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 .
Email atgravestwo2@aol.com
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Support by check or money order may
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P O Box 132
Fairfield, Al 35064
