Angels and Demons: The Holiness Tier

Hello, readers! It's Serena here with a slightly unusual post (then again the unusual seems to be our usual in this blog, ehehehe) about spiritual warfare in writing. Basically I'll be reviewing (briefly) four different books/book series with spiritual warfare as the theme, and discussing how the writers went right or wrong with their depictions of angels and demons. This all kind of ties into part of one of my recent posts about soul stirring stories. Sometimes writers manage to capture the beauty and mystery of the spiritual realm, while others go too far and strip it of its holiness and mystery by explaining things that weren't meant to be explained.

Now let me go ahead and clarify: I am by no means an expert on angels and demons. I don't make a habit of studying them; I don't spend my life pursuing research on the elusive mysteries of the spiritual; I didn't fast and pray with monks in the mountside before typing up this post. Therefore, don't take everything I say like it's the gospel truth. Sometimes I get things wrong, and of course I don't know everything about angels and demons. I'm just a girl who likes to read and sometimes notices problems with books containing angels and demons. I encourage you to do research yourself if you're putting spirituality into your book, as well as asking questions and gleaning knowledge from your parents, pastors, priests, and so on and so forth. Basically, I've thought long and hard about this post (as well as prayed about it), but humans don't know everything, and I, unfortunately, am human.

(Wow, that was long-winded)

Okay, y'all, let's dive into the Holiness Tier of the four following books and discuss what the writers got right (and wrong!) about their spiritual realm!

Let's start at the bottom of the list: Wars of the Realm, a three-book series by Chuck Black documenting the fictional adventures of Drew Carter, a young man who is given the ability to see into the spiritual realm, and Validus, an angel who gives us a peek into the life of the heavenly host.

Here's the problem: the heavenly host aren't so heavenly after all. Starting with Validus the angel. He's strong, he's fast, he's got wings and a cool sword, and of course... Self esteem issues? Yeah, that was when the books got really weird. In the first book it's just Drew running around thinking he's lost his mind when he starts seeing angels and demons. Then in the second book we get backstory on Validus, the angel who was created last and therefore thinks he's less important than the other angels. A lot of the book is Validus thinking "I was created last, the tip of the leaf, the smallest drop in the river" and metaphors like that. It was really, really weird that this heavenly guardian who's supposed to be protecting us was so human. He wasn't perfect or holy in many ways, which made him more relatable than an angel should be. But that wasn't even the beginning of the issues with the book.

The angels and demons were too physical and had a whole lot of rules and barriers that made the story extremely strange and inaccurate. They were affected by gravity, density (they could go through objects but the denser the objects were the harder time they had), and fought each other using weapons such as guns. And no, these weren't metaphorical guns representing spiritual truths. These were actual guns make by humans. The angels and demons could "translate" physical objects to the spiritual realm and then shoot each other.

When angels and demons "translated" into the physical realm, they couldn't see what was happening in the spiritual realm. So there could have been an angel posing as a human with a demon lurking right over his shoulder, and the angel would have no idea. Also, in human form they were just like humans except stronger, faster, and could see in the dark. Honestly one of the spiritual characters could have been taken down by a human with a baseball bat.

And here's something really weird the author threw in: Water burned demons and healed angels. If an angel got shot (or hit with a baseball bat), then they could just pour water over the wound and it would painfully heal them and stop the blood flowing and heal any damaged bones. (I'm not even going to ask why the angels had blood, bones, and possibly organs). But if a demon got wet, it would burn and potentially kill them. This means, in theory, if everyone just hung out in a submarine under the water, they would all be safe from demons. I'm pretty sure that's not how the spiritual realm works.

There were many, many issues with the books, all the way from Validus's emotional shortcomings and the fact that one of his fellow angels was kill by a bullet. A bullet. Um, why were the demons using guns, and why did the angels have organs to be damaged by said guns? It was cringy to see just how weak and limited these guardians were portrayed. There was no holiness, no mystery, and barely anything spiritual with all the "answers" to the questions about the spiritual realm. I wanted to tell the author that some things are mysteries for a reason. There was no respect to be felt for any of the angel characters in that book, which was sad because it could have been a powerful, moving series.

One a scale of one to ten I'd have to give these books about a one on the Holiness Tier, as there wasn't much holiness being shown.

Next on the list are Frank Peretti's This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness, two books about the power of prayer, using the battle between angels and demons as an example of what prayer can do. These books are some of my favorites, so it's going to hurt me to talk about what was wrong with them (which actually wasn't much). They opened my eyes to the hidden battle of light and darkness, probably changing my life, so I'm somewhat biased in their favor. Hopefully that won't stop me from giving my honest opinion.

The angels in this book were actually pretty holy. And, thank goodness, they did not have guns. Or organs (at least none that I know of). When one angel appeared in front of a human, the human was terrified by the angel's presence. The angels were powered by Christians praying, which was kind of the book's theme. The angel characters were likeable and had different personalities, while the demons had names of different sins that they specialized in such as Gossip, Lust, Hatred, and so on.

The story switches back and forth from the human realm to the spiritual one, and it's fascinating to see how seemingly simple things might actually be God's angels at work protecting us, and seemingly harmless sins are actually Satan's demons trying to snare us.

There weren't actually too many problems in the book that I could see. The angels did resemble humans with big, white wings, but since there's so much mystery enshrouding angels, for a book portraying them it's not really bad to take some creative license in order to educate on spirituality. Maybe after reading Wars of the Realm I'm a bit less picky at how angels are portrayed in other books. As long as they're holy and don't have guns, I won't complain (much).

One thing that I did find odd was that sometimes during the battles angels would die. The book never explain where they went to. They'd just get stabbed by a demon's sword and then, well, vanish. Killed demons went to hell, but it never said where the angels went. I wish I could gripe about that, but since I literally just complained about Chuck Black not letting things be a mystery, a I guess I can't go on too much about the angels' death being mysterious. It would have been nice to know where Frank Peretti was sending them to. Angel heaven, perhaps? It's actually been a while since I read the books, so this might have been explained and I just forgot about it.

All in all the books were full of good symbolism, so while we can't know for sure that it shows exactly how the spiritual realm looks, we can view it as what could be, knowing that some things are just going to be mysteries, and then walking away from the book with a better understanding of how sin and prayer work.

For the Holiness Tier I'd give it a six out of ten. It was an excellent set of books that opened my eyes to spiritual warfare (and got me good and scared of the occult), and though there's some creative license, I can't blame the author. It's a bit hard to write from an angel's POV when there's so little to work with.

The Delusion by Laura Gallier is third!

The Delusion chronicles the journey of a young man who drinks water from a well (Not a random well; the entire journey to it was pretty spiritual) and gains the ability to see angels and demons. I don't know exactly what I think about the book, and I certainly wouldn't recommend it to everyone, but this isn't a book review. I'll push my personal opinions about the rest of the book aside for now, as this is just supposed to review the way spirituality is portrayed. And y'all, it's portrayed amazingly.

The demons have names of sins carved into their heads, and are described in an eerie, unsettling way. The unsaved are bound with chains dragging behind them, chains inscribed with names of people in their past they haven't forgiven. Cords with the sins they give into protrude out of the back of their head. The demon and demonic activity of the book is written in a way that completely battles today's modern obsession with "handsome, bad-boy" demons that seem to be in too many books and TV shows. The demons are powerful, ugly, and thrive off of sin. No one knows for sure what demons look like, but these are so hideous that they're frightening.

Not to fear, though! Just as I was starting to get scared out of my skin reading the book, the light side of the supernatural showed up. Angels and Christians. The Christians have light coming from them, while the angels, although not showing up as often as the demons, are memorable. They are beautiful, mysterious creatures the demons cringe from. Instead of getting stabbed (or shot) by the creepy crawly demons, the angels, spurred on by the power of prayer, aren't in danger from the bad guys. It's nice to know that your spiritual safety doesn't depend on how fast an angel can dodge a bullet, and more on you following God. The angels manage to beat many of them, however, which is another powerful lesson on the importance of prayer.

The best scene comes when the protagonist, an unbeliever, finally gets close to one of the angels. The poor boy is so terrified of the glowing being and decides to gain some favor by bowing and offering to worship the angel. Bad move. The angel gets angry, the protagonist is almost blinded in the explosion of light, and in the end the guy thinks "Okay. These creatures really, really don't like being bowed to." Which, of course, is biblically accurate.

I'd love to go off on a rabbit trail about my thoughts on the book, but for time's sake I'll just skip to the Holiness Tier. Nine out of ten for sure. The angels and demons are written better than I could ever write.

Last, but definitely not least in this outrageously long post, is The Angel and the Ring by Sigmund Brouwer. The book follows the journey of a young boy in the ancient times trying not to die. There's also this ring, and a girl, and something about a lost treasure, but to be honest I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to the human parts of the story because I was captured by the spiritual parts. Meet Brin's guarding angel, a nameless spirit who occasionally interjects in the book with his own personal section, The Angel Blog. The name makes it sound incredibly dumb and not at all holy, but trust me, it was pretty good.

The angel's section takes a unique spin on an angel's POV. Instead of the narrator telling us about the angel, the angel is the narrator, pausing the story to catch us up on what he's been doing, as well as giving us some insight into the spiritual realm without giving away the mystery. At one point he goes off into a rant about how angels and demons are portrayed, mentioning the dangers of turning angels into curly-haired, chubby cherubs, and demons into little red men with goatees and comical pitchforks. He also mentions how angels are almost impossible to describe because they are spiritual creatures, not made of flesh and blood with physical wings and physical bodies. Nothing was mentioned on the subject of angels using bullets, but I'm pretty sure this angel would have empathetically been against it.

There's also a part about the human protagonist being and danger, and the angel pausing the story to tell us that he could get rid of the bad guys in half a second, or whisk the protagonist away to safety in a heartbeat. But he tells us that it's all up to God. Not even the angel knows what the plan is for the protagonist, but he is trusting his Heavenly Father to call the right shots and turn everything out for good in the end.

The story was exciting, creative, and even humorous from the angel's POV, yet somehow managing to keep him an elusive, holy being. He was a guardian, a servant, a protector, and could totally take ole' Validus down in a fight, with or without a gun. (And no, I'm not going to let that whole gun thing drop.)

For the Holiness Tier I'd give this a nine out ten. The only perfect book I've read depicting angels would be the Bible. But this book was simply superb, and is perfect for anyone wanting to read something about adventure and spiritual warfare without taking away the holiness from the angels.

I hope that this post will be able to start some discussions, whether you're in agreement or disagreement. Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments. I have so much to learn about spirituality, and conversations about it can only help us gain more knowledge, as long as we remember to keep God's Word in the midst of it.

Keep writing and eating cheesecake!

-Serena Stellington