Sheep or Goat

One of the scriptures that has always kinds of bothered me is the one about the sheep and the goats. It has always conflicted in my mind with the idea of grace -- unearned. If grace is unearned then why does the separation of the sheep and goats have to do with what they have DONE? As if they have earned their way toward "sheepiness" and away from "goat-ness."

The best explanation I had encountered to fix this (in my mind) inconsistency was that the actions of the sheep and the goats was the fruit of their relationship with God. That helped.

The other day, as I was reading an article in Weavings, I realized that my problem with the passage might have to do with this -- how can I ever be a sheep? I can't imagine that I could achieve the actions necessary to become a sheep. It seems out of my reach. Impossible. I need the grace.

W. Paul Jones, in his article Inside Out as Upside Down, says that "both sheep and goats are inside each of us."

Perhaps the grace is that God transforms us. He takes our combined sheep/goat state, and remove the goat. He purifies us, changes us, and helps us to move on to perfection. Without God's help, I cannot be a sheep. Without God's help, I'm lucky to be a little bit sheep.

There is another page in this quarter's Weavings which says, "God can do everything, and I can do nothing, but if I offer this nothing in prayer to God, everything becomes possible in me (by Carlo Carretto). All is possible through God, even my "sheepiness."