Last Sunday night we watched The Sheep Detectives (free with Amazon Prime Video). It’s a light-hearted mystery involving sheep solving the murder of their shepherd. It’s PG, very well done, wholesome in its entirety, with one reference to God that I’m sure some will take offense at. I don’t.

The exchange involves ewes Lily (brown) and Mottle (white) with Sebastian, a black ram who has been out and about in the world. Hence, he’s answering the questions.

The dialog goes like this:

Lily: What is this?

Sebastian: This is the church where someone named God lives.

Lily: Who is God?

Sebastian: It’s a bit confusing. God is a shepherd.

Mottle: So he could be our shepherd?

Sebastian: No, because he’s also a lamb.

Lily: What?

Sebastian: And he’s also invisible. And he’s made of bread. And he damns things?

Lily: Dams things? Like a beaver?

Sebastian: Yes.

Lily: So God is a big, invisible lamb beaver…made of bread?

Sebastian: Yes. And they eat him on Sundays.

Mopple: Poor God.

Has Sebastian heard about God? Yes. Has what he has heard about God true? Mostly. Has he understood anything that he’s heard? No.

I expect we all have not-yet-believing friends and neighbors who have heard all the words, and we think they have rejected Christianity. It may be that they have rejected their flawed understanding of Christianity.

I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord GOD. (Ezekiel 34.15, ESV)

I am the good Shepherd. (Jesus, John 10.11)

Behold the Lamb of God. (John the Baptist, John 1.29)

No one has ever seen God. (Jesus – John 1.18, ESV)

I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” (Jesus, John 6.48 – 51, NIV)

They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. (Ephesians 4.18, ESV)

And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. (1 John 5.20, ESV)