In my November 15 post – All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day – we questioned why there was no All Angels’ Day. This led to the question, “Do angels really exist and if so, how can we know that they do?”. Unless you have discovered a way to know the answer to these questions, would you care to join me in a pursuit of alternative questions? “Is it more likely than not that there are angels?” and, if so, “What must we do about it?”
Let’s start with what we know. In the Meaning of Life Video Series and in Chapter 13 of Discovering Life’s Purpose, we established that God created everything (including us humans), loves us, invites us to eternal intimacy with Him and established the purpose of our earthly lives as being to prepare ourselves to accept His invitation. If you’re unsure of any of this, would you consider taking a bit of time to click on the first of the above two links to refresh yourself so that we can start out on the same page?
From this foundation, I thought we might learn about the existence of angels by exploring how God might help us accomplish His purpose for our lives. Achieving His purpose is a pretty big undertaking! What is our experience with big undertakings? Can we look at the approach taken by the most successful companies on Earth - Ford, IBM, Apple, GE, and others? Like Henry Ford’s Ford Motor Company, might we name God’s operation God Incorporated? Of course, God Incorporated’s best practices would necessarily include, at the very least, those that the best CEO’s have been able to come up with.
Earthly best practices comprise establishing a Vision, creating a Mission Statement, communicating both to their people and delegating the achievement of both to them. How might this practice look at God Incorporated? Might God’s Vision be Eternal Intimacy with Every Soul and His Mission Statement be Enable Every Soul to Achieve Eternal Intimacy?But to whom would He communicate and to whom could He delegate?
Earthly leaders hire who they need. However, God had no one to hire. Fortunately, God had a readily available solution. He would simply create "employees” to whom to delegate. We call the “employees” he created “angels” and our religions describe them. Roman Catholic teaching describes angels as wholly spiritual beings which God created to surround Him eternally in Heaven, and to be His agents to carry out His will. If you would like to
explore this teaching further, please click on Angels. In summary, God needed to create angels to whom to delegate. He was assuredly capable of doing it. Is it not more likely than not that He did it?
So we don’t need an All Angels’ Day any more than we need a God Day. Instead, we need to pray to both every day for help in discovering and achieving what we cannot do on our own. Like our best leaders, God knows He cannot make us adequately prepare ourselves. He can only enable us to prepare ourselves. He knows we must own what He requires of us.
He clarifies what is required of us in The Greatest Commandment. Must we not own the acquisition of an in-depth understanding of All the Alls in The Greatest Commandment and The Neighbour in The Greatest Commandment? Must we not own what they outline as our prerequisite preparation? Must we not own God’s achievement of His Vision?
Del H. Smith conducts research into life’s meaning and is the award-winning author of the Amazon Best Seller, Discovering Life’s Purpose.