The Lord has delivered Jacob
and redeemed him from a foe
too strong for him.
(Jeremiah 31:11 REB)

    Homer tells us that Aeetes, the baleful king of Colchis, had a sister called Circe, a goddess who had no love for humans. After Odysseus and his crew had fought their way into the peace of a harbor, more than twenty of his men went on to the Island of Dawn to investigate. They made their way through the forest of Circe and approached her palace. They heard Circe playing the harp and looked in; she smiled and invited them in to eat. How pleased they were to be invited, and what a fine meal she fed them. But as they ate the drugged food, she hit them on their shoulders with her wand, and they changed into grunting, feverish swine.¹

    “I didn’t believe the story, of course,” said one Christian gentleman, “until one evening when I was passing a group of young men on a street corner. I heard enough of the lascivious story being told, and I saw the leers, the flushed faces, the glistening eyes, and the muttered wickedness, and I knew I had wandered into the garden of Circe. The spell was working before my very eyes. These humans were changing into swine.”

    And so it is, feeding on what has been poisoned, we surrender ourselves to a spell that cheapens and coarsens us, making animals of us in our passions and the way we indulge them. We need someone wise enough and strong enough to deliver us from the curse, because in our sinfully weakened state and in a society like ours, we aren’t able to do it alone.

    But it’s more than wisdom and strength that’s needed. We need someone who cares greatly if we cheapen ourselves. Because she was malicious, it didn’t matter to Circe that the humans were turned into animals that roamed her forests or pigs to be herded into sties. But it matters to the Holy Spirit. He seeks our sanctification because he cannot bear to see us continue in our shame. Those who don’t care for us will shrug at our dishonor or give up on us before too long, especially if their wisdom isn’t heeded or recognized.

    Hosea, who speaks more tenderly of the love of God for his people than any other prophet, also speaks more trenchantly against the corruption of the people. He pictures God as a loving husband/father, driven to distraction by the bentness of his wife/son. The husband who paces up and down the floor, rehearsing the treachery of the wife, cannot cease to love her — doesn’t want to cease to love her. The father who laments over his son’s wild and reckless ways knows that the sinful boy is destroying himself, but the loving father can’t turn away. “How can I give you up, Israel? How can I abandon you?” (Hosea 11:8 TEV)

We need someone wise enough and strong enough to deliver us from the curse

    Simply reflecting on God’s patience sometimes makes me tired. Sometimes, when I’m already weary and thoughts of his loving kindness come to my mind, I wonder why he doesn’t just wash his hands of us all and create a world where he hears nothing but praise and sees nothing but glad-hearted obedience.

    But I know better. For even I have learned enough about him to know he cannot abandon us, cannot give up on us, because it is not in him to want to give up on us. The often repeated words of the famous missionary Hudson Taylor come to mind: “Before I had children I knew God wouldn’t forget me, but now that I have children of my own I know God can’t forget me.”

    Even for those who presently don’t care that bury their snouts in swill and muck, who are content to be humans with piggish ways, there is the possibility of full reclamation because God is not willing that any perish. (2 Peter 3:9) And since many of us have been redeemed from just such crass wickedness, we have special reason not to give up on others.

    For those of us who do care about honor and fidelity but have moments of terror when we look a mirror and see piggy eyes looking back at us — eyes greedy for favorite sins that cheapen and damn us — we’re not to despair. For if the Spirit of God works for the reclamation of those who don’t care, you can be sure he works for the deliverance of those who do. He loves us more than we love our sin, and there is, as people like C. S. Lewis have reminded us, an ancient “magic” at work — a magic more wonderful than Hermes’ fabled flower that delivered those who were under Circe’s spell. We are even now being delivered, and one day the rescue will be completed.

    Another ancient myth, every bit as terrifying as the one about Circe and her evil spells, is about a young man who cast a spell upon himself. One day as he lay by a river, he leaned over to look into the water, saw his own reflection, and fell in love with himself. More precisely, he fell in love with his image. He couldn’t take his eyes off the wonder of the vision, and he died adoring himself. A narcissus plant marked the spot where he died!

    It might be that those who look in terror as piggy little eyes glare back at them from the mirror are in less danger than those who love the vision they have of themselves.

    It’ll take wonderfully strong “magic” to deliver them from so powerful a spell. It’s an awful enchantment and all the more dangerous because the self-adoring have a hard time seeing themselves as self-adoring. And what’s more, they aren’t repulsed by what they see, so they’ve no wish to be rescued.

    The wicked tax-man is in less danger than the righteous Pharisee. (Luke 18:9-14) The man in the ditch whose life is oozing away with his dripping blood is not nearly as wounded and robbed as the two who energetically marched past him in their “Sunday suits.” (Luke 10:30-32)

    Still, we’re not to despair; Christ is able to break even that evil spell from which Narcissus died. We know that, because he has done it for multiplied millions of us down the years, hasn’t he!

    This much we know; where the Spirit of God gets his way in a human life, glory and honor result!

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¹ The story is told in Homer’s Odyssey, bk. 10. See Harvard Classics, edited by C.W. Eliot. Danbury, Conn.: Grolier Enterprises Corp., or Robert Graves, The Greek Myths (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1969), 2:358-59.

Excerpted from Where the Spirit of the Lord Is..., ©1999, Howard Publishing Company. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Title: "Of Pigs and Ancient Magic"
Author: Jim McGuiggan
Publication Date: January 31, 2002

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