The Story of Legion

There is a part of me that identifies with Legion. Like me on my pathway of becoming, Legion also becomes someone else, something both less and also more. After Legion is set free, is made healthy and whole, Legion is in his right mind. Legion’s internal and personal, demonic tormenters leave him. Legion no longer experiences cognitive distortions. Legion is able to understand clearly. He is able to purposefully and functionally perceive and know. Dysfunction drops away and Legion is able to behave and act in responsible, predictable, healthy ways towards both himself and others.

Legion has always been alone and he has no friends and no significant relationships because he is “many.” His family and the town's people are afraid of him. Legion lives apart from the living. He lives among the dead, surrounded by tombs. Repeating, Legion lives among the dead. Legion is not able live with the living in town. He is too scary.

Legion is set free and sees the intimate relationships of Yeshua with his friends. He sees that they are not afraid of one another. Legion perceives that he doesn’t belong with anyone or anyplace and he wants to belong. So, Legion asks to join Yeshua and Yeshua’s friends. Yeshua refuses the request and tells Legion to “go home.”

Legion is disappointed and is in despair at being told that he cannot go with, cannot live among, Yeshua and his friends. Legion is not permitted to have an instant and built-in community where he feels at home. He is told to go and find belonging and meaning elsewhere. In essence, Yeshua tells Legion to go and find his own community. And so Legion goes away to discover for himself his own Way, physically separate and aside from the One who initiates him into the land of the living, the One who sets him free to become himself.

I don’t know the ending of Legion’s story. I don’t know how his story turns out because his story ends abruptly. To my knowledge, nothing further is written in the Bible about Legion. He walks away from Yeshua and his friends; he walks into obscurity and into history, becoming a part of The Ages. I’m left wanting to know more. I want to know more about Legion. I love Legion. I always have ever since I first heard his story when I was a little boy. For you see, Legion is me.