Jeremy L. Berg

Jeff Dunn has a nice piece at iMonk today on the scandal of those shepherds being in our nativity displays.  He begins:

If I were to be in a Christmas play, I would want to play a shepherd. I mean, they get to wear cool robes and carry a stick. I like carrying sticks. I want a black thorn Irish walking stick in the worst way. I could use it once a year playing a shepherd in a Christmas play, and poke people with it the rest of the year. Sounds like a perfect gift.

We romanticize the role of the shepherds at Christmas. We make them handsome and rugged and virtuous. Obviously they must be godly, because the angel gave them the birth announcement of Jesus. Plus, they get prime spots in the creche—so they have to be righteous, right?

Wrong.

Read more here.