Monday, February 16, 2009

The Demon-Possessed Man - Hold the Bacon, please.

Luke 8:32 Now there was a herd of many swine feeding there on the mountain; and the demons implored Him to permit them to enter the swine. And He gave them permission.

Ted Steinberg wrote a small article about our friend 'the pig'. In the early 1800's, pigs used to wonder the streets of New York, other cities as well, but we'll stick to this well-populated city. The pigs would walk amongst the people eating garbage and waste and those people that were not as well to do as others would go out and kill the animals and feed their families. While the pigs did clean up some of the garbage, they added their own garbage when they would defecate on the sidewalks. There were many times they tried to ban the pigs from the streets but were set back by protesters - mostly housewives and the less wealthy. Then in the mid-1800's, cholera set in. The disease spread and was found to be caused by unclean conditions. Nothing is more unclean than pig poop in the streets. The police formed a troop that marched the pigs uptown, instilling a ban in the city of the pigs and clearly dividing city and country.

While we see the cute little piglets and mud-cooling, pink-skinned bacon givers
in a better light today, this article gives us a pretty good analogy to the choice made by Jesus to throw the demons into the swine.

At first glance, the pigs seemed to be doing a service to the city - cleaning up the streets of its garbage. Satan always looks good at first glance. This is why it is often so tempting to step into sin - it seems good on the surface. The people thought the pigs were a help to them, it was providing them food for their families. The results of sin can falsely seem like a good answer at the time - a lie to save yourself from being embarrassed, or a slip-up on your taxes so your not financially burdened. But as time wore on - decades later - the urine and everything else that pigs naturally get rid of, caused disease. The same with sin. The natural decay that sin causes soon leads to a deadly result. The only option in both scenarios is to rid the place of the problem. They drove the pigs out of the city. Are we ready to drive the sin out of our lives?

4 comments:

Kelly said...

Gracious - some of your best writing ever here! This was so awesome! Especially the part about sin seeming so inviting or insignificant at the time. Suddenly we're buried in poop!

Great, great writing today!

Greg C said...

I hate when the devil gives me these choices. Those easy ways out always seem so inviting even though I know they are wrong. I loved the comparison with the pigs and sin.

Sharon said...

This is really good, you know and you described it so well, I had a visual of the entire post.
And Yes I am driving the sin out of my life, I am a work in progress.
Thanks for this, blessings my friend

debrah said...

Dorothy you certainly do have a way with words! It is so true when you compromise or turn to sin to clean up your mess...you only wind up with a bigger mess! Great Post!