Sin, Salvation, and a Shaggy Goat

Well, you see, the angora goat got to reading the Old Testament--especially those parts in Leviticus and Deutronomy and such--which called for the sacrifice of a shaggy goat, and that made him nervous, so he took off.

The trick had been telling the goat it was just a Christmas pageant in the front yard of Bethlehem Church in Fergus Falls, but it didn't take a High Priest to figure out that somebody was going to end up on the table.

The runaway first thought to find a vegetarian religion, but it is tough to ask catechetical questions when you are running at top speed. Jim Aakre, the owner of the almost-sacrificial goat, chased the critter for two hours before giving up. He says the lack of snow made it difficult to track the beast.

It is a little difficult to know what the good people of Bethlehem Church were thinking. Jim says he also provided a llama and two puppies for the event. Bethlehem probably is using one of those new translations of the Bible.

Mari says she has a lot of sympathy for the goat, since she once was staked out in a similar creche, together with her husband and two kids. At Good Shepherd, it seems to have been the opinion that the Baby Jesus had an older, asian brother, which might explain a whole lot about the cockamamie claim about a virgin birth. Joseph must have begun to wonder about it later, because the marriage didn't last. Actually, that may have had nothing to do with how things worked out. Probably.

I cannot find the article, but the word from up in Fergus Falls is that they finally corralled the shaggy goat by agreeing it didn't have to be religious, and anyway, they still had a Biblical llama and two puppies, should any great sins need to be atoned for, which wasn't likely: nobody in Fergus Falls has admitted to doing anything wrong for years. Not really.

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