Unbound

For it had seized him many times; and he was bound with chains and shackles and kept under guard, and yet he would break his bonds and be driven by the demon into the desert.   Luke 8:29  NASB

Seized – What if the story of the demoniac isn’t about demon possession?  What if it’s about an ancient perspective on the modern idea of addiction?  Don’t get exegetically upset yet!  Just put aside the Sunday school story for a moment and consider the similarities.  Yes, we might have to s-t-r-e-t-c-h a few things (like pigs) but read this comment about addiction before you dismiss the idea:

“Addiction . .  is a disease of loneliness.”[1]

“Human beings only become addicted when they cannot find anything better to live for and when they desperately need to fill the emptiness that threatens to destroy them.”[2]

“A sense of dislocation has been spreading through our societies like a bone cancer throughout the twentieth century.  We all feel it: we have become richer, but less connected with one another.  Countless studies prove this is more than a hunch, but here’s just one: the average number of close friends a person has has been steadily falling.  We are increasingly alone, so we are increasingly addicted . . . We have separated from one another and turned instead to things for happiness—but things can only ever offer us the thinnest of satisfactions.”[3]

“ . .  when we think about recovery from addiction, we see it through only one lens—the individual.  We believe the problem is in the addict and she has to sort it out for herself, or in a circle of her fellow addicts . . . [but] the problem isn’t in them, it’s in the culture.  Stop thinking only about individual recovery, and start thinking about ‘social recovery.’”[4]

What was the real trauma of the demoniac?  Can I suggest that he felt totally isolated?  He lived among the dead.  He was completely rejected by his community.  He was treated as a social leper.  He had no friends.  He acted according to those expectations; being naked, making others afraid, screaming.  What if his torture was simply this: no one cared for him?  Do you suppose the ”demons” inhabiting him were any worse than the “comfort” of addictive behavior for those of us who have no one to talk to?  Can you, just for a moment, feel the relief when Yeshua does not turn him away?

The demoniac is a lesson in binding.  The more disconnection; the more addiction.  Connection is inevitable.  The more we are unbound from others, the more we will be bound to substitutes.

Topical Index: bind, addiction, isolation, community, demoniac, Luke 8:29

[1] Citing Dean Wilson in Johann Hari, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, p. 151.

[2] Bruce Alexander cited in Johann Hari, op. cit., p. 180.

[3] Johann Hari, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, pp. 180-181.

[4] Ibid., p. 181.

YESTERDAY’S POST CORRECTION:

You probably figured it out, but yesterday the post was supposed to read “Can’t live with it; can’t live without it,” NOT “Can live with it . . .”  Sorry.