Excellent interview with Christopher Hitchens on BBC Radio Five… unusually intelligent questions for a radio show. (14.6MB MP3, 36 min.) Here’s Hitch on the metaphor of the shepherd and his sheep:

… and I have to remember why you people call yourselves a flock. Be like a sheep yourself if you must, but please leave me out of it. I’m not a sheep and I don’t need a shepherd and what shepherds do when they’re not actually messing around with their sheep is they’re keeping them around and alive so they can be fleeced and then killed.

Personally I never understood the appeal of the “Lamb of God” idea, except as a ghastly homage to the gruesome practice of animal sacrifice. Ughh!