Religious Swine Flu

I was reading this morning in Matthew 8 were Jesus came upon the 2 demon-possessed guys in the Gadarene district. You know the story: the demons immediately recognized His divinity and begged to be sent to a nearby herd of pigs. Mysteriously, Jesus consented and the demon-possessed pigs ran down the hillside and drowned in the Sea of Galilee.

Interestingly, the townspeople came out and asked Jesus to keep movin' on. On the scale of requests they could have made of the Son of Man (healing, wholeness, forgiveness, mercy), they chose the least miraculous and the most natural. They didn't want anything to happen out of the ordinary, even if it was to benefit themselves and others.

It is AMAZING how much church folk are like the Gadarenes. So many want the calm of status quo, even if it means Jesus keeps movin' on. A colleague of mine who is transitioning his church had a very religious member come in and chew his butt for 30 minutes about all the changes that were taking place and how it just wasn't the same anymore. My friend said, "OK, but what about the lives that are being changed, the people being reached, the souls being saved, the marriages being put back together?", filling in with details and facts and numbers. The guy said, "I don't care about that--you've changed my church!"

Nothing is more disappointing to me than when so-called believers take and hold on to the attitude of the Gadarenes: they'd rather Jesus keep on movin' somewhere else so that their lives and church can get back to normal; the way THEY like it. This is a swine flu that is epidemic in the American church. Church leadership that tries to overcome this influenza is in for a tough fight. Frankly, few will survive because this attitude is so entrenched. God help us!