Send Us into the Pigs
Imagine
you had once looked upon the unvarnished glory of God—not with human eyes, but
with angelic ones. You were one of the angels who could dwell in the direct
presence of God without being burnt up by His light, power, and glory.
For
whatever reason, you followed Satan and joined in a rebellion against God. You
lost and were cast out of God’s presence, no longer able to sit in His glory.
After the initial shock of your defeat wore off, imagine how bitter you’d be
about what you had forfeited. “I used to be able to wait on Him, to worship
Him, to see Him, and now I live in darkness, forbidden to look on His face?”
How
much would you hate Satan, the ringleader who led you into such misery?
But
still, you have a job to do, so you torment a first century man and turn him
against his family and community. You make him violent, unpredictable, and
scary. You are bitter and angry, and so you derive a pathetic pleasure from
turning this man from love. He is marked by hatred and fear, the same hatred
and fear that has driven you for thousands of years. You used to join in
joyous, rich, encouraging, and intimate fellowship with like-minded angels in
heavenly worship as you bathed in God’s light, but now you’re joined in a
merciless war against people, with a group of like-minded devils inhabiting a
grubby, loathsome man who terrorizes everyone around him.
How
far you have fallen, indeed.
But
you’re not done falling yet.
In
the distance, you see Jesus, and you know He’s the Son of God. Foolish mortals
may mistake Him as simply being a prophet while ambitious and jealous men might
label him as a false teacher to serve their own ends, but you who once stood in
the presence of God know truth, power, love, and glory when you see it. And you
know you’re defeated. Even if your company name is “legion” (many), there
aren’t enough of you in existence to withstand the power of this one solitary
life. You found that out the hard way long ago.
You
and your cohorts know you can’t keep terrorizing and using this man any longer
because Jesus won’t let you. So what do you ask for? What is your wish? You
who used to dwell in the heavenlies, who then were cast into the darkness and
finally are living in the pathetic swamp of a toxic man, what’s your next best
hope? What do you plead with Jesus to allow you to do?
“Send
us to the pigs” (Mark 5:12).
If
you look it up in the Bible, these demons “begged” Jesus to send them into the
pigs! Please, please, pretty please! We used to live in the heavenlies and messed
that up. We lived in a man and messed him up. So now just send us into
pigs—pigs!—and we’ll kill them as well.
Can
you imagine begging to inhabit a pig with the intent to kill it? What a sad ambition!
What a pathetic fall from grace. Do
these demons ever think of what they were and compare that to what they have
become, and shudder?
But
this story isn’t just about pigs and demons as much as it’s about us.
Have
you beheld the glory of God, bathed in the love, compassion, and grace of God,
and yet slowly slid away to become a person who brings judgment instead of
encouragement; division instead of unity; casts shame instead of blessing;
steals, murders, and destroys instead of bringing life?
Do
you take glee from making someone feel small? Do you have a perverse pleasure
in making others—maybe even your family members, maybe even your children—feel
afraid of you?
Wake
up!
Look at how far you’ve fallen and know you may not be done falling yet!
If angels can go from rejecting the presence of God to desiring the filth of a
pig, don’t think you, who have seen much less, can stop your fall at any given
point.
When
we leave love, when we stop cleaving to the truth, when we reject peace, we
become, more and more, people of hatred, lies, and discord. It is the
ugly degradation of sin whose slope isn’t just slippery, it’s more like a
cascading waterfall, and the story of its inexorable advance predates human
existence.
“Send us into the pigs.”
Do
you crave what you once despised? Have you become the kind of person you
used to think was pathetic? Is your highest hope now something that is
disgusting and beneath a person who was created in the image of God?
Do
you who once reveled in God’s presence during sweet times of worship, now
thirst after the darkest places of the internet for escape? Do you, who have
heard God’s comforting, affirming words of love and forgiveness, use your
tongue to demean and destroy? Do you take your hands, similar to the hands of
Jesus that He let be pierced for our salvation, and ball them into a fist to
make someone hurt or be afraid?
“Send
us into the pigs.”
Have
you gone from reveling in the joys of heaven and the work of God to lusting
after terrorizing a pig and serving the cause of Satan?
Go
Home
If
so, there is hope, and it’s found in a parable told by Jesus that also involves
pigs. In this case, it’s about a prodigal son who envied the pigs for
their food. The inexorable slide of sin is seen in stark relief when Jesus
describes the son of a rich father, once clothed in luxury, who grew up eating
delicacies, but then leaves his father and becomes so poor, abandoned and
hungry that he ends up envying pigs.
What
did this son say and do? When he recognized his condition he said, “I will go home to my father and say, ‘Father,
I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being
called your son. Please take me on as a hired servant’” (Luke 15:18-19).
Jesus’ point in this part of the parable is
clear: the Father will always take you back.
Go home. Turn back to the light. Turn back to God. Plead not to go
into a pig but into the service of your Heavenly Father. He’ll take you
back. He’ll lift you up from wherever you have fallen.
You don’t have to keep falling further and further from God and those you once loved.
Look up and behold the glory of God.
Demons don’t appear to get a second chance, but
because of Christ, we do. “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord
will be saved” (Romans 10:13).
There’s
a woman who lived the same journey as the prodigal son. Mary of Magdala once
had seven demons come out of her. After Jesus healed her, she became one of the
leading lights and one of the most powerful and influential leaders in the
early church. While Jesus walked on this earth Mary of Magdala went from being
possessed by Satan’s servants to supporting Jesus out of her own purse (Luke
8:1-3). In her prior days she brought darkness and hate everywhere she went;
now she was spreading the Light of life for all humans.
We
can go from darkness to light, but the journey is fluid. In today’s
Christian world we so focus on that one-time decision, but I’ve been alive too
long and have witnessed too many stories to believe our life’s aim is decided
in one single choice. Far more often, it’s subtle shifts in our thinking and
direction that eventually and oftentimes slowly lead us to places we never
could have imagined—both good (Mary of Magdala, the prodigal son) and bad
(angels begging to enter pigs), depending on the direction of those shifts.
To
drift from love, by definition, is to drift toward hate. Wherever
you are not for God, you are against Him (Matt. 12:30).
Which
direction are you drifting toward today?
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