“The people went out to see what had happened; and they came to Jesus, and found the man from whom the demons had gone out, sitting down at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind; and they became frightened.” (Luke 8:35)
Whenever I read this verse and the surrounding content, I’m often befuddled. It’s perplexing to me that the villagers who observed the utter transformation of the demoniac-turned-rational, were so afraid of what they saw that they asked Jesus to leave. To me, this says that they had accepted and become comfortable with crazy demonic activity so much that they didn’t have the ability to change and accept calm, sane, stable and redemptive transformation.
If you read this story in Luke 8:26-39, you’ll observe a man tragically tormented by demons. The demonic torment caused the man to run around naked for a long time. He wasn’t able to be chained or kept under guard, and he lived in a graveyard. The Gospel of Mark says that he gashed himself with stones. There’s the implication that people tried to control or contain the man by chaining him or keeping watch over him, but he would break the chains and run away.
I think the village grew accustomed to the crazy guy that lived in the graveyard, ran around naked and howled at the moon. It’s interesting to consider the possibility that maybe we’ve grown accustomed to stuff in our own life that is truly crazy. It’s even possible that we grew up in a crazy home—maybe with a parent or sibling who had challenges with addictions—and maybe our crazy meter is desensitized from what we knew to be normal in our upbringing. Or maybe we have a co-worker or classmate who is sketchy, but we’ve gotten used to their actions or words, such that we dismiss it with the cliché, Oh, that’s just Judy.
But what happens when Jesus steps into crazy and begins to work transformation, redemption and sanity? This is an essential question to consider, and we can learn something important from the choices the villagers made when they saw the crazy guy miraculously cured and sane. The villagers asked Jesus to leave them because they were afraid. They let fear make their choices, and by allowing fear to dominate, they rejected Jesus who could do all things impossible.
It’s curious to me that the villagers were comfortable and acclimated to crazy so much that they asked the Author of sanity and the Healer of crazy to leave their area. As this relates to us, I want to suggest some helpful applications that could give Jesus more space to maneuver in our life and create cures while decreasing crazy. For starters, let’s recognize crazy in our life at face value and not disguised in rationalizing or familiarity. Additionally, let’s be certain to come to Jesus no matter our condition, fears, background, experiences, pain or crazy. Furthermore, let’s allow Jesus to wholly be Himself with us—eliminating crazy, dispelling fears, clothing past shames, soothing anxieties and letting love sculpt peace into our soul. Lastly, keep talking with Jesus. Don’t make a conclusion or ending where you could have continuous conversation with the Prince of Peace!