A
re angels religious icons or modern-day fairy tales? They have certainly come a long way over the course of a few millennia. Throughout the bible, angels are presented as the Lord’s agents, entrusted with the legwork of communication and admonition. The devil – the old man himself – is often referred to as a ‘fallen angel’, and merely the worst of a cavalcade of the downfallen.
How did the modern-day idea of angels develop? I suspect that they became part of the apparatus established by the clergy to validate their position as God’s interpreters on Earth. While it is true that God used to speak to man in days long past but it is equally true that we were visited by angels as well. The Late Dr. Julian Jaynes posited that ‘hearing voices’ was the domain of an ancient and more cerebrally primitive brain; and that the only modern-day folks who hear ‘voices’ or auditory hallucinations are schizophrenics. Whether one subscribes to this theory or not, it is undeniable that few of us are visited by spirits in the sky anymore, if we ever had been. We have gone from ‘Avenging Angels’ to ‘Angels from Montgomery’, from the Sword of God to a pretty girl, from religious icon to t-shirt festoon and internet meme.
It is hard to believe in angels when you live in war-torn rubble and have to scrape and steal for food and shelter.
I am not infrequently confronted with lost souls professing devotion to their personal angel, as though it were an equerry or laptop leprechaun: But have they ever seen their angel? I doubt it, but one can always extend the benefit of doubt where matters of belief are concerned. I have never seen my ‘angel’ or anyone else’s, and I must emphatically state that I do not wish to slander or belittle a personal angel that might have been assigned to me without my knowledge.
I was walking down an alley in Sechelt, where I live, one gorgeous sunny day, when my attention was swiftly diverted upward to the passage of the 11:05 float plane to Nanaimo. The beauty struck me with an accompanying frisson up the spine. But it immediately occurred to me that in many parts of the world, a cloudless halcyon day was no guarantee against the raining down of death and destruction from the heavens. Never mind the horrors of the unknown lurking within deep dark forests or the bottomless seas. Our most fearsome horrors inhabit the skies above; drones, warplanes, satellites, gunships.
And just as quickly my temperature rose to a boil when I thought of flippant angel groupies and their dimestore t-shirts. It is hard to believe in angels when you live in war-torn rubble and have to scrape and steal for food and shelter. They don’t wear angel t-shirts and it should not be surprising that so many have lost faith not only in angels, but in any messages they might be conveying from their superiors. Indeed, it seems the only folks who believe in angels are the ones who don’t need them.
