When Jesus and the disciples met the demoniacs, the Word records that “Some distance from them a large herd of pigs was feeding.” As Jesus casts the demons out, they rush into the pigs, who then charge down the banks into the water and drown themselves. The disciples are with Jesus, but they are not alone. The farm hands who were watching the pigs must have walked over. Perhaps intrigued by the fact that Jesus and his group didn’t flee as the demoniacs came out of the tombs, or perhaps because they overhead the two men shouting. Nevertheless, they’ve witnessed a miracle of deliverance. Unfortunately that miracle came with a rather severe price from their perspective. “Those tending the pigs ran off, went into the town and reported all this, including what had happened to the demon-possessed men. Then the whole town went out to meet Jesus. And when they saw him, they pleaded with him to leave their region.”
Like the demoniacs, the townspeople come out to meet Jesus. Like the demoniacs, they plead with Jesus to let them just get on with their lives. Like the demoniacs, the townspeople don’t really want Jesus the Son of God. The parallelism is significant, and the irony is off-the-chart.
From the perspective of the townsfolk, Jesus is the cause of a massive financial loss and resulting unemployment. Certainly those tending the pigs are now unemployed. Likely the butcher(s) who processed the pigs too, and the farmer(s) too are likely bankrupt. The fact that two ‘crazies’ have been healed is of little concern to the town as a whole. Besides all that, newly restored people need someone to help them reintegrate with society. That is a social cost. So is job training and immediate housing and food allowances. The whole episode represented a significant cost to the local economy.
When the Kingdom of God comes to a town, there is a cost to that place. Houses of sin, casinos, merchants of drugs and pornography are all going to face bankruptcy. No small number of criminals and addicts suddenly seek retraining and social assistance. That is the direct cost. There is collateral cost too. Temporarily, unemployment can jump as people quit working for unrighteousness. Governments see payroll taxes decline just when the need for social housing and programming spikes. Further, one should expect a drop in impulse buying and luxury spending as households work tithing and gifts into their budgets. Obviously, a temporary financial setback is the smallest of costs when seen with eternity in mind. All the same, from a strictly worldly viewpoint a Kingdom advance is, at the very least, disruptive.
In Jesus’ day, a whole heard of pigs was not a small amount of money. Given that this was the first and actually a rather small deliverance (only two people), it may be that the townsfolk figured they’d all lose their shirts if Jesus got to spend time in their downtown. They plead with Him to leave. In doing so, they sacrifice what is eternal on the altar of the temporary. A bigger mistake cannot be made.
Like the rest of this story, the irony is thick. The few who were out of their right minds came out to meet Jesus and found salvation when He tells the legion plaguing them to exit; the demons rushing to their destruction. Then the few who were in their right minds rush to tell the many, who perceive Jesus as a plague and come out to plead His exit; the people heading back to town, forever lost.
In our day, businesses compete with one another to see who can come up with the next disruptive product, the winner being awarded with market share. New business start ups compete to see who will emerge with the next disruption to industry, the winner being awarded with billions of dollars. But for thousands of years the kingdom of God has been disrupting families, communities and societies. At stake is not market share or dollars, but the eternal lives and destinies of living souls.
Failure to break up the fallow ground will make for a rough planting season. You [ ] do this by changing neither format nor activities initially. Rather, you [ ] model and teach. Let them grapple with Scripture. Let them hear testimonies. Let their eyes acclimate to the light of what could be. God will use these truths over time to prepare them for a different pattern of relating to him.
John Franklin
APPLICATION: Intentionality
How are you bringing the disruption of the Kingdom of God to your community?