Pigs and Demons

One of the great annual events in Fort Worth is the Southwestern Exhibition and Livestock Show, better known as the Fort Worth Stock Show. It’s an event that lasts over three weeks, and features a rodeo, midway with carnival rides, and most importantly, extensive competitions of livestock judging.

If you’re not from agriculture country, you may wonder exactly how livestock is judged. Actually, it’s a very exhaustive combination of many factors, far too complex to explain here. Anyway, I’m certainly no expert.

I attended the Junior Barrow (pigs) competition for a while, trying to learn what the judges are looking for, but due to crowds, less-than-perfect acoustics and my own less-than perfect hearing, I couldn’t get a lot out of it, though I had a good time.

While I was there, I couldn’t help but recall the story of Jesus driving out the demons from Matthew 8, 28-32 (Or Luke 8, 32-33). You’ll recall that the demons flee into swine, which promptly drown themselves. Whenever I think of this story, often my first thought is that it’s a big waste of pork, and then I think of the swineherds, who were no doubt less than pleased about watching their herds go on a one-way swim.

Of course, the story isn’t about pork, and it’s not just about the spread of the Gospel to gentiles (by clear implication; there are no Jewish swineherds, of course). A modern reader has to wonder whether the references to demons are literal. The typical image that we’d expect today would be something from a bad horror movie.

Well, as with livestock judging, I’m no authority, but for years I had panic attacks, and some were quite severe. Having experienced these major panics, I can easily see how people believed in demonic possession. To me, the onset of an attack felt as though some other person was taking over my thought process. I had to struggle to think rationally at all, and the intense fear was like having someone continually telling me that the worst was about to happen.

Supernatural or not, it seemed supernatural to me, and it was only when I turned to the supernatural for help through prayer that I could consistently gain the upper hand on the attacks. The message, of finding a way to cleanse the spirit of very real, very evil presences can come about through the help of our helper, Jesus Christ.