What would you think if a Christian friend confided in you that they believed they had been helped by a guardian angel? Would you expect that there was actually a more rational explanation? What if one of your kids told you about a dream they had the previous night where Jesus told them to tell you to call 911 because the elderly neighbor next door was lying on the floor unconscious? Would you go and see?
Because we live in a modern world, many of us are prone to doubt such things. We know that ancient people who lack modern scientific concepts incorrectly attribute natural things to the actions of spiritual beings. Weather is a good example. There are sound scientific reasons why droughts and floods occur, and why it rains and doesn’t rain. We feel no need to attribute these things directly to the hand of God, although we look for his providence in the circumstances of such events.
The Bible clearly teaches that angels, demons, and Satan are personal, spiritual entities. As we’ll see in other essays, those sorts of spiritual beings are not the only ones the Bible talks about. The Bible talks about several spiritual beings that interact with humanity and view the earth as their dominion.
In my experience, while Christians enthusiastically embrace their belief in the Trinity, they are far more cautious with the rest of the supernatural world. Even though most would say they believe in angels, the idea of angels genuinely interacting with us loses some support. The dark side is held at an even greater distance. Do we believe that demon possession is real? Many people today, including many Christians, consider demon possession to be a misdiagnosis of a psychiatric problem. Perhaps we might think that biblical people didn’t understand psychological disorders.
And then there are the “weird” passages that deal with the unseen world. Do we really believe that the angels who sinned (Gen. 6:1–4) are being held hostage by God until the end times (2 Peter 2:4–5; Jude 6; Rev. 9)? Do we believe that people can contact the dead or other spiritual beings (1 Sam. 28:1–19)? How would the Old Testament prohibitions (Deut. 18:9–14) against doing these sorts of things make sense if they weren’t possible?
People living in biblical times would have had no such intellectual struggles. They were predisposed to believing in an animate supernatural world that regularly intersected with their own. Is it possible that our modern Christian subcultures have trained us to think that our theology precludes these sorts of experiences? If we want to understand Scripture, we cannot think like modern skeptics.