheep­dog. He looks a lot like the wolf. He has fangs and the capac­ity for vio­lence. The dif­fer­ence, though, is that the sheep­dog must not, can­not and will not ever harm the sheep. Any sheep­dog that inten­tion­ally harms the lowli­est lit­tle lamb will be pun­ished and removed. The world can­not work any other way, at least not in a rep­re­sen­ta­tive democ­racy or a repub­lic such as ours.

    Still, the sheep­dog dis­turbs the sheep. He is a con­stant reminder that there are wolves in the land. They would pre­fer that he didn’t tell them where to go, or give them traf­fic tick­ets, or stand at the ready in our air­ports in cam­ou­flage fatigues hold­ing an M-16. The sheep would much rather have the sheep­dog cash in his fangs, spray paint him­self white, and go, “Baa.” Until the wolf shows up. Then the entire flock tries des­per­ately to hide behind one lonely sheepdog.

    You cer­tainly could take that idea and apply it to dif­fer­ent ways that peo­ple act in a cri­sis such as the war in Iraq or the after­math of Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina, and this is what the author of the post did with great suc­cess (though he gets a lit­tle more pas­sion­ate on the sub­ject than I’m quite com­fort­able with).

    But this metaphor seems to me to apply also to the role of the Chris­t­ian Church in our cul­ture and per­haps to some degree to the per­cep­tion of God. Think of how much the Church has been mar­gin­al­ized, how its voice has been muted by squeals of insen­si­tiv­ity and accu­sa­tions of witch-hunting and hypocrisy. Think of how God has been fem­i­nized in pro­gres­sive new ver­sions of the Bible, how many times peo­ple tell the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adul­tery (with­out remem­ber­ing that He told her to “sin no more”) and how rarely they tell of him chas­ing the mon­ey­chang­ers out of the temple.

    And think of how peo­ple tend to want their cler­gy­men (and, in some cases of course, cler­gy­women) to act. They don’t want them to tell them any­thing bad about them­selves. They don’t want them to admon­ish from the pul­pit, only encour­age. The Ortho­dox idea of a spir­i­tual father is well out of step with the vague ghost of a min­is­ter or pas­tor that Amer­i­cans seem to pre­fer. (And it has got­ten worse in my life­time. Dear Abby used to fre­quently refer peo­ple with seri­ous prob­lems to seek the coun­sel of their pas­tor. She doesn’t do that any­more, because most peo­ple would think it a weird idea to give their pas­tor that much of a say in their “pri­vate” life.)

    The spir­i­tual father tells you things, and some­times — often — they aren’t what you wanted to hear. When you offer him con­fes­sion, you don’t get a hug … well, at least not first. You get some­thing much more impor­tant. You get a response, you get intel­li­gent course cor­rec­tion from some­one entrusted by God to do just that.

    I’m not say­ing that the priest speaks per­fect wis­dom directly from God’s heart. That’s not the Ortho­dox under­stand­ing. But then, if he ever did, am I arro­gant enough to believe that I would be able to under­stand one word of it?

    A spir­i­tual father doesn’t need to be per­fect, because I’m not per­fect. But he has to be a sheep­dog. He has to have teeth and claws, because my Enemy has teeth and claws.

    Peo­ple these days aren’t com­fort­able with that view of the Church. But then, an awful lot of sheep have been dis­ap­pear­ing in the night recently.


    Related posts:

    1. Two wolves
    2. Spir­i­tual Coun­sels by Fr. John of Kronstadt
    3. 9/11, Kat­rina and St. Euphrosynos
    4. Prayer request

    December 5th, 2005 | Grace | 1 Comment |

One Response and Counting...

  • s-p 12.05.2005

    Excel­lent!

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