Sheep and goats and kids, oh my.

I was reading Yakko's post about "In God We Trust" and the article he linked to. Besides "E Pluribus Unum" being a much better motto, another thought surfaced while reading.

I don't know how many people know of Dr. Gene Scott, but he has (or had) a satellite/cable channel/show where he went on about.. well, pretty much whatever struck him. He's not exactly the usual TV preacher, to put it mildly. He could be amusing, in a "They give him air time?" sort of way. He asked for money, like others, but he also played some odd tunes. Imagine a guy sitting in a chair and after a song titled "Kill Some Pissants for Jesus" played, told his crew to play it again. Once he had a caller who accused him of fleecing his viewers. Gene replied to the effect that that is what a shepherd does with a flock.

There is also the line about "separating the sheep from the goats" which always did seem a bit strange. What was so bad about goats as compared to sheep? Not as docile? More likely to be independent? Those may be problems if one is a goatherd and envies a shepherd's apparently easier job. And evidently religion - or at least one religion - would prefer unthinking docile creatures as well. If your job is focusing the power of the masses, or holding power over the masses, then it's easy to see why you'd want the masses to think of themselves of sheep. I do wonder about the term kid for a "baby goat." Did this term get applied to children as they also "have minds of their own" and need more supervision? It makes one wonder if the idea of horns implying evil came from something like this as well.

Yet outside of (a) religion, people don't want to be considered sheep. The idea of just being part of the flock (the term "herd mentality" and its derisiveness comes to mind) is insulting. Sure, people like belonging, but not to be thought of as always going along with some group, nevermind if it makes sense or not. People want to believe they think for themselves, whether or not they actually do so.

This is rather striking. In one part of life, being a sheep is fine. It's the ideal. The Sky Parent says so. Yet in the rest of life, it's terribly insulting. Shouldn't it be just the one or just the other?