Diebert van Rhijn wrote:Don't get hung up over the sheep. Same story in the same book is taught with coins : "...or what woman, if she had ten drachma coins, if she lost one drachma coin, wouldn't light a lamp, sweep the house, and seek diligently until she found it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found the drachma which I had lost.' Even so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner repenting."
The idea could be that one tends to value that what is lost over that what is complete. Even God and his band of angels apparently. He must be craving Satan the most.
That is true too, and in discussion with my GF last night we likened it to the Prodigal Son (
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?se ... ersion=NIV;).
Still there is something about the sheep or the prodigal son or the drachma going astray. Maybe its my own twisted exegesis, but the "independence" of the stray has value in it. That will be hard for me to prove and I guess I need to "prove" that Christianity in general is a push toward self-mastery and not slavery.
"For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." (Genesis 3)
I want to make this point as well, the serpent in Gen 3 does NOT lie to Adam and Eve, he tells them the absolute truth, God does not want them to eat the fruit for exactly that reason, what the serpent fails to tell them is that it may not be in their best interest. But God himself restates exactly what the serpent said:
"And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: "
"one of us" means one of the Elohim (Gods)
At this stage of the game man has no choice but to exercise his knowledge, but he must attain to a significant self-master, stray significantly enough from the herd, to herd himself back to God and to submission to God. Being that Men are inherently sinful, following a herd of sinning men cannot be God's ideal. Therefor, and again this may be my own desire poking through, I tend to interpret all these parables in such a way as there is actually
more value in the stray sheep, drachum or son because of their degree of independence.