May 21, 2010
Intervention
There are many intervention programs on TV and they cover the whole gamut of our society, everything from saving animals to saving people. The account of the man with an evil spirit in the region of the Gerasenes sounds to me quite similar to folks who are addicted to drugs and who do not want to be confronted. The possessed man was out of his mind, crying out and cutting himself with stones. He lived in the tombs and was so strong that even chains could not bind him. When the man saw Jesus, “He shouted at the top of his voice, ‘What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Swear to God that you won’t torture me!’” Jesus intervened by casting the evil spirit out…a spiritual detox of sorts. (Mark 5:1-20 NIV)
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Gail;
-----The condition of the man possessed by Legion in the region of the Garasenes was in one way quite different than the condition of a man possessed by drug addiction. The one was possessed by spiritual entities - actual and distinct beings robbing the man’s control of his self to function through it. He is no longer himself. The other man is possessed by a complex system of beliefs and values that are of his own construction, yet he remains his own self - this self that he has constructed. Whether or not he developed the system purposefully or out of carelessness, he has become subject to it is as much as the demon possessed man had become subject to the demons.
-----Although Jesus responds to them both from the same perspective - love - and for the same purpose of healing, His intervention is different. He simply threw the spirits out of the demonic man the same as He restored the health of sick people, the sight of the blind, and the hearing of the deaf. But He never simply replaced the mindset of the misled with a new and different mindful of thoughts and heartful of feelings.
-----However, Jesus met multitudes of people and changed their lives with a word. He knew the heart and mind of man, and at will He could know the heart and mind of any individual. Thoughts and feelings operate in a complex system that generate the personality, character, and identity of an individual. But the system is neither rigid nor invulnerable. The seemingly simplest thought can catalyze a chain reaction in the system leading to a fundamental reorganization of the whole way of thinking and believing. Having the ability to know each mind intimately, Jesus has the means to know what ideas at what times will reorganize a person’s life. Thus Paul set out to Damascus with murder in his heart and arrived there in love. Albeit, a face to face encounter with the resurrected Jesus is no small thought.
-----Most of my life I have been perplexed about praying for the recovery of both addicts and mental derelicts. I have recognized that God gives man free will to construct his own mind to his own liking. And it is just that liking that is the problem. God does not rob anyone of his freedom to like what he likes, whether what he likes is poison or milk. A man comes to God or goes from Him freely. So how can one pray for God’s intervention in what a man likes?
-----Thankfully, no man is monolithic in heart and mind. Everyone’s mental system is polluted with that of which he is not. A man who chooses to like milk is still polluted with inklings to like poison, however small they might be. Likewise, a man who chooses to like poison is polluted with traces of liking milk. Recognizing that Proverbs 16:9 says, “A man’s mind plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps,” for the man walking the way of poison I now ask God to direct as many of his steps as possible to land in milk puddles.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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