The body is a great teacher of truths that are beyond dispute, because there is no arguing over whether you have a headache or not, or a toothache, an earache, a stuffy nose, or a cough. The body suffers real pains that can be medicated away. What did people do before aspirin was invented?

A parable that has always confused me concerns the person whose house was infested by a demon. The demon was expelled, and the house tidied up. When the demon saw the house tidied up, he invited seven even-worse demons to join him in reoccupying the house, and the man was worse off than ever.

Yesterday, during day four of a ravaging sickness, I discerned some insight into that parable.

Say you sprain your ankle while jogging. For the rest of your life, you will have suffered that sports injury, and at the first irregularity in that ankle, you’ll remember that sprain, aware that you always knew that ankle would henceforth be vulnerable. If you favor that ankle, your motion will be unnatural, with abnormal stress placed on other bodily parts, leaving them vulnerable to injury.

I had a bad tooth once that took a while to be handled. The dentist told me, until the tooth could be treated, I shouldn’t chew on that side of my mouth. I was rather shocked that the dentist would suggest in such cavalier fashion that I throw all those teeth under the bus. I had no choice but to follow his advice, which I had been doing anyway, of course, though I regretted having to do what was not in the long-term best interests of all those other teeth, many of which were probably just a hard malted milk ball away from cracking themselves.

Sickness enters in, and the body fights it off. But the germ thinks, I have beaten him before, and I can beat him again, so six days ago, he sneaks in and manifests his presence in the form of my sinus infection.

Preoccupied by that, the body focuses its defenses on the infected nostril, leaving the other nostril, the throat, etc., undefended. So here come the other seven demons. Both nostrils are infected, the throat becomes raw from coughing, the voice can hardly speak, the chest is full of the stuff flowing out of the sinuses, and that stuff then also runs rampant through the stomach. Instead of fighting one demon symptom, the body is embroiled in struggles against several demon symptoms.

Jesus made a career of expelling demons, rebuking fevers and such, and telling parables. That He would stir those elements together in compelling, sometimes-confusing fashion, is easily understood.

Maybe I don’t have the definitive explanation of the parable cited above, but as I lie awake coughing uncontrollably, trying to fight off this sickness, I can sincerely relate this experience to a battle against an invasion of demons!