(Ir)rational Sheep
By Hieromonk Tikhon
A domestic sheep’s survival—and its value to the shepherd—rests almost entirely on its ability to follow the flock. A sheep that consistently refuses to conform is both a management problem for the shepherd and a threat to itself and others. Here are some common failures of sheep to assimilate, and their consequences:
1) Not eating when the others eat
Sheep are strongly synchronised grazers; the flock feeds and rests together. An animal that hangs back or fails to graze when the rest are eating is waving a red flag. The shepherd reads this as a likely sign of illness, parasitism, dental problems, or chronic stress. Left unaddressed, that individual loses body condition rapidly, becomes weaker, more prone to flystrike and internal parasites. It will become what’s known as a “lagger”; a sheep too lame to keep up with the pack, whom predators are guaranteed to target. It will eventually be taken by such a predator or simply die. To prevent this from happening, the shepherd will either treat the underlying cause or cull it.
2) Refusing to drink from the same water as the others
In open pasture or on the hill, sheep develop a daily circuit that brings them to a habitual water source. A sheep that refuses to drink with the flock is likely either sick, spooked, or has found a dangerous alternative (stagnant pools, toxin-laced run‑off). Dehydration hits a ruminant hard—feed intake drops, digestion stalls, and the animal weakens fast. Traditionally, a shepherd watches the flock at water to spot droughted sheep, and a “teaser” that refuses the common trough might be individually driven to water or, if it becomes a chronic straggler, it will be taken by a predator, left to die, or culled because the labour of managing it outweighs its worth.
3) Focusing on watching for threats instead of eating
Feral sheep have no shepherd, nor dogs to protect them. As a result, as prey animals, the burden of watching for predators falls squarely on themselves. A sheep cannot lower its head to eat or drink without taking its gaze from the horizon and rendering itself vulnerable to oncoming predators. Naturally, feral sheep need to spend more time, energy, and worry watching for potential threats. The healthy domestic sheep on the other hand, knows that its shepherd and his dogs watch over it, and that it can safely lower its head to eat or drink until told otherwise by the shepherd.
An overly-anxious domestic sheep that spends most of its day head‑up, staring at the horizon, scanning for predators, and calling in alarm never gets its fill. That perpetual state of anxiety is contagious—it keeps the whole flock unsettled and can ruin a day’s grazing across the group. For the hyper‑vigilant sheep, constant cortisol and poor nutrition cause weight loss, poor wool quality, and lowered fertility. Such “nervous” sheep are earmarked for culling as soon as possible. They are more trouble than they are worth, because they create a perpetually flighty flock that is hard to handle, breaks out of folds, and exhausts the shepherd’s dogs.
4) Acting like a shepherd or a dog instead of a sheep
A bummer (or cade) lamb is an orphan or a rejected lamb that has been bottle‑raised by men. It imprints on the man who feeds it and often loses the normal fear‑respect for dogs. In the field, these lambs behave bizarrely: they follow the shepherd’s heels, persistently bleat for the human, try to come between the dog and the sheep, and might even attempt to bunch or chase other sheep as if they were a working dog themselves.
What happens to them is that they usually cannot be reintegrated successfully into the maternal flock. They disrupt the dog’s work, confuse the other sheep, and are extremely vulnerable because they lack normal flocking instincts—they will walk straight up to a predator or stray off alone looking for the shepherd. Traditionally, such lambs are either butchered as soon as they reach a reasonable weight (their meat is just as good), kept as a solitary “pet” who lives near the steading, or occasionally, if a calm and steady animal, turned into a “bellwether”—a trained lead sheep that walks to the shepherd on call and helps coax the flock. But more often they end up as mutton because they have no place in a working flock.
5) Not “hefting”
“Hefting” is the deep-rooted, learned knowledge of a specific patch of open, unfenced hillside—the “heaf” or “heft”—that a ewe passes down to her lamb. A hefted sheep knows exactly where the grazing, shelter, and water are within its own territory and rarely strays outside invisible boundaries. A sheep that doesn’t heft—either because it was brought in from elsewhere, has lost its mother too early, or simply lacks the instinct—will not stay on its allotted ground. It constantly wanders, crosses into neighbouring flocks, gets caught in bogs, falls into gullies, or ends up miles away.
The consequences are stark. On unfenced hill farms, a non‑hefted sheep is a liability. It demands constant gathering, causes endless fence‑mending or neighbourly disputes, and exposes itself to predation and starvation. Such an animal would never be kept on the open hill. It would be sold down to lowland, enclosed pastures, or culled from the breeding flock so that its genetics don’t erode the flock’s “homing” instinct. Without heft, a sheep on the hill won’t last a season—it either dies or is deliberately removed by the shepherd.
These are common ways for irrational sheep to suffer and die as a result of failing to assimilate to the flock, and this is also the case with the rational sheep of Christ’s flock in the Church. Let’s look at some parallels:
1) The one who doesn’t eat when the others eat
This can be interpreted literally. It is distressing to a pastor to see one of his spiritual children refusing to socialise or break bread with other members of the parish when a parish gets together. And indeed, this is a sign of an underlying spiritual sickness, perhaps, unfortunately, most commonly, judgmentalness. The Church calls us to mourn and celebrate together as the Body of Christ, and if this does not come naturally to us, this is a sign of a deeper spiritual sickness. If we see this behaviour in ourselves, the best thing to do is confess it (and perhaps we know exactly why we have been reluctant to socialise), and see what advice our pastor gives us in working on this.
This metaphor of the sheep who refuses to eat with the rest of the flock can also be applied spiritually. When was the last time your priest or bishop organised a class or discussion group, and did you attend it? Realistically, what was the effort required for you to be there in some way, shape or form? Nowadays, with technology, many of the catechetical gatherings of our church can be hosted online, and joined with literally only the touch of a button. How many of these gatherings have you missed in the last year? In the last two years? Three years? It is a shame to miss these gatherings, not only because of the missed opportunity for grace and knowledge, but because it is often feelings of enmity or pride that keep us from being at them.
Those who fail to gather and spiritually eat when the shepherd directs them to are the spiritual “laggers” behind the pack: the ones marked by the devil as easy prey. Such people require (or perhaps demand or expect) individual spiritual care from their pastors, imagining that they are above the common way. If we don’t choose to spiritually eat with the rest of the flock, how can we be surprised when the spiritual predators snatch us away, or when we eventually spiritually die of starvation or a lack of repentance? Didn’t we bring it on ourselves?
2) The one who refuses to drink with the others
“If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink,” says the Lord (). The daily routine of the irrational sheep involves stopping to water with the other sheep, and the weekly routine of the Orthodox Christian should involve participation in the divine liturgy at every possible opportunity with the rest of his brethren.
What can be said of those who blaspheme the liturgy by thinking that attendance of it is not necessary (the Holy Canons certainly don’t agree with this), or that the Sacred Mysteries of Confession and Holy Communion are not important? It’s obvious to everyone that such people are lost and shouldn’t be listened to (though they often have much to say on spiritual matters). Salvation does not await those who blaspheme the holy services, and spiritual death, excommunication, or to be taken captive by the invisible enemies are the fates of such people, unless they repent.
3) The one obsessed with “threats” on the horizon
What is our job as Orthodox Christians? To live as the Church tells us, fundamentally. If we do this, then all of the natural virtues which we need for salvation will come to us naturally, as a result of our natural inclination to do what is natural to man—i.e., to do God’s Commandments.
What resources has God given His rational sheep? A safe enclosure—the enclosure of the Church, which has its own boundaries as defined by the Church herself. We also have a shepherd to watch the horizon, with his shepherding dogs to watch the flock—i.e., a bishop and his priests. And we have a flock of brothers in sisters in Christ, from whom we learn, and learn to love. Who in this picture is responsible for keeping an eye out for threats and predators? The shepherd, i.e., the bishop! What should the rational sheep focus on? Being obedient.
The Orthodox Christian who is obsessed with conspiracy theories is a spooked sheep which refuses to take its eyes of the horizon so that it can simply eat and drink as the others do. Not content with the watchful gaze of his shepherd, he sees ghosts on the horizon, crying, “This is a threat to our privacy! That is a threat to our health! This is a threat to our soul!” The person doesn’t know it, but he has a taste for the devil, who ultimately is the one responsible for releasing many of the prominent conspiracy theories (even if some of them are true). The devil seeks to bring man’s attention to himself.
The Church is fully aware of the New World Order, and knows more about the future than literally anyone else in humanity. Our bishops have the grace to discern what threatens their flocks, and what should be ignored. When we need to avoid something, the Church tells us. Those who have been with our church for more than five years know this by experience.
The spooked rational sheep has fallen into the culture wars. Try to disentangle his opinions on culture from protestant and roman catholic influence, and you can’t. He has sucked himself into a war that the Church which has fled to the wilderness has no part in. What does each of these Orthodox conspiracy “specialists” have in common? They all talk about the same things that the youtube and online forum “influencers” talk about. Meanwhile, we’re still waiting for that first person in human history to become an expert in something from watching youtube videos.
The irony of such people, is that amidst their calls for us to boycott the “systems” and technologies that they associate with antichrist and the new world order, they themselves are bringing about the new world order and the antichrist: What will happen before the Antichrist comes? Civil wars. What will civil wars stem from? Culture wars, which the conspiracy theorists have become firmly entrenched in, and want us to participate in with them. Who will eventually unite these opposite ends of the culture wars? Either the Antichrist, or a type of his. Is this a road that any Orthodox Christian wants to be on?
Self-willed boycotts, like the ones the “horizon-watchers” make, can easily destroy a man’s soul. A self-willed boycott is a podvig, and when is it ever advisable to take on podvig of any real magnitude without pastoral blessing? The boycotter, unfortunately has fallen blindly into a number of sins: Of undertaking a podvig without a blessing; of thinking he had the grace to know more about spiritual threats than the archpastor chosen and ordained by God to protect him from spiritual harm; of trying to drag others into his prelest; and of engaging in a culture war as if it is a spiritual war (which feeds into his own delusion that he is a saint).
Here’s an easy demonstration of why the conspiracy alarmists shouldn’t be listened to: Think back on every time in recent memory someone has told you that something should be boycotted which the Church hasn’t told us to boycott. “Don’t eat x because of bla bla bla…” “Never use y because of bla bla bla…” Can you name such a person, who isn’t either foreign to the Church, or hasn’t uttered blasphemies in the same time period? Prideful opinions and blasphemy go hand in hand. Take this is your proof that these people should be ignored.
The “Orthodox” Christian who constantly harps on about these “existential threats,” much like the irrational sheep that won’t stop crying out in alarm, causes little but chaos. Without repentance his fate is spiritual death, as well as those who follow him.
4) The sheep who doesn’t realise he’s a sheep
There’s an overfamiliarity that doesn’t come from God. The lay-theologians and lay-patriarchs are the sheep who don’t realise they are sheep. Armed with their novel, unenlightened ecclesiology and theology, they have no problem strutting right up to the jaws of the noetic wolf. Like Origen, they swim in waters too deep for them, and it is only a matter of time before they will eventually drown, unless they are rescued by the Saviour.
It is easy for us to forget who we are and imagine that we are theologians or ecclesiologists, despite neither having theological training, nor living exalted spiritual lives. This manifests itself by us choosing to go to war about things we consider “essential matters of faith,” but which in reality are far from, even with our superiors in the Church. We think we’re being martyrs, but we are just modern day “Don Quixotes,” tilting at those whom we have fantasised are malefactors.
In the Church, the bishop is called to act as a bishop, the clergyman as a clergyman, and the layman as a layman. If we diverge from this we create a chaos, which, if left unrepented of, will see us unbeknowingly removing ourselves from the heavenly kingdom.
5) The one who doesn’t respect the boundaries set for the flock, and wanders where he pleases
These are the “inter-church” ones. They have their own novel ideas of where the Church really is, and where it really isn’t, and have no problem visiting churches that our church has no communion with (and especially of taking blessings from pastors of very dubious Orthodoxy). These are the secret partakers of mysteries foreign to our church. The ones with their own “confession” of “faith” which no existing synod has, as if the gates of hades have prevailed against the Church. These are the drifters. These are the ones who “talk shop” with dubious people outside of our church as if light has part with darkness.
What can be said about such people, other than that at some point they will fade away? They had everything they needed right here, but they didn’t want it. Pray that we don’t become this, and repent if we have.
These are some of the failures to assimilate of irrational sheep, and of Christ’s rational sheep. Perhaps we are all guilty of some of these failures. If we are, let us repent, and hope that the Lord, with our good intention, will lead us to the pasture of blessed obedience and simplicity, so that instead of focusing on things that we are not called to focus on, we can focus on loving our Man-befriending God—the Co-essential Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—to Whom belong all glory, honour, and worship, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
