Turned to the story of the Gerasene demoniac in Luke this morning. I think a lot of folks just see this as Jesus casting out a lot more demons than normal from someone. I think I did when I heard this story growing up. But there's a lot more going on here that you're not really taught to catch. Jesus isn't just showing mercy to the demonized man. He's also showing mercy and compassion to the demons themselves.
It is the demons who first address Him and beg Him not to "torment" them. In the Greek, this is an interesting word, "basanizo". It literally means "to interrogate harshly". To examine by torture. Imagine interrogating someone by waterboarding and you've got it, but the emphasis is on the interrogation, not the torture.
The demons are begging for mercy from Him, and it gives Him pause. He stops what He was doing, commanding them to leave, and asks what the demon's name is. He treats the demon like a person, not a thing or a monster. It's here he learns that there are a lot of them in this man. The word in the Greek text isn't Greek, it's Latin, "legion". That's an interesting choice for Luke to use this specific word. It suggests that this man might have been speaking Latin at the time, and the nearby settlement was a Roman one. That they were farming pigs is also a clue these were not Judean settlers.
The demons beg Him not to send them into the Abyss. In this day and worldview, this would have been another term for Tartaros, the hellish zone of the Underworld where monsters, Titans, and the truly monstrous human souls were consigned. They know He can do it. But they also appear to believe that He might show mercy on them. Isn't that fascinating? The demons trust who He is enough that they know He might show mercy on them. The context I think we're missing here through our own learned prejudices is that, and what Jesus Himself recognized, is that the demons themselves were suffering too. Perhaps they were trapped with the man just as much as the man was trapped with them. Maybe what we're missing here is that the demons were the ones asking Him for help, not the man who wasn't in control at the time.
(This reminds me of a case of Dissociative Identity Disorder I once heard about from my Abnormal Psychology professor in college. It was actually one of her patients. The alternate identities came to the psychologist looking for help when they couldn't rouse the person's main or original identity or self. They were actually scared for that personality, didn't know what to do, and sought the therapist ought themselves.)
And that trust was not misplaced. Notice they ask Him to send them into the pigs. Why can't they just leave and do it themselves? Because they're trapped there. And Jesus has compassion. He doesn't send them into the Abyss. He doesn't "torment" them further. He just releases them from the man, and the man from them. He sees their suffering as well as the man's and He has compassion on all of them.
But the demons are not "healed". They receive the mercy they ask for, but they are still suffering, still angry, still fearful, and once in control of the pigs, the pigs destroy themselves. This wasn't Jesus' doing. This was the demons' doing to the pigs and themselves through their own choices.
The man however is free from the demons. He begs to go with Jesus, but Jesus tells him to go home and tell them what happened to him. I could be wrong, but I suspect this is because the man is a Roman. This is more of an act of compassion than it seems. The man has been suffering for a long time, and he needs to time to be with his own people and heal rather than come under scrutiny as a gentile following Jesus.
No comments:
Post a Comment