Thursday, June 2, 2011

The Scapegoat

I am still cleaning up from the water that flooded our basement. Cardboard file boxes got wet and had to be sent to recycle. Now I am sorting and deciding what to save and what to discard. Today I found something that I have not seen in twenty years. Many years ago at a church assembly a pastor was passing out little plastic goats that he called “scapegoats” to help people focus their angers on that little scapegoat rather than other people.

It seemed like a good idea at first but then people began to think about what that means. It makes that little piece of plastic shaped like a goat an idol and it also does nothing to relieve our feeling of anger. It was pointed out that we need to really face our causes of anger and pray for help in solving our causes not transferring them to a plastic idol.

That toy goat is now missing its horns and is going to a place where future archaeologist will dig it up and wonder “What is this?”

4 comments:

  1. oh, dear... I didn't know your cellar got flooded (I know, I haven't been reading here much *blush*). I had that happen to me once, in the middle of winter! what a mess! I can soooo relate!

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  2. So sorry to hear about the flooding. An interesting thought about what future generations might think of the scapegoat. Similarly my Dad used to think that future generations would look at the toys representing various cartoon characters and think we worshipped animals (ie Foghorn Leghorn, Tweety Bird, Bugs Bunny etc)!

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  3. You don't realize all the stuff you have until you get down in the basement and satrt moving things around. Sorry it had to be the result of a flood.

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  4. Nancy LOL and what would they think of our toy space aliens ala star trek and star wars

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