A Sign to the Angels

One of the books my dad put on shelves when he was a vendor for Choice Books -- and one of the books that ended up being my favorite ever -- was Frank Peretti's This Present Darkness. When I read it the first time as a teenager, our church was in the middle of an incredibly painful church split. Even at fifteen or sixteen, I could the sense the raw, gross feeling that boiled not quite beneath the surface in our church as people chose sides and faced off, and some left... and then many left.

Perhaps it was because my parents had been one of the couples who had originated this church plant, but I heard many behind-the-scenes discussions regarding spiritual warfare, and what was really happening behind the split.

Concurrently, I picked up This Present Darkness to read, and was immediately engrossed in Peretti's fast-moving thriller-type angels and demons drama, featuring -- go figure -- a church-split and the spiritual warfare that framed it, and it was fascinating to me to walk through the story and to see it playing out in real life right before my eyes.

(*Note: Just so there's no confusion, This Present Darkness is a fictionalized account of a true phenomenon -- warfare between the demonic forces of Satan and the angelic forces of God. For Biblical evidence of this, check out as an example Daniel 10:12-14 and 10:20-21.)

So anyway, there's a scene in This Present Darkness (well, many scenes, but this one stands out in particular) where the post-split church has gathered their fractured people together -- whoever's left -- and they're meeting in their building. Prayer and praise begin to pour out of them. Unseen to them, along the walls of the church, angels are standing, watching, worshiping along with them, participating in the unity and the healing of the church as they feel strength and the power of the Holy Spirit begin to flow through them. 

That struck me again this morning. What we know about angels is limited mainly to the Word and to the times when an angel reveals himself to someone in the natural. I'd hazard a solid guess that most of what Hollywood says about angels is, to put it mildly... untrue. See Clarence P. Oddbody's example from It's a Wonderful Life; he's the angel who has to earn his wings, etc.

Here are a few things we do know about angels: They are servants of God along with us (Revelation 22:9), they encamp around us and deliver us (Psalm 34:7), they rank just higher than humans in the order of creation (Psalm 8:5), they hold positions in a military-style ranking over kingdoms and nations (Daniel 10:12-14), and many more characteristics that I won't go into here. But here's one really interesting thing about angels that I... don't think I've ever before considered.

In Ephesians 3:10, it says: "[God's] intent was that now, through the church, the manifold [manifold = multifaceted like a diamond] wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities [read: angels/demons] in the heavenly realms, according to the eternal purpose which He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord."

This absolutely floors me! The heavenly beings -- angels and demons -- are watching how the wisdom of God is at work in the church, in the body of Christ, in the people we call our brothers and sisters. Angels and demons are watching how we treat each other, how we interact with each other and with God, how we are displaying the wisdom of God.

They are watching, witnessing, and if they are servants of God (angels), they are pleased when we reflect the multifaceted wisdom of God. If they are enemies of God (demons), they are wounded by the same. There is incredible power in the pure reflection of God's wisdom through the church.

When my husband first gave me my engagement ring, it included a small diamond wedged inside four tiny prongs. It was clean and shiny and new, and I had a hard time looking away from it, because any time it caught the light, a multitude of tiny, beautiful colors sparkled in its depths. It didn't reflect only one color or two colors or five colors. It was multifaceted! Wonderfully complicated and flawlessly simple at the same time.

That's God's wisdom reflected through a church intent on serving Him -- and witnessed by the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms!

Okay, so... that was a really, really, really long lead-up to the 1 Corinthians passage I was in today, so I'll try to drive right to the point I wanted to make.

1 Corinthians 11:2-16 is one of those passages in my Bible that I've examined from just about every possible angle as I've grown up trying to understand it. I'm not sure I'm there even now, but the Holy Spirit gave me some new insight today.

I call it the "head-covering passage." Growing up Mennonite, I fought my internal battles over whether this passage meant that I should do as my grandma and my mom and most of my older relatives did -- wear a physical head-covering over my head because that's what the passage seemed to imply -- or if I should interpret the passage culturally, and consider it a treatise from Paul on order of creation and worship in the church.

Per normal, I think I come out on the both/and side of things. I'll try to explain.

I found a meme the other day on Facebook, and I shared it with a few groups, because it made me laugh. It said: "All Scripture is God-breathed, unless you don't like it, and then it's cultural." :)

While that's intended as a joke, I think we have to be very careful not to write off whole sections of the Word as "cultural," because then it becomes tempting to continue the process until all Scripture becomes cultural, and our faith is based on sand instead of on the solid and very real Rock that is Jesus Christ.

But to lay out the culture of the time period so we can better understand why Paul says what he says: Men in that day did not grow long hair or pray with their heads covered, and women in that day did not uncover their heads in public. Why? Because that's what prostitutes did. Such a woman was sexually promiscuous or had loose morals. 

I've been fascinated by the show The Chosen -- which I highly recommend, by the way; it gives a fresh and beautiful look at the life of Jesus. But -- fair warning -- it should not be used as a replacement for reading the Bible; the show is not God-breathed, but it is certainly being used by God to touch the hearts of many, many people who have been closed to the Lord their whole lives, and as such, is Holy Spirit led.

Anyway, in the show, Mary Magdalene begins as a woman who has been possessed by demons (this is Biblical: Luke 8:2), and at the end of the first episode (spoiler)... is freed from those demons by Jesus. In the first episode, she doesn't wear a head-covering, and per the surrounding culture of the day, she is seen as a prostitute, a drunk, a woman of loose morals. After her redemption, she always covers her head in the presence of men.

Now, obviously, today we do not consider women whose heads are uncovered by cloth or doilies or netting or lace... to be prostitutes. But I think the primary application of this passage lies here: "In the Lord, however, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as woman came out of man (Adam's rib), so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God."

What I think Paul wanted to make clear was this: There's an order to everything, an order of creation -- and in that order, it is important for all of us to recognize that Christ is head of the body as man is the head of woman. "Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man" (1 Corinthians 11:3).

But Paul is not saying that man is more important than woman; he illustrates the interdependence of the two sexes in 11:11-12 and again in Ephesians 5:22-33. He seems to be talking more about how the two pieces of creation work together to create one cohesive whole. 

Raw honesty here: When I had "the talk" with my kids regarding the physical aspects of men and women... we talked about how Lego pieces snap together, and suddenly, all the birds and the bees in the world became irrelevant. It made sense: there was a plan and a purpose for how the body functions, and Lego made one of the hardest jobs as a parent... at least somewhat easier. Thank you, Lego.

But here's the thing: This is also true of our spiritual bodies. The Lord has a plan and a purpose for how we fit together in our roles as men and women, and in 1 Corinthians 11:10, it brings it around full-circle: "For this reason, and because of the angels, the woman ought to have a sign of authority on her head."

Some think this means on her physical head. Some believe this is her spiritual body. I tend to lean toward the second. Why? "Because of the angels."

I believe the angels look at my role as a woman created in the image of God and how it works together with my brothers and sisters also created in the image of God, and how together, we form one body -- and in that unity and holiness of fulfilling my purpose in the order of creation...

The multifaceted and flawless wisdom of God blinds the enemy, the demons, Satan himself, and fills the angelic warriors encamped around me with strength. I believe angels worship God when we set the example. I believe they worship God anyway, but the sight of the church fulfilling our beautiful roles in the order of creation is a spectacular, sparkly-diamond thing.

When we worship God in our perfectly created roles, heaven can't look away. Whew!! Isn't that awesome?!