The Sheep and the Goats

I got to hear about 10 minutes of Thom Hartmann's show this morning in the car, and caught the tail end of an interview with Rev. Dr. Welton Gaddy, the president of the Interfaith Alliance. They were discussing the role of religion in government, and Thom said that he thought that so much of what goes on in the name of Christianity is so strange, because in his opinion the Christian religion is really summed up by the Sermon on the Mount and Matthew 25, which contains, among other things, the parable of the sheep and the goats--which both basically say that what matters is taking care of other people. Gaddy said that growing up in the Southern Baptist church (he's still a Baptist preacher, though not a Southern Baptist one) he never heard Matthew 25. He said it didn't really fit in with their message of how to be saved. Thom quipped that it was ironic that this passage was ignored, because it was part of the answer the one time that Jesus' disciples came and asked how to get into Heaven. I thought that what Gaddy said was fascinating, if true. It would sure explain a lot about what you see coming out of many churches that profess the name of Christian.

I don't read the Bible much these days. I spent a lot of time reading it in my younger years, though, and the parable of the sheep and the goats, from Matthew 25, is one of those stories that has persisted with me through time. Basically, according to the story, at the end of time all the nations will stand before the Son of Man (presumably Jesus), and he will divide the sheep from the goats. He tells the "sheep" that when he was hungry, they fed him. When he was naked, they clothed him. When he was homeless, they put him up. When he was sick, they cared for him. When he was in prison, they visited him. And the sheep are confused. They are like, when did we do any of these things for you? We never did that for you! And he tells them that whatever they have done for the least of his brethren, they did for him, and that they would get their reward. To the "goats," he goes through the same thing, except saying "You never did anything to help me, so it's the pit of hell for you!" They are also confused, because they are like, hey, we never overlooked you, Jesus! But he says that whatever they failed to do for the least of these, they failed to do for him.

I don't really believe in a literal heaven and hell. I think of them more as descriptive of a state of mind or consciousness than places you go to forever when you die. But in thinking about this passage a little bit today, especially in the light of the Tolle references in the blog (The Teeming Brain) I linked to yesterday, I think that this passage fits in very well with what I believe (at this moment, today, June 21, 2007) about the universe. That we are all part of one big whole. What I do to you, I have done to myself. There is an inescapable reciprocity in what we do because we are all, at some level, small parts of a very big interconnected whole. Which is comforting in some ways, but also scary at some level. How often do I think petty, mean thoughts about other people? How often do I get impatient? How often do I let myself feel alone and separate? How much more could I do to alleviate suffering in this aching, groaning world?

(As an interesting little aside, when I told my Significant Other--not a daily Bible reader, either--about what I'd heard on the radio, he said that he'd just then been reading a version of Matthew 25. When that kind of stuff happens, I know it's time to pay attention!)

Happy Solstice, by the way!

Links:
Matthew 25
The Interfaith Alliance