What is this? A new...
Illustration
"What is this? A new teaching?"
The Jews had learned how to live with demons. They had worked out patterns for avoiding, exorcising, and adapting. It was said that one could not walk without stepping on at least several demons, so vast was their number.
We get used to almost anything. In The Fixer, Bernard Malamud writes of a Jew who was falsely arrested. He did not contest because he felt he would be released; when transferred to a worse prison, he still kept silence, thinking he would be vindicated. After a series of worsening incarcerations, he was at last sentenced to death. By this time it was too late to find help. The novel is a moving plea for those suffering or observing injustice, to speak when the time is ripe for vindication.
Similarly, we get used to our demonic forces and do not resist them. They may just go away. We accommodate, exorcise with patient resolution, and adapt with a lifestyle that accepts living with demonic forces. We do not protest nor seek a different way. Finally, we are so tightly intertwined with them that there is no protesting. We are condemned to live out our lives under their influence.
Jesus comes with a new teaching. It is not to accommodate demons beseting us, but to opt for the most significant work we can do -- to hear his new teaching and accept his power rather than live any longer with forces that are destroying us.
The Jews had learned how to live with demons. They had worked out patterns for avoiding, exorcising, and adapting. It was said that one could not walk without stepping on at least several demons, so vast was their number.
We get used to almost anything. In The Fixer, Bernard Malamud writes of a Jew who was falsely arrested. He did not contest because he felt he would be released; when transferred to a worse prison, he still kept silence, thinking he would be vindicated. After a series of worsening incarcerations, he was at last sentenced to death. By this time it was too late to find help. The novel is a moving plea for those suffering or observing injustice, to speak when the time is ripe for vindication.
Similarly, we get used to our demonic forces and do not resist them. They may just go away. We accommodate, exorcise with patient resolution, and adapt with a lifestyle that accepts living with demonic forces. We do not protest nor seek a different way. Finally, we are so tightly intertwined with them that there is no protesting. We are condemned to live out our lives under their influence.
Jesus comes with a new teaching. It is not to accommodate demons beseting us, but to opt for the most significant work we can do -- to hear his new teaching and accept his power rather than live any longer with forces that are destroying us.
