5 They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. 2 And when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit met him. … 6 When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and bowed down before him; 7 and he shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.” 8 For he had said to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” … And the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea, and were drowned in the sea…. 18 As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed by demons begged him that he might be with him. 19 But Jesus refused, and said to him, “Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you.” 20 And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him; and everyone was amazed.
Selected Verses from Mark 5:1-20
I’ve been thinking lately about the ways different actions impact the world. Excuse some engineering-speak mixed in. There are some things that take the same amount of time no matter how many people are impacted. For example, writing and preaching a sermon for a congregation of 20 takes roughly the same amount of time and effort as for a congregation of 200. Perhaps the larger congregation would have more diversity within it that must be considered, but that’s a small effect compared to all of the prayer and study that are required.
On the other hand, helping people who have crises requires an amount of time that scales somewhat linearly with the number of people involved. That is, if it takes X hours to help one person, it takes roughly 10X hours to help ten people. Relationship-building cannot be mass-produced.
One reason I started blogging was the hope (probably unrealistic) that someday, I could reach a larger group of people this way than I would with one-on-one interactions. Again, writing a blog takes roughly the same amount of time no matter how many people are reading it. The good and bad of the internet is that once something gets out there, it lives for a long, long time.
I frequently read a blog by Matt Read called, “Confessions of a Community College Dean.” One of his recurring themes is Baumol’s cost disease. It’s not a perfect explanation for higher ed, but is a useful concept in a lot of ways. In essence, the productivity of certain tasks is constant while others improve. The labor required to make, say, a television today is far, far lower than in 1950. The labor required for a string quartet to perform a piece of music is the same today as when that piece was written, whether yesterday or 100+ years ago.
One way that particular line of thinking breaks down is this: 100+ years ago, a given performance could only be heard by a relatively small number of people, in a particular place at a particular time. Today, a given performance can be heard by an unlimited number of people, anywhere in the world, at any time, due to recording and sharing technologies. Thus, my blog.
Still, there’s something different about a live performance. There’s something different about being present. Otherwise, nobody would attend concerts. The quality of the music at a concert is generally lower than a studio recording, with mistakes and crowd noise and so forth. Yet, there’s something special about attending a live event with the performers and the crowd.
Jesus understood that. Jesus was not a prolific writer; indeed, we have no contemporary written records of his ministry, only remembrances some decades after the fact. Jesus spent some time preaching to crowds, but spent far more time with just a few close disciples. He knew that those relationships were essential to changing society. He had to teach a few people, so that they would then teach a few others, who would teach others, and eventually reach to the ends of the earth.
In the story I cited above, Jesus heals a man by driving out his demons. The man then wants to stay with Jesus, to become one of his intimate disciples. But Jesus knew a better way. The man had learned what he needed to learn, and so was turned loose to tell others.
I may not impact very many people directly. But if I can share a message of God’s love with a few people who carry that message on to others, eventually love will win out and overtake the world.