[Editor: The following is a guest article, authored by our brother Chronoblip. Visit his site here.]
When survival is the priority, because resources are scarce, human social interactions are driven by necessity.
When survival is not the priority, because resources are abundant, human social interactions are driven by novelty.
Put differently:
Shepherds are concerned with the survival of the flock.
Charlatans are concerned with their status in the flock.
Or as Jesus Christ put it:
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep. But a hireling, he who is not the shepherd, one who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them. The hireling flees because he is a hireling and does not care about the sheep. I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own. – John 10:11-14 (NKJV)
Shepherds “police the flock” for the safety of the flock, to ensure there are no “wolves in sheep’s clothing”, and the flock may or may not recognize and appreciate this and may or may not confer a higher status to the shepherd, but he’d be doing the same regardless. Charlatans “pace and lead” for their own status and benefit, because they are goats who want the wolves to eat the sheep first. Hirelings have some level of innocence, they may only be cowards, but charlatans cannot claim ignorance of what they are doing.
Goats think they’re sufficiently smart or cunning enough to avoid being caught, and that their schemes won’t be discovered until it’s “too late” for anyone to do anything about it.
Living in Italy, how much does someone like Vox need to worry about the consequences of people taking him as seriously as he takes himself? But we don’t need to waste our time trying to “expose him” or ensure he “gets his comeuppance”. Why?
Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. – Romans 12:19 (NASB)
We shouldn’t be distracted by revenge from our work to “make disciples of all nations”.
Folks like him will get what he deserves, or it’ll have been nailed to the cross with Jesus Christ, and we won’t likely know for sure which it’ll be until after this life, so we can instead ignore him as much as his own choices allow us to. If he gets in our way, we can then deal with him, but if he runs away like a hireling at the first sign of danger, or worse ends up feeding people to the very mechanisms he claimed to be working against, then we’ll have been blessed by God to know for sure in this life to then act confidently and decisively with respect to him or folks like him.
God is good. I don’t believe there is providence all over the place, but I can’t help seeing something in the timing of this.
Less than 10 minutes prior to my ‘submission’ yesterday, Vox had a post which included this gem:
Apparently the fruitless tilting at Gab, and his more recent flirtations with Tortious interference, were evidence he is a clueless idiot.
I’ll hold up my end of the bargain and start getting the boorishly verbose versions posted.
Dear Chronoblip:
The metaphor of the shepherd is really interesting, and it long predates Christianity (or Judaism).
There’s a line in a Sumerian text where Gilgamesh gets approached by Inanna, the goddess of beauty and sex, and she asks him to fuck her.
“No,” sez he. “I travelled into the future, and read Boxer’s blog, and I know to say ‘no’ to a skank bitch like you…”
“Why you don’t want to fuck me?” Asks Inanna, feeling all rejected…
“Because I remember how you treated Dmuzi, the great shepherd of his people.”
So there is this identification of a good leader with a shepherd.
Later on in the text, the shepherd metaphor is discussed further. A shepherd, it is noted, protects his flock from obvious dangers, but otherwise he mostly lets them go where they want to go. The sheep know where the best grass and sunshine is, and the shepherd is generally just along for the ride. In the same way, the people one leads will intuit the best way to do things. The leader has veto power, but a great leader is like a good shepherd, and he doesn’t abuse it.
I started writing a comment yesterday, and quit, because I wanted to look up sources, which I haven’t done yet. Anyway, I suppose this is all just rudderless ranting, but I’m gonna post it anyway.
I think that is an astute observation. It reminds me of how I told my wife before we left our previous church that, if I have a problem with a leader, I will automatically have a problem with their flock, because leaders are a reflection of those they lead. Or at least should be.
Swap “prince” with “pastor”, “government” with “church”, and yet the dynamic remains the same.
That Sumerian line is interesting! It is humbling to know how a memes I have used is much older and more deeply established than I realize. I wish I could take credit for having intentionally tried to tap into such a connotation, but I started using it more because “shepherd” and “charlatan” sounded nice together as a contrast.