In depth discussion of a Jesus healing event

Matthew 8:28-34

When he came to the other side, to the territory of the Gadarenes, two demoniacs who were coming from the tombs met him. They were so savage that no one could travel by that road. They cried out, “What have you to do with us, Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the appointed time?” Some distance away a herd of many swine was feeding. The demons pleaded with him, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of swine.” And he said to them, “Go then!” They came out and entered the swine, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea where they drowned. The swineherds ran away, and when they came to the town they reported everything, including what had happened to the demoniacs. Thereupon the whole town came out to meet Jesus, and when they saw him they begged him to leave their district.

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This is a very well known miraculous event in the life of Jesus and has been frequently been discussed and sermonized since there is a great amount of information to glean from these just seven sentences of narrative. Homilists often point out how demons recognized Christ’s true identity without him saying a word, and this is true. They also knew they would be driven out of the human sufferers by Christ, again before Christ even said a word. But I want to teach you about two observations you can make that do not receive as much emphasis or understanding in the more common preaching.

The first thing to note is that the demon’s highest priority is to stay inside a living body, and so they beg Jesus to allow them to go into the swine. Sometimes you better understand reality of the physical and spiritual world by noting what the demons did not ask for. They were subservient to Jesus yet they did not ask that they be “cured” of being demons. If God can do anything, why would not the demons ask Jesus to change them into “good spirits” or something other than demons? This is because they could not. A demon is the condition of being contrary to life as determined by God. In other words, think about the colors yellow and green. Green could not ask Jesus to now be yellow because “green is the name given to that condition of color” while “yellow is the name for that condition.” Another example is that a cold virus could not ask to be a flu virus because the name “cold virus” is given to the virus that causes colds, while a flu virus is the name given to the virus that causes flu. Calling a cold virus a flu virus would not make it any less a cold virus. Calling green yellow would not make the wavelength absorption that produces green change to the wavelength absorption that produces yellow. Now Jesus could change the object’s fundamental nature so that it changed color from green to yellow. And Jesus could change a cold virus into a flu virus. But demons are not changeable because they are not a living being that has a set of characteristics that can be changed. Demons are the “state of being demonic” in tendency and priority. Because Jesus, empowered by God, could converse with demons it is natural that humans tend to anthropomorphize demons and think of them as a living being that has a “spirit body.” But this is not true. Demons are like being cold. If a person is shivering in the cold wind and becomes cold the person is cold, but cold is not a living spirit form. Coldness is a state of being, not a living being. Coldness is real, since many people feel it, it can be measured (thermometer) and people die from it frequently. Likewise demons are real, and can be observed, measured and felt, but they are not living beings, not even a “special case” of being spirit beings. Demons are not living beings (nor are they undead beings) because they are not beings at all. They are a state of being. In other words, they are a state that a being can possess, just like being cold. So in this example, if the two homeless people had come running from the tombs (where they lived) begging Jesus to cure them of cold, Jesus could easily, and without miracle, make them warm by giving them shelter, blankets and hot soup. The difference is that the people themselves, their true character, would have been the ones requesting warmth since they would be normal people who happen to be cold. But when a demon possesses a person the demon does the speaking for the person. That does not, I repeat, mean that the demon is a living or undead being. But it is such a powerful state of being that it takes possession of and reorganizes the person’s body, mind and spirit (though not soul). Think about if “cold” was speaking on behalf of a person who was cold. “Cold” would ask Jesus to make it snow, or have the chill wind blow harder, and “cold” would not care about the body that it was killing, since it’s “job” and it’s only state of being and point of reference is to be “cold.” Cold is cold. So this is a valuable insight for you into understanding demons. Demons are not little devils, or the undead returned, or alien spirits (LOL) or mini-fallen angels or any other anthropomorphizing being you could hypothesize. Learn to recognize demons and their influence by thinking of them as being a condition or state of being such as “cold” or “green.”

The cold example is the best to use because like I said; if a person is endlessly and severely cold he or she will die of hypothermia. So cold that is unlimited is a dangerous condition.

This is one reason that non-Catholic “exorcisms” are unbelievably dangerous and wrong headed. People who think that demon possession means that a mini bad spirit is “inside” of another person are totally wrong in their perception of the problem. Just because one “drives out” a demon does not mean that it was a “being that is inside” the person, even if a person thinks they are conversing with it. The minds of humans are wonderful and clever, but limited, especially when looking at themselves or each other, because they almost have to anthropomorphize everything they see, especially if it seems to have dialogue or a set of characteristics. So while Catholics themselves, and the rituals also have the sound of, thinking of demons as “beings” they are incorrect, but understandably so because the Bible is not a complete textbook to all the universe’s manifestations and causes. When a person has a “demon” the person is under the control of the state of being demonic. The condition of being demonic does the speaking and thinking for the person, and has only continuation of being demonic as it’s only characteristic. If you get confused keep thinking back to the cold example, which is why I gave this example to you, since it gives great clarity and insight. A demon is like a person being subsumed by the condition of being “cold” so that “being cold” is the past, present and future and only “option” and “priority.” The answer is always “cold” if you tried to dialogue with a person who is possessed by “cold,” if such a thing existed, which it does not. So a demon is a state of being that is being a demon. Therefore the first thing the demons ask of Jesus, who they recognize as the Son of God, is to go on being demons but with the pigs instead of the men. It is like in our example if hypothetical “cold” state requested of Jesus that “cold” goes and makes someone else “cold” since “cold” has no choice or options because cold is the state of being cold.

Jesus agrees that the demons can “Go then!” The demons enter into the swine and the swine immediately hurl themselves over a steep bank into the sea where the pigs drown. I bet you are now recognizing something that you did not before when you’ve read this miracle. People assume that the demons drove the swine into the sea. But this is not true! Demons only care about being demons because they are not beings but the state of being. How do we know this? Let’s use again our “what if instead of this they said that” logic. Notice the demons did not ask to be sent to hell. If they are demonic beings and that is their “true home” and if they take pleasure in pain, why not ask Jesus to send them back to hell rather than expel and/or destroy them? That is because they are not beings who have “places where they live.” Demons are the state of being of the organism they control, just like being cold. So if a demon is here and recognizes that it is going to be expelled by Jesus (Jesus doing so in order to free and save the person afflicted just as warming a person freezing to death but unable to ask for help) the demon is going to “want” to go from here to there since it is simply transferring a state of being. A state of being that is transferred from a person to person, or from person to pig, would not “think” to ask to “go home to hell” or be changed because it is only a singular state of being, like on and off. So the demon would not “want” to “make” the pigs leap into the sea because demons do not desire nor manipulate circumstances other than the inevitable outcome of their being the state of “demon.” As long as a person is cold, that person is cold. The cold is “expelled” when the person is warmed up sufficiently that the person is no longer cold. A demon “exists” so long as the demon exists, and when it is expelled it is gone, just like the state of being cold.

Think about what being “cold” is by definition. Cold is the state of being where molecules of the body slow down in their vibration so much that life can no longer exist. Hot is the condition of very fast vibrating of molecules and like cold, outside of the human body’s level of tolerance, too much of being hot too can destroy, either as fever or as actual burning. There is a range of temperature, that state of being, that humans function with health within. There is no acceptable or healthy “amount” or “level of demon” that a human can contain however. True demon possession is “on” or “off” or to be precise “possessed” or “expelled.” True demon possession can be compared to the state of being deathly cold only, where the coldness is at the non-life sustaining level and that is the only option. Having an actual demon (and not just behaving very wickedly) is the same as being in the state of being so cold that life cannot take place in that body. Again, remembering I am only using an analogy and all analogies are flawed in their use to some extent, although this one is a very good and tight analogy because it leads you along to a completer understanding in its valid parallel of logic. So just as the state of being “demon” equals, in our parallel, the state of being “so cold that it will kill the body” you can now better understand what state of being the demon “measures” in its on/off way. The “state of demon being” is anti-life. I’m not making a political or moral statement; I am still being scientific here.

Just as our hypothetical “man who is possessed by cold” would be under the influence of a force that only “cares” about being too cold to live, the state of being “demon” is a state of pure reflex where all behavior is contrary to the continuation of life. See, these two guys that Jesus encountered were not robbers who had their hideout in the tombs and terrorized the community in order to rob and bully them. That would be two wicked people who perhaps commit unspeakable crimes, but are not demoniac. Demons who possess these two men by definition force them to a state of being that is “anti-life.” They are forced to “live” where only the dead live (the tombs of the town) and they exist in the continuing state of being demonic, which causes all actions to be in a demonic state, with no concern for their own welfare. Robbers sit down and have a good meal with the proceeds of what they took from people. They are wicked but still working within the boundaries of life affirming actions, at least for themselves. True demonic possession is the state of being in a condition of non-affirmation of life.

So the demons request of Jesus that he allow them to go to the pigs and possess them. Think about this. Why would they request of Jesus to go to the pigs, and not just flee from Jesus in terror into the pigs all on their own? Would that not be logical? Why do they have to ask first? The answer is that because demons cannot occupy animals. Animals, either savage or tame, are free from demons. The demons could only enter the pigs if Jesus gave them permission. If they could have entered into animals, they would have fled from Jesus with no word spoken and done so by getting the heck out of Jesus’ way and assuming that it would be OK to be in the pigs. But that is assuming a world where demons could exist in animals and we know that it is not possible or true. First of all demons are the state of being based on a consciousness that does not exist in animals. God created animals without sin or a set of values by which they must live in order to thrive. God created infrastructure (the planet, rocks, and soil), the plants and the animals to live and not to have “choice” about being in favor of their living and thriving or not. All things that God created are good, including humans in the beginning. So to use a psychology expression a demon would not find “a hook” within a plant or animal attach itself to and create that state of being since that state of being is not possible in an animal, plant or rock. Life would never have continued on this planet if demons could possess animals because you can see that a bias toward not life affirming activities in animals would have killed them off even faster than habitat loss, disease, climate change and so forth. The logic of eating, drinking water, finding shelter, mating and raising young would have been repeatedly broken. So there is no reason or ability for a demon to ever possess an animal (despite what you may think of the nasty pit bull down the street!) Seriously, even poor animals bred to be killers or trained to be vicious would on their own revert to life affirming behavior. At the very least they would try to survive. True demonic possession is the state of being in a totally non-life affirming condition. So the demons had to seek permission from Jesus in order to enter into the pigs. Obviously the swineherds were standing nearby to witness this, and you’ll notice the demons did not ask to leave the tomb living guys alone and go into the swineherds for a while instead! The demons recognize Jesus as being their anti-state and therefore know he will not permit their continued possession of the two men or any other humans before any conversation even takes place. Jesus is the opposite condition of the state of being demonic. So the only option for the state of being demonic to continue was to ask Jesus to allow them to go into the swine instead of the humans.

This is where my defense of pigs and all other animals begins, ha. Putting aside the prohibitions about clean or unclean animals, everyone understands that all animals are good because they are created by God in the beginning and all that is created by God is goodness. It is the pigs that under the possession of the two demons that throw themselves into the sea. The demons created the non-life affirming state of being in the pigs and so the pigs did the opposite of what they would naturally do (which is life affirming) and they hurled themselves into the sea. Now I am not saying they turned into conscious pig heroes and sacrificed themselves for the greater good, ha! But I am using kind of a negative hypothesis to show you that animals exist in a constant state of being life affirming, uninfluenced by demons or other spiritual pressures or dilemmas that exist among the conscious “post Garden of Eden” humans. This is another reason that animal worship and idolatry is plain wrong and strongly and consistently rebuked by God throughout both the Bible and the Qur’an. It is actually an “insult to animals” to assign a spirit, either good or demonic, awareness to animals. That is because this implies a “choice” whereby if animals are acting consciously that means they can make choices. That is an insult to them because all animals are created by God to only function in a life affirming way… they would never make a “power” or “spiritual” based choice because they already exist in a perfect state as created by God.

Since, therefore, the swine, as all animals, lack the “hook” to be demonic and continue to live, they immediately perish. As perfect “life affirming” beings, animals would perish immediately upon having a demon. This is why God does not permit it to happen and created them without that capacity to be possessed by demons or otherwise spiritually afflicted. This is why Jesus allowed the demons to go into the swine, knowing that the swine would perish (and so the demonic state would be closed in these two cases and the condition of being demoniac erased) and also so that the Apostles and other bystanders could learn from this what I am telling you about here, plus the other understandings that have traditionally been sermonized. Of course the people whose livelihood depended on the swine were not so interested in the spiritual lesson and they begged Jesus to leave their district!

Jesus is clearly seen here as, to use a popular scientific expression, anti-matter to demons. Jesus is the perfect state of not being demoniac. Demons cannot exist in the presence of true Jesus. They need his permission even to flee. Jesus gives permission during this miracle (more properly called a healing) so that the Apostles can learn and teach what they saw. Notice that Jesus did not have to do anything in this case to expel the demons. If they had not “spoken up” to “ask permission to go to the swine” Jesus would have expelled them right out and they would have been expelled into non-existence. Remember a demon is a state of being, not an entity that would pack its nasty little suitcase and go to another person or float around looking for victims. It feels that way and language in the Bible uses some of that imagery, but that is why Jesus provided examples, such as this one, where people can observe a truth that is too complicated to put into human words (yet remarkably simple to live by in the pious life).
I wrote this in order to convey two points, which I have pretty much completed, which is to teach about the true nature of demonic possession and to illuminate the goodness and “built in” life affirmation of all animals, clean or unclean, predatory or grazer, simple one cell or top of the animal kingdom in complexity. Without going into detail, perhaps to address in future blog postings, I will mention a few other points to consider. One is that there is true demonic possession but it is much rarer than people think. The second is that being insane is not the same as being possessed. Third is that when Jesus expelled demons he was really expelling demons and this was not code word for curing mental illness. When the Gospel relates that Jesus cured many people, in the thousands, this was a mixture of people with physical and mental ailments (even though mental illness was not recognized as such during those times). So Jesus did encounter and cure people with mental illnesses. However the examples related in the Gospel of demon expelling are indeed demons being expelled and not just the out of date and quaint labels put on mentally ill people. Here’s how we know that. Mental illness is not usually the stark raving running around psychotic type. It is the eroding of wellness through what we know today as post traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety and so forth. While it was no where near as prevalent then as it is today (since society and survival were much more straightforward then and there was not a survival reward for neurosis) it obviously still was common enough. It was common enough that it did not merit mentioning in the Gospels. Remember Jesus cured blindness and restored walking to “many” and even more dramatic cures that were not enumerated in the Gospel either! So if the Apostles and disciples grouped even dramatic cures such as those together in order to say “many throughout the region” and numbers implying the thousands, obviously they did not mention the many cures by Jesus of the mentally infirm. What they did mention was where Jesus brought their attention to true demonic possession so they would recognize and know its qualities and characteristics. The nearness of Jesus, as you can see in the example of the two demons, is often enough to effect a healing and a cure. Many who listened to Jesus were cured of their emotional and mental afflictions without him having to do a specific miraculous cure. Jesus was totally unique in this because he was born from being overshadowed by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit’s presence with the permission of God is enough to bring about many healings and cures. We know this because when Jesus designated St. Peter as his rock with the key and the Holy Spirit descended in Pentecost, even the falling of St. Peter’s shadow on someone could bring about a cure (Acts 5:15). So if St. Peter’s shadow falling on someone as he passes by could bring about a cure you know that the very presence of Jesus brought many cures of particularly the mental, emotional and spiritual kind of illnesses. So I want to make clear that there is a difference between true demoniac possession and severe mental illness.

Something else you need to think about is that people can “create demons.” This is actually where demons “come from.” Notice this is very different than saying mentally ill people or their illness cause demons. No, rather, collective wicked behavior does at some point “congeal,” for lack of a better word, into demoniac possession. There is a critical mass of mental and spiritual mindset whereby individual or group sinful, cruel or wicked actions create traction in the world of human’s perception whereby the types of demons encountered by Jesus come into being. This is a whole huge and obviously important topic that needs to be analyzed on its own, perhaps in future blogging. But people often ask, “If God is good where does evil come from?” or “Why does God ‘allow’ Satan and demons ‘into’ the world?” Both questions are totally understandable and deserve answers, but they come from a set of assumptions and understandings that are weak and invalid. Both the Bible and the Qur’an describe demons and their attributes and they know there is connection between the wickedness of man and the actions of demons. This is true, but people need to know that they are not as weak as they think and that they can expel demons and prevent their very creation if they understand how deviation from God by humans brings demons into existence and power in the first place. Remember as I explained, animals cannot be possessed by demons, so there is a billion or so years of life on earth without demon presence. Guess who is the one species of living being that is associated with the existence of demons? I think you know! Demons are not fallen angels who are running around on earth with day passes that lets them out of hell. They are permitted by God to exist because they are an “output” of humans, kind of like smog. The psychoanalyst Carl Jung came very close to understanding this. He was a Christian who hypothesized that Nazi Germany was “possessed by the Nordic god Wotan.” Now of course Jung did not believe in an actual pantheon of gods but he recognized that a national possession of some sort took place and he found the closest “match” of characteristics when comparing Nazi Germany traits to those of the mythological Wotan. Jung has been consistently “demonized” (LOL) by many Jewish psychology professionals for “excusing” or “providing an excuse” for Nazi Germany, but this was not his motivation nor where he could have gotten to if he pursued this question further. Jung came close to recognizing that a separate ruling entity had congealed in Nazi Germany that was not only the numeric total of wicked deeds, wicked “policy” and “group or gang mentality.” He was trying to get to an important and very valid observation about the origin of a collective demonic possession, but he was too distracted by his many other theories and projects to really do justice to this potential discovery. Also it was not a subject that he was rewarded for exploring. However if he had, might he have not described patterns that later one must think about with Cambodia, Rwanda, and now certain parts of Kenya and see if there had not been similar symptomology.

Just to bring the subject to a close, I know many will cite scripture that demons are spirits that are disobedient to God and/or that they exist to punish and torment humans. Yes, those are things that demons “do” as a natural outcome of their state of being. Their state of being, like being cold, can be interpreted as punishing, tormenting, and disobeying. A child who wanders out of the house in the freezing cold and dies could be viewed as meeting those criteria too, but that would be a totally inaccurate reading of the situation. The “cold” in this case would be acting contrary to God’s will and being “disobedient” (freezing and killing a child, all children being loved by God), is being “punished” by the cold (the child having wandered away from home without the parents), and being “tormented” by the cold (what a sad and awful way for a child to die). So one could say that “cold” is disobedient to God, punishes a human child, and torments a human child, yet that would be giving “cold” an agenda that it does not consciously possess and it does not address the origin of “cold.” Likewise, the fact that demons are not fulfilling God’s plan for goodness, torment, and punish humans does not mean that God created demons, nor do they exist for expressly those purposes. Those actions are inevitable outcomes of the state of being of demonic possession. So to eliminate the influence of demons and protect people from their influence in the world one needs to understand their origins and source of reinforcement, just as one needs to examine responsibility in babysitting, provision of heating, and the adverse affects of weather in the example of the cold that killed the child In the above example. The cold is a natural force. But the unheated poor person’s house, the open door and the underdressed, unsupervised child are actions that are under the influence of humans. Demons likewise come into being as a natural force that is congealed into collective dark power by the actions and spiritual attitudes of humans.

I hope you’ve found this discussion and spiritual direction useful.