While out shopping I stopped into a store featuring “Angels for all occasions” and after only a short while I noticed that all of the angel figurines were women. (not to mention pretty young women) Which got me to thinking, where are the angel men? Can’t men be angels too?
After a short thought about my childhood and catechism classes I remembered that all of the angels in the Bible were men. Whenever God sent an Angel to visit people on Earth he sent men angels and they apparently weren’t too cute either because they were always having to tell people to calm down and not be afraid and to simply listen to the important message that the lord had sent.
In fact the word angel comes from the ancient Greek and means simply “messenger” and not pretty girl or cute guys with wings because…well..angels were neither cute and none had wings. (I’m not counting cherubim and seraphim because they’re just plain weird)
Anyway, even Lucifer was an angel and he’s Satan for Chr… well you know…
So when did all of the angels transform into women? And why? Is it because of our culture’s recent developments in homophobia over the last few hundred years? Is it because nobody wants to image a big hairy guy standing next to them with an ethereal hand on their shoulder? Or because a guy with long flowing hair and a long flowing robe and wings would just be too “gay” for the average church goers liking? Have men just become too creepy to be imagined as angels these days?
It’s certainly not because people don’t believe in angels because a 2008 survey by Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion, polled 1,700 Americans and found that 55 percent, including one in five of those who say they are not religious, believe that they have been protected by a guardian angel during their life. And an August 2007 Pew poll found that 68 percent of Americans believe that “angels and demons are active in the world”, (guess who gets to be the demons?) and according to four different polls conducted in 2009, 55% of Americans believe in angels while only 36% believe in global warming!
In the extremely popular 1990s TV show Touched By An Angel the 2 featured angels were both women… until they added a man angel later in the 3rd season…and he was…wait for it…the Angel of Death!
What gives?! And I was hoping to be an angel someday…you know way, way, way, into the future not anytime soon… but apparently according to the Bible that’s not possible anyway because God has already “created an abundance of immortal beings called angels”…so what do I know?
But in all fairness I have to admit that I have often opined that we men here on earth should give more jobs over to women because they are more apt to be kinder and gentler and start fewer wars (if any) than we men have already shown such an enormous propensity to do.
And although that hasn’t been happening here on Earth it appears that we’ve already made our choices about what we want Heaven to be like. Women! And lots of them because ironically they’ll be the ones most likely to help us out and take care of us and show us the way to enlightenment and wise decision making back here on Earth.
Besides according to the Bible there’s no sex in heaven. So what would Heaven need men for? When we die and as we ascend into heaven are we all just transformed into beautiful women with lovely clothes and wings? (If so I do hope there’ll be shoes!)
I just hope we men aren’t sent someplace else…you know…like where there’s actually global warming!
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