Someone was telling me about a college, somewhere in the Midwest, that had a large contingent of Iranian students. Back when the former Shah was deposed, the students demonstrated at the college administration building. The president went out to speak to them and, during the course of their negotiations, the president casually remarked something to the effect that, “You look like a bunch of sheep out here.”

With that, the students went on a campus-wide rampage, breaking windows, threatening other students, destroying property.”The president learned, the hard way, that in Iran, to call someone “sheep” is a term of ugly derision.

I can see their point. Of all the images for Christ's relationship to humanity, few are more unappealing than the image of shepherd and sheep. Down here in North Caro…