The cross of the Cross: Theyist Swine and Abraham’s Hard-Line of the Gospel
“For he (Abraham) is a preacher, and he shall pray for thee (Gen.20:7)
“I will not take from a thread even to a shoelatchet, and…any thing that is thine” (Gen. 14:23)
“And they that saw it told them how it befell to him that was possessed with the devil, and also concerning the swine” (Mk. 5:16)
“Preach not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, preach deceits” (Is. 30:10).
“And also the swine,” we read. That’s like reading “and He created the stars also”--besides the Sun and Moon. Don’t read too little into that–because there’s a lot of them. But Jesus did not come here to kill pigs, the Rev. Smooth would say, to dampen the hysteria. Just because the hog market went through the roof even as the stock dived, doesn't mean that Jesus had anything to do with all those dead pigs–the rooster crows, the sun comes up, ergo, does the rooster make the sun come up? Just “see Jesus” and forget about the pigs. Jesus did not come to Gadarene to kill pigs. Let’s talk about Jesus first, the apologist would say, and sooner or later they may come to realize that a large herd of swine in the Holy Land–maybe God has a problem with that. They didn’t talk about, they talked to, Jesus. They saw enough of Jesus to want Him gone. They understood that they couldn’t have the Cross without taking up the cross. That Sermon on the Mount rubbish, Luther would say, is what “strawman James” brought into the Church to overthrow “salvation by faith alone.” When Luther’s protector, the politician Hesse, told him that he couldn’t stop committing adultery, Luther told him to exchange “his many whores” for polygamy.” “What if I’m found out,” he asks? “Just tell the Big One, lie,” Luther smirked. “Life among us is no better than with the Papists,” he chortled. The difference being, “we have the right doctrine.” Philip got to keep his swine. The problem for the Gadarenes was that they saw the doctrine perfectly, and Jesus did not apologize for the swine. Apologetics was invented to sanitize the pigsty, and the adultery of politicians in the church. The cross will put the pigsty out of business. The price of not being persecuted was to make room for the political bedroom in the church. “They took the sow by the right ear,” as Henry VIII said, brought her into the Church, and she’s been wallowing there ever since. You can have the Cross, Luther told Philip, without bearing the cross. And those floating pigs? Well, Jesus was still in the Old Testament here, wasn’t He. After the Resurrection, those pigs would have been grunting happily around their masters. Had James understood this, he would have left writing Epistles to Paul. And the Church would be infinitely better off if Jesus had come to die and left the explaining to Paul. Instead, He muddied the waters with the Sermon on the Mount, full of the most reckless sayings since the foundation of the world, which to this day no one understands, and which “have never been tried,” because, as his own church member Philip could testify, you cannot keep people from committing adultery. Sooner or later they will relapse, and snap the bands by which you seek to reform them. Jesus did not apologize nor clarify the swine. And the Gadarenes agreed with Luther that Jesus had created an impossible situation, beyond human acceptability. In essence, He demanded that they consent to everything they had witnessed. To the spoiling of their goods, they were now expected to hand over themselves and sit at His feet like the maniac. A troubled young Nazi, compelled to execute Jews, came to his pastor for counsel. “If I refuse,” he said, “I will be executed.” “And if you’re dead, what happens to the Jews,” his preacher asked? “Someone else will kill them,” he said. “So your death solves nothing. And your death will increase the evil. Is that what God wants,” he cried angrily? “Grace is big enough to cover all sins,” Luther said. “So sin boldly.” Like Philip, the young Nazi was in an impossible situation. But to kill or not kill did not affect his salvation because “man is saved by faith alone.” This had nothing to do with salvation. What you do or do not do has nothing to do with your salvation, as long as you profess to be saved “by faith alone.” This young Nazi, like Philip, was still under the influence of Old Testament salvation by works.
Jesus didn’t apologize for the pigs–the hard, unwavering line of Abraham, who ended up alone, wearing out the desert in a tent. It was too much even for Lot. “He that loseth his life for My sake shall find it.” The Gadarenes had lost a lot in their pigs. You can always build another swine herd. But how do you get your life back if you lost it like the maniac? Such a life was not worth living. “You’re reading too much into it,” the Rev Smooth Deceit would protest. Let’s not get hung up about the pigs, let's “see Jesus” first, and then, if the pigs are still in view, we can talk about the pigs. They saw more of Jesus than they could bear, because the unclean swine in them were howling to be sent away. It was Jesus or the swine. They begged Jesus to leave and not do them any more favors. Their pigs were over the cliff, but the maniac was off the deep end, which is where they would end up. Such a life was not worth living. But, says the Rev Smooth Deceit, first bring them to Jesus, and if there is a problem with unclean swine in their lives later on–they will be convicted sooner or later. They need grace, not a cross that no one can bear (witness the poor young politician who saw only the cross and was not told about the grace of the Cross).
“I wouldn’t take a shoestring from you,” Abraham told the Theyist. This is a hard line, the cross before the Cross, repentance before faith, renewing before salvation almost. This is the “straw” of James, who makes the Sermon on the Mount even worse, making people believe that they cannot have the free Cross, without at the same time taking up the mortifying cross, which is precisely the definition of salvation by works. That notion would have left poor Philip tormented by uncontrollable lust, and the young Nazi dead.
Jesus ignored the pigs–he would have to sail through them on the way back. His was the hard line of Abraham–no strings attached, period. All this wreckage and he had barely stepped off the ship. He certainly didn’t believe in going after rhino with grapeshot. Lot, with an eye toward the bottom line (his large herds converted into monies) had a softer approach–he would have found his bottom line at the bottom here, for God gave them their request, but sent their lean hogs into the sea.
But the hogs appear incidentally in their calculation here. It was the maniac “right minded, clothed, and sitting” that “made them afraid.” That is, they were less concerned about the hogs in the deep, than the unclean swine deep within themselves. This is what they were confronted with here: “repentance, not to be repented off.” A clean slate. “Not one hoof,” Moses told Pharaoh when he spelled out the terms of Israel’s redemption, “will stay behind.” Not one washed hog swam to shore. This is the hard line Abraham. “One thing thou lackest,” Jesus told the rich young politician. Where is grace here, Luther cries? What’s he doing bartering about “things” as if you had to accumulate enough good works to reach a certain threshold to be saved? He’s playing a zero-sum game here. All or nothing. The Gadarenes got the point. The Rev. Smooth Deceit wants sinners to first see Jesus, and then we can talk about all the rest. Get them saved first, then we can talk about repentance, although few would care once they are told they are saved: the lowest spot in Heaven will do, heh. In fact, you still might be able to have fun there on the lowest rung—or to actually have a life. The born again maniac was the confirmation of all their fears: torment before time–for to be hemmed-in without escape in a “city wherein dwelleth righteousness” was to not have a life. Abraham was rich–but what do you do with wealth in a tent? What kind of a life is that? A life of “not living by bread alone, but by the Word of God.” It was too much for even Lot. They saw all that in an instance in this renewed man–he went from a raging manic to a “fool for Christ.” They were willing to forge bigger and heavier chains to contain him, but now he had them on the run, for he went about Decapolis preaching tirelessly, without fear, or budget, or training. They saw all this and trembled. The maniac was now agitating the swine within them, and like Cain, they were unwilling to have the pigsty cleansed. They would not want the life of the raging maniac, but their life suited them. What they saw before them threatened life as they enjoyed it. The Rev Smooth Deceit would not be there to wean them of their false perceptions. After all Jesus had a wonderful plan for the Gadarenes, one which will make their present life even better. But they saw no Good News here, only death and destruction, and a man changed beyond recognition. They decided to pass. Little did they know the danger they were in. For when God visits, He leaves behind a blessing (the renewed man) or a curse (“more wicked” demon infestation), depending on the response to His message. No man ever walked away unchanged after hearing the Gospel. God does not allow neutrality. “My Word does not come back void.” God either saves, or punishes sin with even greater sins.
The maniac was but a more extreme version of themselves. What happened to the maniac would happen to them. He was but a + at the end of Legion. They harbored the Legion of sin. They would require the same cure. Yet they had deceived themselves that they had made progress by devising the straitjacket for the maniac. They were all maniacs. They were snipping at branches in dealing with the maniac, and told themselves they were dealing with root causes in doing so. Now they were confronted with the hewing preacher, and they begged him to leave before He applied His “ax to the root of the tree.”
Theism are but the warts on the back of Protestant adultery. When Luther and Calvin Christianized adultery by introducing divorce-remarriage they exploded the 7th Commandment. They reaped “divorce/remarriage” beyond the wildest dreams of the Sadducees. For 500 years they filled libraries with arguments to contain the fire. It leaped over the wall into Theyism, from which they are now taking heavy blows. Theyism is but the last conflagration on the ruins of the 7th Commandment. The demons are now rampaging among them and what do they do? They’re back to forging bigger and heavier chains–politics, the counfsling of the Freudian simperers, conversion therapy. demon subduing drugs–the pot calling the kettle black. They are the Gadarenes of the modern age. They want the Cross, but find taking up the cross a price too high, for divorce-remarriage is the root of Theyism, and dealing with it would result in a terrible purge. The “ax would have to be laid to the root of the tree.” This they know. “They turn (to Trump, or now the Supreme Court), but not to the Most High.” They are left with “smooth things'' because they cannot enter the Straitgate of the Gospel, the cross of the Cross. They cannot return to the Bible without laying the ax to the root of the tree first. The maniac caused trouble for the Gadarenes, the cross of Jesus made them “afraid.” In the end, they begged Jesus to leave them as they were (or so they thought). When they rejected the Light, the demon returned with 7 more wicked than the first. Theyism will get worse, because God cannot destroy it without striking at the root: the destruction of the 7th Commandment by Protestant divorce/remarriage. When they “put asunder what God had joined” (divorce adultery), God gave them over to the even more reprobate evil of joining and confusing what God had put asunder in the original Creation (Theyism).