Psalm 1:5

sheep and goats

Therefore the wicked shall not rise again in judgment: nor sinners in the council of the just. (Psalm 1:5 DR)

Following a fairly intensive surgery a few years ago I had to be put on some rather strong painkillers. It turned out to be Fentanyl, which I had already been receiving prior to my release from the hospital.

I remember well the experience in the hospital; how the IV version worked almost instantaneously, and while I didn’t particularly enjoy the brain fog, the pain relief was welcome. Following my release I was given a lower oral dose to be used as needed, and while it didn’t have as much of an impact, it still was effective.

I had always wondered why anyone would choose to become addicted to painkillers, but after taking it for a few days I began to understand why. I remember clearly a moment when I was near the end of the dosage and the pain was at manageable levels— I looked at the bottle and realized I didn’t actually need it but rather that I wanted it. In that moment the temptation became real and I had a partial understanding of how that occurs. I also knew that if I didn’t dispose of it, I could have serious problems in the future, since I was already habituating myself to wanting it.

As humans we are constantly wavering between what we know we should do and what we want to do. And sometimes even the things that are good that we want to do we find difficult to actually do. This double-mindedness is an unfortunate reality of our fall.

In this verse of Psalm 1 the Psalmist draws a distinction (as in the rest of the Psalm) between the wicked and the just, how the sinners will not rise again in judgment. And while such neat distinctions are well and good, it is also the case that for much of our sojourning we often hover between the two, or at least imagine that we can do so.

St. Hilary of Poitiers notes this dynamic within the Church:

For many are kept within the pale of the church by the fear of God; yet they are tempted all the while to worldly faults by the allurements of the world. They pray, because they are afraid; they sin, because it is their will. The fair hope of future life makes them call themselves Christians; the allurements of present pleasure make them act like heathen. They do not abide in ungodliness, because they hold the name of God in honour; they are not godly because they follow after things contrary to godliness. And they cannot help loving those things best which can never enable them to be what they call themselves, because their desire to do such works is stronger than their desire to be true to their name. And this is why the Lord, after saying that believers would not be judged and that unbelievers had been judged already, added that This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light. (St. Hilary, Homily on Psalm 1, 22.)

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In the conceptual background of St. Hilary’s words here are Jesus’ famous discourse about the future judgment and the separation of the sheep from the goats, and so I thought something along those lines would be an interesting way to go about this animation.

I found some old illustrations of various livestock, particularly of sheep and goats. I cut them out in Photoshop and composited them in After Effects, do some simple animation to bring them into the scene, staggering the animation.

To conclude and give myself a loop point I separated them by having the sheep ascend and the goats descend. I was originally planning on separating them out to the right and left and then ascending and descending, but that would have taken longer then the five seconds I had allotted without feeling overly rushed. I also liked the notion of having them mingle together (calling also to mind the parable of the wheat and the tares) and how the separation happens at the end.

Enjoy.

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View a higher quality version of this gif here: