Religious Themes in Film

Lesson 7: City of Angels: Angelology

Angels in competition with humans: Envy and the Fall of Angels

We have addressed some of the reasons why angels might be attracted to human beings and talked about some of the things that we have that they don’t. In some traditions, this attraction turns to jealousy and envy.

Think about it this way: You are an angel. You have spent eternity praising God and carrying out his will. Suddenly, God creates another creature. God creates this creature in His own likeness; that means he give humans physical bodies as well as spiritual souls, and infuses them with the ability to love.

God also gives human beings free will which means – unlike the angels – human beings can choose to love God or not. In fact, with free will, humans can hate God if they want. Humans, unlike angels, fall easily into temptation and whittle their lives away in useless pursuits of wealth and lust. To top it off, God commands the angels, perfect celestial beings, to fall on their knees and give praise to these faulty creatures.

And, here’s the kicker: God forgives humans, after all that they do. God does NOT forgive angels.

If you were an angel, and this were the case, wouldn’t you be upset?

We have seen how the angels were at first upset when Moses rose through the levels of heaven to receive the Torah: “Why does a white drop ascend on high and serve among those who cleave the flames?” they ask. In other words, what in the world is this piddly creature hanging around great beings like us?

Satan (a la Lucifer, a la Iblis) was also upset at God’s creation of man. There are a number of different stories in Christianity, Judaism, and in Islam that illustrate Satan’s jealousy toward us.

In one Gnostic text titled "Cave of Treasures," Satan wonders why he has to worship humans: “It is meet that ye should worship me, because I am fire and spirit; and not that I should worship a thing of dust, which hath been fashioned of fine dust.”

In some interpretations of the Qur’an, the Satan character (called Iblis) falls because of this same jealousy: “I am better than he,” the poet Rumi has Iblis boast.

God commands that the angels bow before Adam. It is at this point that Satan and his Fallen Angels rebel. Satan, as we remember, was once the most loved of all the angels by God. He was his right hand guy. Satan can’t believe that God would love something as nasty as a human even more. To heap insult onto injury, God forgives human beings when humans question His wisdom. God never forgives Satan.

There is another interesting interpretation of Iblis’ fall that is worth noting. Iblis, in some stories, refuses to bow down to Adam not because he thinks Adam is not worth it, but because he wants to obey the first commandment. In other words, by bowing to another creature, Iblis is being asked to worship other things before God. Iblis’ love for God is too strong; he cannot break the commandment by bowing to another creature – even when commanded by God!

Iblis is sent to hell for eternity, but, even there, he continues to love God and sing his praises. Thus, Iblis becomes a worshiper par exemplar. Even knowing he has to spend eternity in hell and that his love for God will never be rewarded, Iblis continues to love his maker.

This tension between humans and angels emerges in the next film we will examine, The Prophecy. One also sees it in movies such as Dogma and other End Time films that include Lucifer or Satan fooling around with human destinies.

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