![living earth near me living earth near me](https://www.assistedliving.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/signs_its_time_for_assisted_living-1024x683.jpg)
So I was surprised to find myself disagreeing with one key element of his interpretation. And I am just scratching the surface of the attention he gives to Creation in his thinking and writing. He has also written books like Agrarian Spirit: Cultivating Faith, Community, and the Land and From Nature to Creation: A Christian Vision for Understanding and Loving Our World. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Christian Theology at Duke University and Senior Fellow at Duke’s Kenan Institute for Ethics. Norman Wirzba is, by the way, someone I deeply admire. So when I came across one such interpretation in the book by Norman Wirzba entitled This Sacred Life, I wanted to share it with you. Despite what many theologians and pastors have said, people with common sense and a heart for God’s Creation have a hard time accepting that Jesus would care nothing about the pigs.Īll of this has made me even more curious about alternative readings of the story. The second conclusion I gather from the interest in what I have written is that people are not convinced by the standard theological explanations of the story. It is up to the reader of the story to discern what that interpretive thread should be. It doesn’t give us a clear statement that explains how those data points fit together. So how could they drown?Īnd this is where Biblical storytelling creates mystery as well. But here it’s not clear from the story whether the pigs are passive creatures who are only acted upon in the story or whether they have volition of their own.Įven more strangely, as I have already written, we know pigs can swim. Their death is clearly connected with the demons being allowed to go into them. In the story, the massive herd of pigs die suddenly and violently. Yet, we also associate pigs with many negative attributes. In Charlotte’s Web, we sympathize with a gentle, intelligent animal. We have complicated perceptions of pigs, too. We want to ask Jesus, “Do animals matter to you?” I want to ask him, “As someone from a Jewish agrarian society, what did you think when you saw the pigs?” Interestingly, we don’t see Jesus interacting with animals very much in the Gospels (although the story from Mark 1:12-13 is very significant), and even here he does not directly do so. Demons, which for 21st century readers raise all kinds of questions, also appear. In it, Jesus shows powers and a beyond-human presence. First, this story from an ancient time and from three of the gospels is still profoundly provocative.
![living earth near me living earth near me](https://files.liveworksheets.com/def_files/2022/8/20/208201853193270244/208201853193270244002.jpg)
This popularity, along with the the diversity of comments, tells me two things. My post about the Bible story involving the pigs, demons, amd Jesus has somehow ended up being the most popular article I have written.