Jesus, Pigs, & Postmodernism

This upcoming Sunday, one of the lectionary readings is a section from Luke, Chapter 8.  In this story, Jesus heals a man inhabited by a legion of demons.  However, Jesus does not simply banish the demons to hell - No!  Instead, Jesus forces the demons out of the man and into a herd of pigs.  Those pigs, now inhabited by a legion of demons, run off a cliff and drown in the Sea of Galilee.  Whether or not this was a good thing to do to the man (and the pigs) is a matter of perspective:

• To Jesus’ disciples, Jesus’s actions were a miracle, and good.
• To the man possessed by demons, Jesus’ actions are unquestionably good.
• To the swineherds - the hired hands that took care of the pigs - Jesus’ actions were harmful and put their jobs at risk.
• To the man who owned the herd of pigs, Jesus’ actions are harmful because he took away his livelihood.
• To the nearby town, Jesus’ actions were scary. Because of their fear, the town asks him to leave.
• To the demons, Jesus’ actions were merciful (at least they did not have to go back to “the abyss”).​

While we often like to think about Jesus as if he did no wrong, many people in this story were collateral damage to Jesus’s healing actions.  By some people’s perspective, Jesus is the villain of the story: he damaged people’s property, killed livestock, and put people’s jobs at risk all to help one man on the outside of town.
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Post-modernism is a field of thought that explores the idea that stories, news, research and even facts are imbedded within a worldview and the perspective that will guide and change how a narrative is told.  When people look at the “good ol’ days” of the past with rose-tinted glasses, postmodernist thinking is the one that asks, “Who were the 'good old days' good for?”  When people reminisce about the days when Walter Cronkite gave the nightly news, postmodernist thinking is the one that asks, “What stories were considered not newsworthy?”  The same postmodern tools allow people to put forward their personal truth and alternative facts.  For good or for ill, postmodern thinking has taken firm root in our culture and it has become increasingly difficult to agree on what can be considered truth.

Along with the question of what is opinion, what is perspective, and what is true, is the additional question of “which opinion, perspective, and truth is one the correct side of history?”  This upcoming Sunday, we will be exploring what is on the rubric for being “on the right side of history” and how to judge how well we are doing.  I won’t be talking about current policies directly, but I will be discussing how to assess their benefit and collateral damage.  Hopefully, we can do it without harming a single piggie.

Blessings,
Pastor Chris