6-19-19 - Demonized

(You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.)

Nearly every week, it seems, our country endures a new eruption of mass gun violence (beyond the 310 individuals shot each day, of whom 100 are killed). The drill has grown numbingly familiar – we learn about the shooter and his or her motives; gun safety groups call for stricter oversight of gun use, gun rights group argue for more guns; we honor and remember the victims, support the survivors, call for action, pledge to pray, opine on social media. Rinse and repeat. As the rhetoric flies, it is very easy to demonize different elements involved, especially the perpetrators of violence and those who enable them.

I don't think that would be Jesus' approach. This week’s story, among others, shows that he had a gift for separating disease, sin and evil from the person afflicted by them. He did not confuse people with the problems they manifest. Confronted with this terrified and terrifying man, Jesus sees what is wrong and addresses it head on. In this case, that means dealing first with the demons oppressing the man.

Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion”; for many demons had entered him. They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.

This man’s neighbors were not so discerning. They took the human approach – they saw the problem, not the person. They sought to control him, subdue him, ultimately to enchain and isolate him. It didn’t work – he was at the mercy of evil run rampant, beyond his control – and theirs.

I do not suggest that people who manifest evil bear no responsibility; this story yields no such conclusion - we are not told that this man was destructive to people other than himself. But even in the case of mass murderers and hate-mongerers (and Jesus would put those on the same moral level), we do well to remember what Paul wrote to the Ephesians: “Our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

The key to confronting evil with love is to remember that our battle is with the powers of evil – and that it has been won by Jesus Christ, who gives us his power to wield in further skirmishes. Whether we are dealing with a person bent on destruction, or someone in the grip of addiction, or simply someone who annoys the daylights out of us, we are called to separate the person from the condition they bear or the problems they bring, to do our best to build up the person’s spirit, weak as it may be, while working to free them from the ills that beset them.

Does anyone in your life fit these circumstances?
Has anyone done this for you, seen you apart from what was wrong with you? 

Sometimes that is the key to opening hearts so healing can begin.

It has become very easy these days to demonize other people, those whose values or behaviors or actions or opinions strike us as unholy and destructive. Technically, though, only one entity in the universe can actually demonize someone, and that is the Devil (who my spiritual director aptly terms “the Enemy of human nature”). Do we really want to do his work for him? Didn’t think so.

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Sunday’s readings are here.