The Anxiety Opportunity: How Worry Is the Doorway to Your Best Self

by Curtis Chang

“My name is Legion.” What a startling answer. Legion was the name of the basic unit of the Roman army, the force oppressing the land of Israel at the time (the unit numbered two thousand men, which explains Mark’s inclusion of the number of pigs listed in Mark 5:13). There are multiple possible layers to this revelation. Certainly, this name confirms the biblical worldview that dark spiritual forces are behind human forms of oppression, and these spiritual forces can hijack an individual’s very identity. Does the revelation of “Legion” mean this hijacking occurred because this man was himself a victim of Roman brutality? Or perhaps this man was one of the many native militants who was obsessively consumed by a hatred of the Roman invaders, such that over time he had fused himself with a narrative of violent retribution? In other words, was he an ancient and extreme version of those today who have given over their identities to our political conflicts? We aren’t given the full backstory, so these are just conjectures.