I know I’m not working alone. There are other bloggers who share their convictions about faith and all the ways we express our commitments to Christ. Something about the content we offer, and the packaging in which we offer it, causes readers to associate some of us together in their minds. While I’m aware of that association, I confess I seldom read what they write. It’s not any kind of rejection, but I feel the driving hand of God at my back with such force that it’s all I can do to keep my feet under me.
It’s not that I reject what they say; I don’t often have time to notice, much less reject. On the other hand, if they were saying the same things I do now, I wouldn’t feel the burning need to write my own blog. I do track those who are part of the Radix Fidem family, of course, but there is only so much time in each day, and my mission currently requires giving some attention to a lot of other sources.
It occurs to me that I could wish for my own AI, one that operated from my values, that would carry the burden of paying attention to what’s out there on the Net and offer a summary of what it found that might be worth more attention. There’s a lot to digest, at least until the powers that be choose to clamp down on the Net.
So, I am friendly with two bloggers you might read, or maybe should read: Bruce Charlton and Adam Piggot. There’s enough overlap between us that I count them as allies, though I confess I don’t often read their work myself. And so it is I was alerted through a third party recently that these two have been involved in a debate over some aspects of mysticism that involved some folks who seem to be neither my allies nor enemies.
For me, the debate takes predictable directions. On the one hand, the ostensible issue is something called “spirit guides”. Now, this blog claims to rest firmly on Scripture, but with a very strong dissent from the historical church leadership as to how we should approach the task of reading Scripture. I am quite adamant that we are obliged to seek the Hebrew background that guided Jesus, and that it requires rejecting the whole of western metaphysics and epistemology.
At any rate, I take the position that people promoting “spirit guides” today do so in conflict with the Bible. Yes, the Bible mentions angelic beings who represent God and work directly with us. But humans do not become anything like angels. There’s an awful lot of that covered in Michael S. Heiser’s very scholarly work in the Unseen Realm and in several related books. I’ve made much of his work, and will continue to refer to it. My point is that I agree with Heiser that, when a (non-human) being represents God, there is no functional difference between that being and the God who sent it. Whether you are encountering God Himself in person, or His chosen representative, the net result is the same in terms of how it affects you.
The issue arises when, among this vast horde or spirit beings in God’s Creation, there are some who do not represent Him. How and why He tolerates them is none of our business; it’s above our pay grade, as it were. They exist and they work against Him. More to the point, some of these beings work against His stated agenda for us humans. They do that work by seducing us, not unlike the way the Serpent deceived Eve. They even seek to masquerade as “angels of light”.
I prefer to distinguish between the good and bad spirits by the labels I use. Because the common use of the term “spirit guides” delineates beings whose net effect pulls one away from God’s revealed will, that term is tainted in our conversation. As some have noted, it doesn’t matter how sweet and friendly they seem; those spirits are up to no good.
The problem is that we do not have an appropriate label for the good spirits, nor a good lore of how they operate. We already have a problem with people not properly understanding how Scripture uses the term “angels”. For example, “fallen angels” are still “angels” in the context of the Bible. This tells us that common usage in English is wrong, and we may be fighting that battle for a very long time.
The typical position among mainstream Christians is to deny that God uses any interceding spirits these days. They don’t deny the witness of the Bible, but have been long conditioned to think that they have a direct connection to the Father. This is functionally accurate, as already noted, but it runs the risk of misunderstanding Scripture about things that they would rather ignore. It’s functionally accurate most of the time. The problem is the inherent legalism of western conversation, with all the silly word games and juvenile gotchas that come with a western frame of mind.
I assert firmly that the Hebrew people did not communicate the way we do in the western world. The Hebrew language was fundamentally symbolic in the first place. The Bible is loaded with figures of speech that mean something else, and that’s simply how they talked. But the meaning to which they were pointing was something that exceeded definition by human words. This brings us back to that old saw: Hebrew was an indicative language, pointing you in a certain direction to something far bigger than words can contain. English is a descriptive language that pretends to carry truth inside the words. If you read the Bible in English, with a western mind, you simply cannot understand much.
So, while I assert the biblical Hebrew frame of mind is better suited to following Christ, I also seek to communicate to English speaking minds within their frame of reference. Insofar as literal statements are possible, you and I do not address the Father directly. Angelic beings transmit for us. His voice alone shatters the earth and would end your fleshly life. At the same time, we who follow Christ presumably have the Holy Spirit within us, and there is absolutely no way I can describe that in clinical terms. I’m quite fortunate to find terminology that indicates some of the clinical effects of His Presence, but the ontology is impossible in human words. Still, I can say that His Spirit is not His full personal Presence, because Scripture flatly says our human lives would evaporate in His literal Presence. There’s a reason the Bible refers to it as His Spirit, but not His full self.
It’s altogether unavoidable that each of us harbors unhelpful mental associations with some of the terminology in the Bible. It’s a major task of our lives here in this world to seek a better understanding. On some level, it is not possible that we should all arrive at the same understanding on every detail. The inherent flaw of our fleshly existence is the utter necessity of variation that distinguishes one person from another, and how that plays out in our fleshly existence.
When you read about “spirit guides” on the Internet, it should raise red flags. If it seems intriguing, then take the time to discern. Typically, it refers to what we commonly call “demons”. You discern that by the fruit of that spiritual influence in the writer’s conversation. That task is complicated by having a strong sense of what sin looks like in their words. It’s more than just linguistic analysis, but a question of how you go about defining sin.
Defining sin is the subject of a lot of what I write. That’s because there is no way the flesh can reduce that subject to a simple list, in part because human language doesn’t work on that level, and also in part because the flesh itself is inherently flawed. I am among those who reject the notion that anyone can reach a higher level of being while in this world. We can all do better, but we cannot shift into a fundamentally different level. Our fleshly existence is a curse; it is not our true nature as made by God. Until we exit this fleshly existence, we cannot possibly be fully aware of what God intended for us.
Thus, the notion that spirit guides (“masters”) are somehow people who reached a higher state and now float around disembodied in human space to help is a lie from Hell. The only “people” stuck here after death are the spawn of rebellious spirit beings; they are the demons we encounter in daily life. They are stuck here because “here” is a prison, and they are fortunate not to be confined in the Abyss, their eventual destiny. There is only one possible reason former earthly creatures would be here after death: their eventual fate is the Abyss.
People whom God accepts don’t hang around after they die. As Adam Piggot noted, what did Jesus say to the Thief on the Cross? Leaving this world is a reward for serving God’s purpose. Being here means, at best, you aren’t finished yet. At worst, it means you have nowhere else to go. It’s a matter of fundamental concepts.
What you say here reminds me a bit of the “guardian angel” stuff in Catholicism. For some reason, that concept really sticks with women, not so much the men, in my experience. I’m not really sure why that is.
Btw, it looks like that Bruce Charlton link is malformed…I found his site anyways.
Fixed, thanks.
I believe in guardian angels, just not with all the popular baggage.