A Thinking Reed

Angels and demons

Written by

Lee M.

in

Today is the feast of St. Michael and all angels. There’s very little serious discussion of angels (and the demons, their wicked counterparts) these days ; popular images tend to involve either a saccharine Hallmark-card type spirituality or lurid horror-movie imagery. But as our pastor pointed out last night, the Bible mentions angels over 200 times and seems to take them pretty seriously.

So, how should we think about these things? Are there really personal spiritual beings inhabiting other planes of reality and which may occasionally influence events here? Or are they just metaphors for powers of light and darkness in our world? Or something else?

Comments

7 responses to “Angels and demons”

  1. Eric Lee

    A friend of mine who identifies himself very firmly in the Roman Catholic tradition tried to open my mind up to this (at least the demonic side) by recommending to me Malachi Martin’s Hostage to the Devil. It’s well-written, but while the exorcisms in the book are alleged to be real (based on actual audio recordings), so much of his commentary interspersed throughout the five tales is dubious at best.

    I’ve never encountered anything like what has been described here, but nor will I try to seek it out (although, I admit, I like a good horror movie, but that’s about as far as it goes). I do, however, have friends whom I trust who say that they have seen what we would traditionally call “demonic” forces– usually at Christian teen camps. For some reason, crazy, whacky stuff happens at those things.

    I’m not totally closed to the possibility that there are “personal spiritual beings inhabiting other planes of reality …which may oaccasionally influence events here,” however, as I can’t speak out side of my own experience, I’ve never seen the kind of spectacle that Martin claims is all around us.

    What I do see, however, is the masked evil of greed and oppression that is actually celebrated in our culture (i.e. magazines such as Money, Fortune seem to blatantly promote such things). Not for one second do I hesitate to acknowledge those are very real demoniac forces.

    I think the spectacle might occasionally happen, but when one takes it to the extreme like Malachi Martin does in his book, it would seem like the more subtle, yet real evils in our world, those which Jesus actually talked about, will be overlooked. I know the Gospels record Jesus as actually casting out demons into pigs and such, and I don’t discount those narratives, but I’m not exactly sure what to do with it.

    Your thoughts? You ever read books like that?

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  2. Joshie

    What has always annoyed me is how angles are always depicted as beautiful. The first thing they usually say in the Bible whenever they encounter a human is “Do not be afraid” which leads me to believe that they are quite scary looking. The depictions of angels in Isaiah, Ezekiel and other prophetic books are really freaky too.

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  3. Joshie

    lol angels not angles.

    Reply
  4. Eric Lee

    Although, some Euclidian geometry is quite nice this time of year 🙂

    Reply
  5. Camassia

    I’ve had experiences that lead me to believe they probably exist. It’s nothing that would hold up in court, and anyway I’m not going to discuss them on the Internet. But it is interesting that such things happened to somebody who was definitely brought up not to believe in them.

    Reply
  6. jack perry

    I’d like to think that angels inhabit a non-Euclidean sort of geometry 😉

    Reply
  7. Lee

    I guess I’ve read and heard too many things to dismiss the idea out of hand (“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio…”). And, after all, why couldn’t God create other “levels” of reality and beings to populate them? And why is it more difficult to believe in finite spirits than an infinite one?

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