Thought of the Day 08.13.09

A sermon on the parable of the lost sheep from Luke 15 recently got me thinking about the nature of sheep. Well, sheep are extremely stupid. Sheep are obstinate. Sheep are slow of foot. Sheep are vulnerable to predators. And sheep are so self-destructive they will sometimes kill themselves out of clumsiness after putting their lives in jeopardy seeking food in a precarious location.

In short, left to their own devices, sheep are not viable. This is why they so desperately need a shepherd. And although this is a fascinating analogy for our human nature, it got me thinking in a different direction.

Sheep seem remarkably ill-suited to any natural environment without men. Yet if evolution is how all animals got here, why does it seem so unlikely that such a slow, stupid, and tasty creature could have ever been “fit” enough in a man-free environment to develop and survive for over two million years before we domesticated them?

One alternative hypothesis is that they were meant as livestock in a garden in the Middle East from the beginning.