Sheep are not particularly bright animals. It is not that they occasionally wander off, it is their pattern. It is predictable and expected. They are easily distracted and easily led astray. A story ran in the Washington Post in 2005 telling about shepherds in Gevas, Turkey who watched in shock as hundreds of their sheep followed each other over a cliff. First one sheep wandered away and fell over, and eventually the entire flock followed it. In the end, more than 400 sheep died in the plunge. There were 1,100 others that followed, but they survived because their fall was broken by the first ones that went over. Long ago, the prophet Isaiah recognized that the human
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