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Friday, October 21, 2016

NAME THE DEMON


 On the far side of the sea of Galilee, someone (or something) was waiting for Jesus. 

The man ran around naked.  He slept outside in the graveyard.  They had arrested him, but he snapped the cuffs and escaped.  He’d been institutionalized, but he broke out.  Day and night he ran through the village and the countryside screaming unintelligibly.  No one could contain him, and everyone was afraid of him.

In the Middle East of the first century, there was no Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.   The entire Biblical vocabulary for mental illness is versions of  mad, lunatic, demoniac, and possessed.  Using the terminology of the day, Mark observed that the man who greeted Jesus was clearly afflicted “with an unclean spirit” (Mark 5:3), which was the 1st century version of “That dude is crazy.”

This was neither the first nor the last demon-possessed person Jesus encountered (Mark 1:34, Mark 1:39, Mark 7:26, Mark 16:9, etc.).  But, in this case, Jesus did something unusual.   

Initially, Jesus simply commanded the demon to come out of the man, but the unclean spirit protested.  The Lord responded by asking the demon for information about itself.

Jesus  asked him, “What is your name?”
And the possessed man answered, saying, “My name is Legion; for we are many.”  (Mark 5:9)

Jesus then sent the demon out of the man and into a nearby herd of pigs.

Jesus demonstrated that generic techniques don’t work in every case.  Sometimes, to fix the crazy, you have to name the demon.

I know married couples who spent years in vicious conflict over insignificant household issues.  Neither understood why the other couldn’t understand how insane their position is.  The angry call and response of their marital strife seemed directed toward divorce until somebody named the demon.

What actually  WAS wrong? Why WAS this such a big deal?  What anxiety, neurosis, or memory did this trigger; and what was behind that?  Once the couple knew the cause and how it operated, they were able to confront and exorcise craziness that was tearing apart their  home.

As my friend Tony Ares says, “Hurt people hurt people,” and sometimes they can’t stop because they haven’t told the people around them the truth about who damaged them and how.  They can’t heal until they name their demon.

People with addictions and mental illnesses get worse until they get treatment, and generic treatments for “people with problems” won’t help folks with serious conditions.  Somebody has to assess each client and give an accurate diagnosis.  Somebody has to engage and find out every demon’s name.

Communities plagued by generations of crime, disintegrating families, and impotent church culture display the collective symptoms of a special kind of crazy.  Arrests don’t fix it.  Imprisonment doesn’t deter it.  It screams through the streets.  It cries out in the night.  People destroy others and themselves.  They can’t tame it, and everyone is afraid.   The downward spiral will continue and accelerate until each community correctly identifies the problem.  I mean problems.

“My name is Legion; for we are many.”

There might be multiple related and independent traumas.  A person may have co-occurring conditions.  A distressed community must confront multiple systemic sources of oppression and degradation.  They, you, and ya’ll are probably many different kinds of crazy at the same time.

Name it.
However ugly it was, name it.
However guilty you feel about it, name it.
Even if it’s partly what you did to yourselves, name it.

And accept the help God makes available to deal with it.

The man infested by a Legion of problem didn’t wait until he was having a good day to run to Jesus.  He didn’t wait for a properly trained advocate or a democratically representative to make an appointment on his behalf.    Don’t wait for a right time or the right moment.  Run to help now. 

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

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Fairfield, Al 35064

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