Thank Goodness for Sheepdogs...

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by Dr. Carl Mumpower
on Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Originally published in the Asheville Tribune.

If you have ever wondered what tops America's addiction list, look no further than the word comfort. It is the pursuit of feeling good that dwarfs all other priorities and provides incubating warmth for other addictions like food, money, drugs, sex, worry and additional misadventures that routinely capture our enthusiasm.

An addiction is any persistent activity that overwhelms normal life balance and function. An alcoholic's addiction may temporarily ease mental and emotional turmoil but inevitably at the expense of their capacity to be a good provider, parent, and spouse. The insidious impacts of kudzu and addiction have a lot in common.

Our culture's addiction to comfort helps explain notoriously low voter turnout and the routine success of politicos in seducing their constituency with promises of something for nothing. If you are an addict, you tend to avoid anything that challenges your bliss and embrace anything with the potential to feed it.

Sheepdogs Don't Flock

All of God's creatures understandably like to feel good - the trick is to find the right path and resist the short-cuts. Sheep for example draw comfort in the security and warmth of numbers. They also find satisfaction in the sight, smell, and sound of a sheepdog dedicated to their protection. Sheepdogs are a version of comfort food.

Sheepdogs are necessary partially because there is a world full of predators who find comfort in eating the comfortable. It has always been that way in God's world. In spite of the protestations of the fanciful, his word says that it will remain so.

Of matching disturbance is the reality that predators are every bit as capable as sheepdogs and that there are more of them. You may have noticed that wolves enjoy the luxury of traveling in packs - sheepdogs don't.

The Power of Fear

If predators have a weakness, it is that they are almost always addicted to something. Wolves are intensely dedicated to meat and a full tummy. Human predators seek power.

There are all kinds of theories on why men crave power, but the most credible explanation rests on the word fear. Powerful men are usually afraid - afraid of not mattering, other predators, their own inadequacy, or perhaps their mortality and what comes later. That fear, added to cunning and an absence of character, furnishes man his potentials as the most dangerous predator of all.

Security is a Myth

It has been said that rarely does the evil come to us with glowing eyes and a pitchfork. If Satan is as capable as scripture indicates, he is certainly smart enough to mask his minions. Comfort usually looks and sounds good.

One of the world's magnificent guardians ironically came into the world without the power to see or hear. Helen Keller pressed beyond her monumental hurdles and concluded the following - "Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer, in the long run than outright exposure. Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all."

A dedication to comfort, like all addictions, brings with it a matching measure of blinding denial. Sheep and their human counterparts would know no rest without the capacity to tune out perils, manufacture the illusion of safety, and resist the adventure of which Keller speaks.

In 1939, at the dawning of a World War that would lead to 60 million deaths, the people of France, Poland, Britain, and the free world persisted with appeasement and any other straws reaching for "peace in our time". It took the devilment of a predator named Hitler and the courage and perseverance of a sheepdog named Churchill to end the sleep of denial and begin the work of survival.

Sheepdogs Come in Many Colors

Seventy years have not really changed the world. There is still a force of darkness that delights in denial, appeasement, and complacency. While the mumbling majority pursues a 2009 version of "peace in our time", spiritual, social, financial, and political predators are gazing on the herd with hungry eyes. Standing between them and us are a few brave and noble souls with the autonomy of spirit and strength of character to look beyond their comfort to our survival.

Some of those men and women put on a badge and patrol our streets. Others put on a helmet and patrol the world. There are still editors who find the resources to move beyond reporting wrongs after the fact to investigating and illuminating wrongs before the fact. Locally, orange trucks that deliver oil conceal a business model providing a charity lift to thousands. In some churches there remains that rare minister with the courage to speak as enthusiastically of God's challenging commandments as of God's comforting love.

In truth, there is a sheepdog in all of us. False prophets delight in soft words that keep that spark of character at rest. When to get into the fight for what is right is a personal decision we all have to make at our own time. In the interim, we should take moments to value those who remain vigilant on our behalf. Their numbers are few and their burden tiresome. They are the best of us...

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