5. And always, night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying,
and cutting himself with stones.
6. But when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped him,
7. And cried with a loud voice, and said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou
Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not.
8. For he said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit.
9. And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is
Legion: for we are many.
Mental illness is terrifying. When
a person loses control over one of the parts of his body – limbs, eyes, bladder
or bowel – he can concern himself about it. Whether in anger, sadness, or fear,
he can figure out how to compensate, adjust his physical actions, ask others
for assistance, and learn to adapt. But, when a person loses control over his
mind… well, he loses control. He is unable to reflect upon himself, to console,
correct, or guide himself. That
powerlessness of mental illness – powerless, sometimes, to even recognize
illness – must be absolutely terrifying to experience.
A person in this state can be seen
as possessed by something other than himself, something unhealthy, unclean,
something evil. With our accumulated knowledge
these days, we know that every person who suffers from mental illness is not
literally “possessed” by an unclean spirit.
But, even though we have more precise diagnoses and more effective
treatments in modern medicine, that loss of control, and that sense of being
other than oneself, is just as real and terrifying as it ever was. Terrifying enough to drive the person
suffering into isolation, “crying, and cutting himself with stones.”
In Christian Scripture, we see
Jesus healing people thus afflicted by casting out unclean spirits. This can be taken symbolically for any mental
illness, but it is more than symbolic, for Jesus actually speaks to the spirits
and even calls them by their names. In
the passage of Mark 5, one of these unclean spirits says that his name is
Legion, “for we are many.” Here we can
see that the particular cause of this particular man’s suffering is used as a
symbol to denote that the cause is not unique.
There are many who suffer as this man did. As is always true with Scripture, we can take
away many layers of wisdom from this passage, but the one that I want to spotlight
is the compassion with which Mark describes the man’s suffering.
“And always, night and day, he was
in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones.” This is obviously not good behavior for a
human being. Something’s not right. He might have scared some of the people
living in the area, but he did not harm them.
The harm done was to himself. He
was in a most pitiable state. And Jesus,
unafraid and compassionate, took pity on him and helped him regain control over
himself, to again be “in his right mind”.
To be a good Christian is not to
see every mentally ill person as possessed by an evil spirit. But, it is most certainly to see every
mentally ill person as a poor sufferer in need of our help. It is unchristian, it is ungodly, to allow
someone suffering from mental illness to remain in his own torment without
trying to free him as best as we can. It
is most unkind, it is even cruel, to avoid the mentally ill as long as they do
no harm to anyone. In our fear, we are
much too willing to let them harm themselves.
It seems that only when their illness turns to a destructive, suicidal
rage aimed outward at others do we look, aghast, at the horror that was within
the person all along. We might like to
think that the person is simply a vicious criminal looking for convenient
thrill and fame, far too perversely insane in his core to ever have been prevented
from killing others. But, there was a
time when that killer was alone, isolating himself, while slowly being taken
over by his mental illness. He “kept to
himself.” And we didn’t care because he
wasn’t harming anyone. If we had ever
met him, we might’ve been afraid of him, we might not have spent too much time
near him – but we didn’t care enough about him to see if we could help him in
any way. How much do we really care
about the suffering of other people? In
Mark, after the man was healed, the people in the area seemed to be more
concerned about their property than about the restored health and future
well-being of the man.
Helping the mentally ill is very
difficult, tedious in examining and planning and emotionally exhausting in
putting into practice. It is not as
simple or easy as calling out the name of Jesus Christ. Exorcisms, if they are ever effective, are
only so in very rare cases. But it is in
no way wrong to help those suffering from mental illness by calling upon the
name of Christ. Christ who is ever
compassionate, ever selfless and generous, ever brave and kind, is exactly who
we need – is exactly who we need to be.
And so it is good and right to call upon Jesus in prayer and supplication,
in faithful hope that we can be formed into instruments of love and healing… of
companionship and compassionate action, of support and structure, of light and
freedom… of goodness itself.
Christina Chase
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