Of Angels and Demons

Plaza Across from The Capitol Theatre - Salt Lake City Utah

Where Faith is Required

Why does faith play such an important role in God’s plan for us?  I’ve often speculated how differently I might conduct myself had I the memories of my previous probation still intact.  It certainly would be easier to operate in a state of knowing but that’s not God’s end goal.

He isn’t looking for well trained creations; beings properly schooled in the correct assumptions and behaviors.  We are the inheritors of a multiverse more fantastic and wonderful than our hopes, dreams, and aspirations could ever dare aspire to.   As such heirs, God needs to provide us an environment where we can exercise the profound and lasting changes that true learning and understanding bring... free from the complications of expectation and desire such knowledge would impart.

In such a faith based existence, how do spiritual manifestations play a part?  The moment we see God, an angel, a loved one since departed, wouldn’t that negate faith?  How about feeling or sensing their presence?  Might that be ok?  Well, if faith is a required part of God’s plan, I would have to say, “no.”  That would be knowledge.  Knowing something to be true is not the same as believing.  It’s either faith or knowledge but never both.

In addition to faith, I truly believe in a cyclical process of life and learning.  Just as my presence hasn’t been requested or required in the pre-existence while I’ve been alive, I struggle to comprehend a need for those who have died to return here either to provide comfort or bare witness.  Such things would deny me my free agency by robing me of faith and replacing it with knowledge.  In this context, angels, demons and all manner of spiritual specters, ghosts or what have you, have no place in my paradigm.

The universe is a pretty complicated place.  The more we learn about it, the more ridiculously complex it becomes.  We passed the point where our limited senses could experience all we know a very long time ago.  Additional dimensions, particles of matter, periods of time all outside our perceivable universe are now known to exist.  Our intellect has evolved beyond a “seeing is believing” universe.

I believe some of those who claim to have been witness to the supernatural.  That is to say, I believe they believe it to be true.  However, due to the faith requirement and semblance of cyclical order evident in our existence, I do not believe such things actual happen...  at least not the way those experiencing them think.

We live and operate in a physical world where much of what happens transpires beyond our threshold of perception.  The dimensions of time and space, everything we can experience, are just the mountaintops of what’s really going on.  Every so often the mists clear just enough that we almost become aware of the plains and valleys far below.  In attempting to make sense of the inconceivable, our minds develop constructs influenced by our passions and experience that are more understandable to us by creatively filling in the perception gaps.  As strange as this might seem, we’re all very adept at doing it.  In fact, the brain does it all the time.  

My maternal grandmother suffered from macular degeneration.  Over time she developed blind spots in her vision.  Instead of seeing black blotches everywhere, she reported that she would often see the background of a scene just fine.  It was only when something was moving across it in the foreground did she notice something odd... as an object moved into her blind spot, it would wink out as if invisible and then suddenly appear again when it exited.

And it’s not only vision.  We are capable of this with all our other senses.  Touch, smell, and hearing are equally manipulated.  Even logic is aided in this manner.  Instead of crunching through mountains of data each and every time we are presented with a particular situation, we use past personal experience, our current emotional state, and our immediate desires and expectations to devise short cuts in assessing a circumstance.  It’s a natural and beneficial result of intellectual evolution.

It is my firm belief spiritual manifestations are a result of what I might call assumptive sensory stereotyping where our emotional state and the uneasy near realization of things just beyond our comprehension collide.  In a life where faith is required, angels and demons cannot be allowed access and there is strict separations between realms.

This is not to say there is no value or meaning in such experiences because they are fueled by deep seated needs and desires.  As personal scripture, revelation, dreams, or visions, they are of allegorical importance whose meaning must be explored and understood.

“The ability to qualify for, receive, and act on personal revelation

is the single most important skill that can be acquired in this life.” 

~Julie B. Beck

The Value of Storytelling

The Great Salt Lake and Antelope Island - Utah

Myth and Legend

"To wish to teach all men the truth of the gods causes the foolish to despise, because they can not learn, and the good to be slothful, whereas to conceal the truth by myths prevents the former from despising philosophy and compels the latter to study it."

~ Sallustius

I’ve long been fascinated by parables and allegory... especially those involving Jesus.  Human beings have used allegory as a teaching aid for as far back as anyone knows.  Scripture employs allegory on a grand scale.

The Human Genome Project, comparing samples from hundreds of thousands of native populations from every corner of the globe, has pretty conclusively ruled out the possibility of the Jewish nation being the “principle ancestor” of any surviving native American.  For as long as Jews isolated themselves as a distinct population, there has been no identifiable relation between them and native American populations before modern times.  Their connection dates to the out-of-Africa bottleneck of pre-history in the days of Neanderthal predominance.  Even within the Book of Mormon narrative itself, there are many glaring inconsistencies with the anthropological record.

Given the conflicts and other social issues with native peoples dominating the American mindset during our nation’s expansion westward, it stands to reason these native populations would have been an excellent learning tool.  I view the Book of Mormon as a parable or allegory instead of an exacting history of a people.

Like the Book of Mormon, the Bible also suffers from many irreconcilable differences with the archeological record.  For example, we now know the destruction of the Walls of Jericho predates Israelite occupation by several centuries.  The massive ruins would have still been impressive in those days.  It stands to reason, religious scholars used them as teaching elements.  Hence, the story of God’s destruction of wicked Jericho at the hands of the faithful Chosen.

Now, some faithful instinctively react against such notions in a vain effort to preserve the orthodox view.  Without understanding the science or even being familiar with the evidence available to us, they dismiss it all as error.  This is a dangerous stance to take.

Faith, by definition, is belief based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.  Until our modern age, there were no tools available to us to prove or disprove our mythology.  Some naively hold to the believe of their absolute veracity and turn a blind eye to the mounting evidence against such a claim.  If our mythology is not permitted to disassociate from fact and be allowed to reside in the protective realm of allegory, we risk loosing its spiritual and social relevance forever in our relentless pursuit of empirical knowledge.