For Those of Us Who Secretly Fear We Are Goats

I have always wanted to be a good sheep, a loyal follower of Jesus. For just about as long as I can remember, I have loved the guy. I started attending Sunday school at our local Baptist church with my family when I was three-years-old. From the very beginning, I wanted to please God. Also, from the very beginning, God was sometimes a little scary. I remember an early Sunday school lesson about the “age of accountability.” Our teacher taught us about a passage from the Old Testament which explained that there was a specific age when children were old enough to be responsible for their own standing before God. If they died before they reached that age, they  automatically would go to heaven. But if they died even a few days after that, and they weren’t right with God, then things would not go so well for them.

I don’t remember what that actual accountability age was. I’m guessing 8 or 9? I just remember sitting on my little chair in front of my teacher, and thinking about how old I was, and wondering if it might not be so bad to die soon, because then I would be assured an automatic passage into heaven. And heaven was my goal. Always, that was my goal. Because the alternative? Not so pleasant.

By the time I was six, I had  memorized all the books of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments.  I was rewarded with my very own Bible in a ceremony in front of the entire Sunday school.  I was one of the youngest children to ever accomplish this feat. When I was old enough to write, I listened intently and started taking notes during the weekly sermon.  I “came forward” and was baptized when I was 11 or 12. I read my Bible on my own and prayed. I accepted Jesus into my heart.  Not once. Many, many times. Because even though I followed along with the pastor when he gave the altar call at the end of the service each week, how did I know for sure that I was doing it right? Best to be safe. Best to repeat it again, just in case.

I learned in Sunday school that David was a shepherd. I knew that Jesus was the good shepherd, that he searched for his lost sheep, and that he would do anything to find them.

It was nice to think about shepherds caring for their sheep, to know that if you are a sheep and get  lost, that the shepherd will come and find you, that he would even leave 99 sheep who were safe and well-behaved in their pen where they were supposed to be to seek you out. The shepherd never gives up on his sheep. I loved that parable!

Jesus told many comforting parables like this. Look no further than Luke 15, which not only features that happy, rescued sheep, but also the woman who finds her lost coin and, best of all, the prodigal son, who is welcomed by his father after leaving home, squandering his inheritance, and working with pigs. These parables told me that God loved me deeply, not because of anything I did (look at that wayward prodigal son, after all), but because that was who God was.

Sadly, these were not the parables that haunted me.  I listened to them. I was grateful for them. But their comforting messages faded when I came across another parable that Jesus told in Matthew 25.  I’m sure I heard many sermons preached on it over the years. It seems to be a favorite of Baptist ministers. This parable didn’t just have sheep in it, but goats too. There is no shepherd, just the Son of Man, who is compared to a shepherd, but sort of a crabby, ill-tempered one, not like the one in the Luke parable.

In this parable, he is coming in his glory, ready to judge everyone, “as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats (Matthew 25:32).” The sheep are the lucky ones. They are welcomed into eternal life, into the “kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world (verse 34).”

In this parable, the sheep prance along, shaking their woolly backsides, and go tra la la-ing to eternal happiness, while the unfortunate goats go trot trot trotting down to hell.  The goats are told to, “depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”

Here is the truth. I have always worried, deep down, that I am a goat.

Nobody seems to care much about goats in the Bible. Nobody is upset if they get lost, fall off cliffs, or wander away into the wilderness. There are no parables about the shepherd leaving the herd to find the lost goat.

If you are a goat and you get lost? Apparently you are on your own.

For a long time, my deepest, most heart-felt prayer was that I would get to the end of my life and somehow, miraculously, find that I had  been a sheep after all.  That I would finally know for sure that the hundreds of salvation prayers I  prayed over the years were worth something, that at least one of them was done right. Jesus would say, “Well done! Good and faithful servant!” My soul would be saved.

Except what if it wasn’t? Because I’m pretty sure that most days, I haven’t been good enough.

Take a slice out of any time of my life and ask me if I was confident that I would qualify as one of the righteous sheep. Was I a good enough daughter? sister? friend? student? newlywed wife? mother?  household manager? middle-aged wife? anything? Jesus also said in this parable that the blessed sheep are those who fed the hungry, invited in the stranger, visited prisoners, and looked after the sick.  The goats ignored the “least of these.”  How about me? Am I confident I checked all those sheepy boxes during my time on earth, that I gave my heart to the least of these? Maybe a little. Some days. But enough to qualify as a good sheep?

Probably not.

So how could I not be a goat? Everyone could see that I was a goat. Look at me with my sharp goaty horns and my goaty little face. I was the goatiest goat there ever was.

Here is my question, though. What would being “enough”  even look like?

I will never claim to know for sure, but my journey into Centering Prayer has given me hope and another way to think about all this.

When I first started centering years ago, I  would start to drop into silence, but one thought would always rise up and grab me:

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

I’m sorry that I’m not a good enough daughter, sister, friend, student, newlywed wife, mother, middle aged wife.  I’m sorry that I’m not a sweet, cute fluffy sheep. I’m sorry that I’m such a goaty goat.

But maybe there is still hope for me. It has taken years, but the intrusive, invasive “I’m sorry” thoughts have  lessened their grip on me.  At least a little. That is just grace. Grace and what I’ve been learning from teachers like Father Richard Rohr and Father Thomas Keating. Who knew that so much of what I was taught about hell growing up came more from Dante and his Inferno than from the Bible? Rohr says that “Dante’s Purgatorio and Inferno  are brilliant Italian poetry, but horrible Christian theology. ”  Rohr doesn’t even believe in a literal hell. See here:

https://cac.org/a-toxic-image-of-god-2016-01-28/

What?

Nobody goes to hell?

Somehow, all of us are loved and redeemed?

For those of us who grew up with God as a critical judge on the sidelines, and for those of us who are suffering from a little spiritual PTSD, this is a radical idea. It changes everything. It sets me free. To be a goaty goat. To be myself.

This is Sophia. She belongs to a friend who rescued her after she got caught in a barbed wire fence. Sofia had to have her leg amputated, but she is happy and loved.  She proves that it’s a fine thing to be a goat, especially one that can romp through a meadow in the sunshine.

See her here: Sophia frolicking

Sophia reminds me that it is good to be a goat. That we are loved in our brokenness and that we are never blamed for being broken. The broken is where God meets us.  The parables that are working their way deep into my heart these days? It’s the ones that seemed too good to be true before. I confess that I still have a little bit of doubt, that the Matthew 25 parable can still hook me. But I know where I want to live now- in the “too good to be true.” That prodigal son, that lost sheep, that lost coin. Everything gets found. Everything is saved. Everyone is loved. All of us, prodigals and older brothers, goats and sheep, frolicking and dancing with our broken, beautiful selves. Right behind the good shepherd who sees us all as sheep and loves us where we are. All of us together. All the way home.