At one point in His Galilean ministry Jesus sailed eastward across the Sea of Galilee to the country of the Gadarenes. Nearby was a cemetery, and among its tombs lived a wild man possessed of not just one, but an entire legion of demons. Although he had often been caught and bound with chains, he had always managed to break them off. No one could tame him, so he spent his days and nights roaming the hills and cutting himself with rocks. When he saw Jesus, however, he was driven by the demons to run and bow down before Him in fear. The man spoke, but his words came from the devils within. They readily confessed the divinity of Jesus and then begged Him not to torment them. But Jesus drove them into a herd of 2000 swine, which stampeded over a cliff into the sea and were drowned. Those who tended the hogs ran into the nearby villages to report what had happened.
The owners and other people quickly came to see for themselves what had occurred. To their utter amazement they beheld the wild man, now fully clothed, rational, and calm, sitting with Jesus. A crisis suddenly confronted these people. On the one hand they had lost a small fortune in the destruction of their 2000 hogs; on the other hand they had regained their deranged countryman as a healthy, normal citizen. The one responsible for these dramatic changes was the strange Teacher who had come into their midst from across the sea. Their crisis was what to do about this great event. Should they rejoice in the restoration of a wild man to health and sanity, or should they lament the loss of their hogs? Which meant more to them, a human life or the monetary value of their hogs?
They quickly made up their minds. The hogs and their value meant the most, and Jesus was to blame for their loss. So, "they began to beg Him to depart from their region." Jesus had surely come to heal their sick, restore strength to their infirmed, and above all to share with them His precious words of life. But because they refused to welcome Him and urged Him to leave, He indeed left at once. With His disciples He went back into the boat and sailed back from whence they had come. Jesus does not stay where He is not wanted. He loved the Gadarenes and wanted to bestow God's blessings upon them, but He also respected their liberty to choose and allowed them to expel Him from their country. Jesus does not force Himself into the life of anyone. He allows everyone the right to reject Him and shut Him out from their presence.
The Gadarenes had a poor sense of value. They esteemed the worth of 2000 hogs to be greater than a man's health and sanity. They preferred a wild man howling in the hills to the Galilean who had power over demons and the mysterious forces of nature. It is no different today. Christ is unwanted in much of our society. He and His doctrine have been excluded from our schools in favor of philosophies and social theories that demoralize. He is not welcome in our legislatures where greed rules, nor in our courts where criminals get more consideration than their victims. Jesus is caricatured and ridiculed in public entertainment where violence, avarice, and carnality are extolled. He is shut out of vast numbers of homes that allow selfishness, moral laxity, and indifference to virtue enter and take control. When Jesus is ordered out of our society and its many institutions, He leaves and does not force the issue. The Gadarenes may never have realized what their choice cost them, just as American society apparently does not realize what its exclusion of Jesus is costing it. Already it is leading to a downward spiral of morals, social health and stability, and the depreciation of human value that will eventually end in our ruin.
