So Many Pigs: Mark 5:11-13

Sin is destructive.  Evil is destructive.  Certainly, sin and evil have other dynamics and descriptors that can be added to their definition, but they are always destructive.  One of the earliest – and in my opinion best – definitions of sin is that which breaks relationship.  Sin breaks relationship with one another.  Sin breaks relationship with God.  At a very fundamental level, sin also breaks our own relationship with the person God created us to be.

It is intriguing that the unclean spirits ask Jesus to be sent into the pigs.  People occasionally wonder why there are pigs in the story when pigs were considered unclean animals by the Jews.  Remember the Decapolis was a largely Gentile area and the Gentiles wouldn’t be concerned with Jewish dietary laws.  The people of the Decapolis likely knew the joy of a good barbeque.

The Bible gives the number of pigs at around two thousand, so this was no insubstantial amount of pigs.  It’s a fair assumption to say this implies there was no small number of unclean spirits within the man.  There can be no doubt that cleansing the man from the spirits was a grand ordeal.  This is a significant healing.

I think it is also fair to stop for a moment and give some recognition to the man who had the unclean spirits.  Yes, he was an outcast.  Yes, he was living among the tombs.  Yes, he was probably not someone most of us would care to spend any amount of time around.  Yes, the unclean spirits were allowed by him to take up residence in the first place.  Yet, this man was still alive.  As unusual as his life was, he still keep it together enough to not allow the unclean spirits to destroy him.  He had enough unclean spirits within him to obliterate a huge herd of pigs, but he was still alive when Jesus found him.  Regardless of how the situation came to be, he should get some recognition for enduring the struggle day after day.

This incident illustrates the destructive nature of evil.  The spirits destroyed this man’s ability to be the person God created him to be.  The spirits attempted to cause the man to destroy himself by cutting.  The spirits utterly destroyed the herd of pigs after driving them down the hillside to their death.  Evil and sin are destructive forces indeed.

Thankfully, Jesus isn’t afraid.  He is willing to reach into our lives and restore us.  The man is cleansed by Jesus and over the next couple of days we’ll see just how much his life is restored.  Yet Jesus knows how ugly the effects of sin and evil can be.  He is not afraid to enter into our situation and do something about.  Jesus desires to restore relationship because Jesus ultimately knows how sin works.  Sin is destructive.