Tag: Jesus

02Oct

A “Supernatural” Encounter with Angels

Thanks to my sons, I have come late to a recent popular TV show that dealt with angels, demons, and the occult, namely “Supernatural”.  I have seen reviewers describe the show as underwear models fighting demons, and that makes me chuckle.  I am tempted to join the Christian responses of either avoiding it as clearly heretical, or dismissing it with a wave of the hand and saying something along the lines of, “it’s just fantasy; enjoy it and don’t think too hard.” However, thanks to fielding questions about demons and angels, and for the benefit of my sons, I will engage with some of the ideas raised by “Supernatural”.  

First, I will credit some things that the show gets “right” according to hints from the Bible.  In contrast to popular images of angels as beautiful women with harps, or frivolous babies with wings, the show’s portrayal of angels as powerful warriors of grim determination are, in my view, an improvement.  

Artistic Renditions of angels

Biblical angels are supernatural beings of power, spiritual in nature and therefore generally invisible to mortal eyes; but they are able to take human form.  As an example, men in white were seen at the tomb of Jesus to announce his resurrection, and also on the hilltop after his ascension.  The writer of Hebrews furthermore advises Christians:

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

Examples of angels appearing as men from the Old Testament would include the two men who visited Lot prior to destroying Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19.  

In the majority of the biblical passages that deal with angels, they are performing the role of emissary or spokesperson, sent from God.  The very word “angel” (ἄγγελος or angelos ) means “messenger”.  But they also are also engaged in executing God’s judgement upon unrighteous people, and in protecting God’s people.

As in the TV show, the Bible also speaks of angels as being engaged in warfare.  For example, in Revelation 17, we get this information from the apocalyptic vision of St. John:

“Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.”

The Bible speaks of archangels, who are leaders or “princes” among the angelic host. Two are mentioned by name, Gabriel and Michael.  The Book of Daniel mentions Michael twice.  In chapter 10 an unnamed angel visits Daniel, and tells him that he was delayed:

“The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I was left there with the kings of Persia”

From Chapter 12 of Daniel:

“At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book.”

Gabriel says this of himself in Luke chapter 1:

“And the angel answered him, ‘I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news’.”

As in the show, angels can fall away and betray God.  In the New Testament , the books of Jude, and 2 Peter have nearly identical passages regarding fallen angels being imprisoned. From Jude: 

“And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day.”

This brings me now to things the show gets terribly wrong.  In many aspects of its portrayal of angels and demons, “Supernatural” becomes either downright asinine, or simply blasphemous.  Time will not allow me to list all of the sins of this show.  I will gloss over the silliness involving ancient Greek gods and goddesses, Hindu deities and the like—from a Christian perspective these are not real.  I will also set aside the tendency of secular media to mangle the Christian apocalypse, a topic that both fascinates and is woefully misunderstood. The show furthermore has an almost medieval fascination with relics, Latin incantations, holy water, and amulets.

The series depicts angels possessing humans, much like demons do, and using them as “meat suits” or “vessels”.  This is not really Biblical.  

Furthermore, in “Supernatural” even the “good” angels are portrayed as being clueless at best (Castiel) and more often as total jerks (Gabriel and Raphael), and not always much better than the demons they fight.  

In fact, sometimes Sam and Dean must try to kill angels in order to protect themselves or their world from annihilation. An undercurrent of dualism becomes ever more prominent in later seasons.  Rather than good being superior to evil, and evil needing to be vanquished, the idea is that good and evil are merely opposite forces that are both needed for balance, like the Chinese Yin and Yang.  

In Christian theology this would be foolishness.  St Thomas Aquinas described evil as privation.  As one writer describes it, “Evil is not some thing in its own right – like some kind of dark seeping ooze that invades goodness and destroys it. No, evil is not a “thing” at all, but the falling-short, an emptiness or non-functioning, in something else.“ (Dr. Joseph Magee, “Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Problem of Evil”, online at  https://aquinasonline.com/problem-of-evil/)

I find it quite interesting that a show dealing with angels and demons in every episode is nonetheless simultaneously very nearly devoid of God.  The angels are usually portrayed as agnostics who lament that their “Father is absent” and wonder whether God even exists.  This is in stark contrast to the biblical depictions of angels as being in the presence of God. (When God does finally appear in “Supernatural” he is a limited being, bearing little relation to the God of Christianity–This could be a subject for a different essay).  

Even harder to find than God is any trace of the Son of God.  The series has an “Antichrist” but no “Christ”.  Jesus is mostly a nonentity in “Supernatural”.  In an episode in season 6, a diabolical being named “Eve” tells a Christian truck driver “you do know that Jesus was just a man” before brutally killing him.  Of course, in Christianity, Jesus is more than just a man.  He is at the center of it all. He is the God-man who after triumphing over death and evil, has been exalted to the heavenly throne, to “the right hand of God”, where he is surrounded by hosts of angels.  

Jesus tells his disciples in John 1:51, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”  

The final role for angels listed in the Bible is that of choir.  As in the old hymn, “Crown Him with Many Crowns”, the heavenly anthem of the angels ultimately will drown out all other music, including the cacophony of this world.  In Revelation 5, John has the vision of an innumerable throng of angels “numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand” encircling the throne and singing songs of praise to Jesus.  Let us now take up their anthem:

“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”

11Oct

The God Who Notices You

My temptation is not so much toward a disbelief in God as toward a belief in an impersonal and philosophical God, a necessary being that is unknown and unknowable—something like the “first cause” of Plato and Aquinas. Such a being would answer the philosophical mysteries of our existence, and that of the universe, and yet not be interested in the lives of humans. Such a being would be unlike the God of Christianity.

Just how unlike struck me again recently. Upon reviewing the account of the widow of Nain, recorded in Luke chapter 7, a particular sentence popped out at me. As a recap of the story, Jesus and a crowd of his followers have reached the gate of a village and are blocked by a funeral procession for a dead boy. As the wailers cry out, and the casket is being hoisted aloft, we are told of the boy’s mother, a widow. Suddenly, “when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her.”

There it is! These are the words that on a casual reading can drift by unnoticed, but in fact are shocking and set Christianity apart from other religions. As the crowd later gasps upon seeing Jesus perform the miracle of restoring life to the boy: “God has visited his people!”

Jesus “saw” her. And more than that he noticed. He perceived her, with a gaze that pierces flesh and bone to see what is inside the mind, the soul. An old Anglican prayer begins, “Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid…” God sees you and notices you.

God isn’t some Unmoved Mover. He is not aloof, but rather is deeply and intricately involved in our lives. As those townspeople proclaimed, God has indeed visited His people. He came to us not as a vision or an idea, but as a person who could be seen, heard, touched, and mistreated. Furthermore, God notices individuals, and has compassion upon their plight. In other passages of the Gospels we see Jesus being moved to tears at the death of a friend, and showing anger at injustice. This is what sets Christianity apart from other belief systems.

It is radically different from other ancient religions, which had pantheons of gods who were a bit like Marvel’s Thanos, or larger scale versions of the pretenders for the Iron Throne of Westeros (a “Game of Thrones” reference there). These were arrogant, morally impaired, entitled beings jockeying for power, who would not even notice a commoner (unless perhaps an unusually attractive maiden might arouse some sexual interest now and then). Such “gods” don’t approach you, rather you approach them, if you dare, and if you are somehow unusually worthy. They would not grieve for the death of a widow’s son.

This care and concern for individuals also differentiates Christianity from eastern religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism, which would suggest that everything we see and experience, including our griefs and sufferings, are merely illusions superimposed on some deeper reality, and that the way forward is to detach from this world. This deeper reality doesn’t notice you, because there isn’t really a “you” to notice.

This touching little story in Luke could be seen a microcosm of the Gospel. God notices you, has compassion upon you in your current state of weakness and pain. God not only notices, but approaches. Further, he reaches out and touches the spiritually lifeless, bringing healing and new life where previously there was none.

02Mar

Jesus is The Answer, and Ash Wednesday Tells Us the Question

“Jesus is the answer!” So proclaims numerous road signs, Facebook posts, and bumper stickers. For those posting such things, it is an expression of their faith, of their confidence in Jesus. It a touchstone of peace and happiness for them and perhaps also for many who see it–but not for everyone. To a great many others, this statement provokes rather a sense of bewilderment, and begs a follow up question: “If Jesus is the answer, then what is the question?”

This thought brings to my lips a smile as I recall the analogous situation in Douglas Adams’ humorous Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in which a planet-sized super computer named “Deep Thought” was constructed and directed to come up with “the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything”. The program ran for millions of years, and finally returned an answer: “42”. Unfortunately neither the Deep Thought nor his designers knew what the ultimate question happened to be. The pan-dimensional beings seeking this answer were then forced to construct another planet-sized super computer to figure out the ultimate question.

Ash Wednesday is a Christian celebration that reminds us of the question for which Jesus is the answer. Or, more accurately, we are reminded of the problem for which Jesus is the solution; That is, the problem of death:

“Remember, o man, dust thou art, and to dust shalt thou return.”

Thus intones the priest in many a ceremony as ashes are imposed upon the foreheads of penitent Christians, these words echoing God’s curse in Genesis 3, pronounced upon humankind as punishment for sin.

Death is literally the bane of our existence. It destroys all that we hold dear. Try as we might to banish it from our thoughts, death catches us all. We recoil from it as we simultaneously yearn for permanence and significance. The idea of the extinction of our consciousness into an eternal nothing is difficult for us to fully grasp, for “God has set eternity in the hearts of men.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

Death is universal. We all die, because of our sin. Death is universal because sin is universal.

Fortunately, Ash Wednesday is merely the prelude to Easter. Whereas Ash Wednesday reminds us of our mortality, in essence saying, “Ye are dead”, Easter tells us: “Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3).

The good news of Christianity is that God has set eternity in our hearts for a reason. It isn’t a dreadful taunt, or a meaningless musing. Jesus, the Christ, has died our death, in order that we might live his life. “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

As the old Easter canticle proclaims:
“But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.
For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.”
(This comes from 1 Corinthians 15)

Jesus’ resurrection from death foretells our own liberation from it, and not only in the future, in an eternity after physical death. We may be liberated from its shadow, and its dread, and its power over us even in this life.

In the light of this good news, St Paul exults in his first letter to the Corinthians: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”

As John Donne, the 16th century poet we recently profiled, elaborated so eloquently:

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
(Sonnet X)

21Jan

Does It Matter?

Does it Matter who Jesus was? (Or whether he was)?

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I have decided to revisit that Time article from 2014 to which this prior post referred. The article in question was titled “The Search for Jesus: Inside the Scholars’ Debate.” After rehashing various revisionist positions on Jesus, the article drew the following conclusion:

This time of year, many people will conclude that those scholars are asking the wrong questions. They’ll answer as one reader did in the letters to the editor following the 1996 story: “It doesn’t matter who Jesus of Nazareth was or what he was,” he wrote. “What’s most important is the lessons he taught.” (You can find this online at Time Magazine’s website.)

To this we have to respond, “Hell, yes it matters!” And I stick by the expletive here for its literal meaning, which is an evocation of an unpleasant afterlife for those who are destined for perdition. It matters, because nothing less than eternity is at stake!

What, after all, were the lessons that Jesus taught? While a tiny bit of what Jesus said can be viewed as isolated nuggets of wisdom, a la Confucius, the bulk of his teaching was about himself. If a theme could be slapped on what is recorded about the teachings of Jesus, it would be something like “The Father has sent me; the Kingdom of God is at hand”. He spoke much about the nature of that kingdom (try to count the number of times he launched a parable with the words “the kingdom of Heaven is like…”). He spoke a lot about his own relationship to the Father (“I and the Father are one”, “whoever knows me knows the Father”–See John 10:30 and John 14:7). He spoke of his future glorification. He claimed to be the “Bread of Life,” and the “Good Shepherd.” He claimed to be the “Resurrection and the Life”. He called himself by the title “son of man”, which ancient Jews would have understood to be a messianic title (for example, see Daniel 7)

If Jesus didn’t exist, then you aren’t left with many teachings that should be taken all that seriously. Maybe you can go ahead and take away the so-called Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you”.

If he did exist (which in fact is the majority report among scholars), and taught all these things, but was wrong about himself, then you are left with a sad tale of a misguided man. You are left with a man who was wrong about himself, and about the Kingdom of God, and who was ultimately tortured and killed for no good reason. In this scenario the “good teacher” was wrong, and therefore isn’t all that “good” a teacher. You can still take away the Golden Rule as a bonus prize.

If Jesus really existed, and really was a “good teacher” who was right about the things he taught, then we need to treat his words with commensurate awe and reverence. We need to decide how to respond to “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”