Hitchens on Pigs

Hitchens squeals, (sorry I couldn't resist). It is a joke and only a joke...

How is it moral to.....persuade devils to infest the bodies of pigs?

This is actually the hardest question to answer in his litany of complaints about Jesus Christ. There is this issue with two men possessed by demons. The demons plead a job transfer to possess pigs, drown in the sea, and Jesus approves it. The men return to sanity, and the two thousand pigs and devils drown.

General observations:

- God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. He also own two thousand pigs. We are merely stewards of what He gives. If he wants to kill them, so be it.

- Pigs and the sea were symbols of the unclean Gentile world. This is a pig prophesy in part because the Gospel is for the whole world. Where the Curse is found, and the Curser (Satan himself), the Gospel has authority. The Gospel was not just for the observant Jew in Palestine, it is for the whole world.

- Perhaps the pig herders were doing wrong by being swinesters. The area where this miracle happened was not necessarily one where the Mosaic Law had authority. So, that is up for debate.

- People are more important the pigs, even a lot of them. In an era where the Peter Singer's and his type try to argue that all species are equal, Jesus says that we are worth more than many sparrows, or pigs (same idea).

- The Gospel is also worth more than 2,000 pigs. Even if the swine herders received nothing else that day from Jesus, they did get the Gospel.

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