Why Doesn’t He Do It?

The crowd began pleading with Jesus to go away and leave them alone.   Mark 5:17

Jesus doesn’t force himself on a community that does not want him. You would think after Christ delivered a town from the nightmare of a demon-possessed man (see Mark 5:1-15), the people would have asked him to stay. Imagine what he could do about their other problems! But they begged him to go, and that’s why he left the area of the Gerasenes.

It is important to grasp this. They were pleading with Jesus to leave—pleading! “Please leave this area! We saw what you did, Jesus of Nazareth, and we don’t want you here. This is not where you belong. Please go—now!”

Jesus gave the explanation for this on another occasion: “Judgment is based on this fact: God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil” (John 3:19). Things haven’t changed much.

Our culture has increasingly taken the position that we don’t want Jesus around here, either. Of course, many people have no problem with the idea of religious people exercising their freedom to worship as they choose, but as far as the country at large is concerned, the prevailing consensus is that we do not want Jesus here.

His name is not welcome in public, unless it is placed alongside a list of alternatives. The suggestion that he is Lord is unacceptable because that would imply that he had authority over everyone, and we couldn’t possibly entertain that idea—not here!

Some people ask, “If Jesus has the power to deliver us from the devastation of a hurricane, the ravages of cancer, and the peril of death, then why doesn’t he do it?” We send Jesus away, but then we ask why he wasn’t there in the middle of our calamity.

Sometimes it’s impossible to make sense of the disasters, disease, and death that we read about in the newspaper. But we should read it alongside these words: “He came to his own people, and even they rejected him” (John 1:11). Before we criticize Jesus, we should examine ourselves: Are we in the crowd of people who have sent him away?

For further reading, see John 3