Brains of a sheep...

Once again I feel compelled to write a blog entry in response to a comment left on my blog:

Some anti-spankers claim that the 'rod' in the Bible was never meant as a means of 'hitting' the sheep but of 'guiding' them. A shepherd would never hit his precious sheep, they say.

Now I have never owned sheep, but I did grow up on a dairy farm, so I know something about herding animals. When you herd cows, you bring along a stick or a whip. You use it on a cow who strays from the herd or gets out of hand in any way. That doesn't mean beating the animal into unconsciousness but 'spanking' her, if you will. No sane farmer would injure his cow with a stick or whip, not only because she is worth a lot of money but because most farmers love their animals (I did).

Again, I don't know too much about sheep, but my semi-educated guess is that a farmer might have to sometimes use physical force against them with his rod. So so much for the view that the 'rod' in the Bible was merely a means of guidance.

Then again, some of those anti-spankers appear to have the same amount of gray matter as the sheep do, so don't expect them to understand this!

The last paragraph is meant to be a joke... well, sort of!

Emily

Hmmmm...well for starters, I'll readily admit to being a "sheep" in some respects...I mean after all, God often uses the sheep/shepherd analogy in scripture to describe his relationship with us, so I must be like a sheep, right?

None the less, I think the "same amount of gray matter as the sheep do" is a disrespectful remark, and the "well, sort of" is very telling as to how "joking" it is meant to be. Lovely, just lovely...very edifying.

Now as to the issue of hitting sheep, yes, sheep and cows are VERY different. I lived on a beef cattle farm for a while as a child (my family rented the main farmhouse, while the farmer lived in a smaller house on the other side of the barn), and I've conversed with people who've worked with sheep. Cows (cattle) are very docile and "steadfast" creatures (well, unless you run up against an angry steer...), where as sheep tend to be skittish.

I've got to wonder where it was that Emily was herding those cows...my experience living on the farm was that all the farmer had to do was open the barn gates for dinner, and the cows came mooing right along to get their grain. Actually--they were usually all grouped around the gate long before the farmer would arrive to open it--even if they had been in a far field for the day. Getting them to the field was accomplished with a dog--a collie--that would run along behind the herd barking up a ruckus while the farmer led the herd on his tractor.

Sheep would generally be herded in much the same way--the shepherd LEADING, with some dogs in the rear to keep the group together. The rod would be used to nudge a sheep back to the group...but not to strike the sheep. I'm told that because sheep are very skittish, striking a sheep enough to cause pain would cause the sheep to panic and run most likely in the opposite direction of what you want--if the sheep did run toward the herd it would probably be so excited it would set off the rest of heard.

One of the major problems with the sheep analogy though is that most people who try to make it (not Emily in this case) actually go with the myth "the shepherd might have to break the leg of the sheep, then carry the sheep around his shoulders while it healed..." Beyond the idea of this spooking the rest of the herd, there are other flaws with this idea:

• The sheep is not potty trained...nuff said on that one?
• Sheep are grazing animals...you can't just put the sheep down for three square meals a day and expect that to be sufficient
• The sheep could weigh 100 lbs or more
• Breaking the bone would make the animal worthless as a temple sacrifice, thus greatly reducing its value in Biblical times
• Quality of medical care may have been such that this could easily lead to an infection that could actually kill the sheep.
• What happens when sheep #2 "needs" to have a leg broken for discipline before sheep #1 is healed?

And I've gotta say...as I said, I lived on a beef cattle farm. There wasn't a lot of love lost between the farmer and the average cow...because the cow was going to be shipped off to slaughter. A bit more of a "relationship" was allowed to develop with the bull, who was expected to stick around for a few years doing his part to keep the population up. Maybe things are different at a dairy farm where the cows stick around longer, and Emily lived at a dairy farm. But barring that, I do question the idea of "loving" the cows.

In closing, I've got to hand it to the spanking advocates out there. You are doing more to convince my husband not to spank than I have been able to...he's been saying for a while that he wants to keep spanking in his "back pocket" as a possible tool to use...but just look at his comment in response to Emily:

I'll remain lost in my little brainless, whoops... I mean sheep for brains non-spanking little world.