Clearly, the construction project at the Tower of Babel went sideways, as in, the biggest disaster possible. When the people tried to put God on a leash, instead they unleashed demonic powers. Think about that next time before you try to make a deal with God. You may be in for a surprise. An ancient salesperson could have sold t-shirts that read, “I built the Tower of Babel, and all I got was this lousy demonic power.”

The devil doesn’t hide the fact that the nations are ruled by him and his demons. So given that the “scattering” happens at Babel, we come to learn through various books of the Bible that the nations are currently ruled by demons at the time of Christ. When Jesus goes out to the desert we hear this directly from the devil in the third temptation. Here’s how it reads in Luke:

Then the devil took Jesus up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a single instant. The devil said to him, “I shall give to you all this power and their glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I may give it to whomever I wish. All this will be yours, if you worship me.” Jesus said to him in reply, “It is written: ‘You shall worship the Lord, your God, and him alone shall you serve.’” (Lk 4:5-8)

This story of unintended consequences of performing transactional rituals of sacrifice may sound familiar to some, but it seems fewer and fewer people know the stories of Genesis these days. For a modern retelling with some elements of the Tower of Babel, recall Ghostbusters from 1984, where rooftop worship goes bad. The plot climax hinges around a gateway on an apartment tower rooftop from which demons are summoned. Hmm…sounds familiar, except in the Tower of Babel the builders were at least pretending they were trying to leash the one true God. So they thought. Put simply, that’s why you don’t muck around with demon worship. In Ghostbusters, Ray says, "The whole building is a huge super-conductive antenna that was designed and built expressly for the purpose of pulling in and concentrating spiritual turbulence. Your girlfriend, Pete, lives in the corner penthouse of Spook Central."

Ok, enough about Ghostbusters, since that era marked the beginning of the end of belief in spirits for Americans. Surely the cute and cuddly cartoon Slimer didn’t help, because like Caspar the Friendly Ghost, we stopped fearing spirits altogether, and then just forgot about them entirely. Dawkins must have loved it. Carl Sagan would have been pleased, too, since his book The Demon Haunted World sought to rid our culture of such nonsense as spirits of all flavors, friendly and slimy. Surely if we all just stopped believing in demons the utopia would arrive much faster. It’s always the Christians holding us back, saith the venerable Sagan. We need just to give up our belief in the spiritual world, saith esteemed Dawkins. They sound much like Screwtape giving instructions to Wormwood:

“Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves…I do not think you will have much difficulty in keeping the patient in the dark. The fact that ‘devils’ are predominately comic figures in the modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that (it is an old textbook method of confusing them) he therefore cannot believe in you.”

Before I go too far afield with Ghostbusters and Carl Sagan as two screws in the coffin of our beliefs in spirits, I need to reel it back to Babel and Jesus in the desert.

It is really important to understand that the overarching story of the Bible is about the comeback of the one true God, the Most High God (or God Most High, however you like it). God is returning to restore his creation, which is this world and ourselves, or at least those open to his grace. Spirits are like us in that they can choose to follow or reject God, so their fates will be similar, or so the Catechism tells me so.

Because of our “falls,” we invited the demons in.

In other words, the demons are real. All those structures around the world to pagan gods - those “gates” did what Ghostbusters was talking about.

The real shock can come when you realize that God, who controls all things, allowed it to happen. Why would he do that? He loves us, right? God is love?

God’s will is being done, so if we are allowed to choose, he knew beforehand what would happen, but the people and spirits that rejected God did not. Free will is hard. But it’s much easier if you adhere to this line:

“Thy will be done, not mine.”

The key to living in this fallen world is that line. We can ask questions all day long why things are not the way that makes sense to us, but when we ask, we must remember that we are not God. His ways are not our ways. So you can complain about it, or conform your will to God’s will. Some people see this as defeatist, but it is anything but. The way of the Cross is the path to true freedom. To suffer and endure is to follow Christ, who defeated death for us. I’ve heard it explained this way: God is playing seven billion chessboards at once, and we are somewhere among them. Just as Joseph went into Egypt as a slave, that hardship led to the saving of his people, and ultimately the nation of Israel, whom Moses led out of Egypt. Likewise, the numerous hardships of the people in the desert led to the Promised Land. And so on, and on and on. Mary could not have given birth to Christ without all that prelude, with all its tears and glory.

Like an individual soul, a nation can conform to God’s will and be humble. Or a nation can reject God and try to go it alone. Abraham was born into that fallen world, as were we, but now God is restoring his world and his creation to how it is supposed to be, how he intended it to be.

In the meantime, we live in nations ruled by demons. Yes, that’s what I said: every nation is ruled by demons. So when we say, “One nation, under God,” this creates an interesting dilemma. Many of us want to think of America as “under God”…but is that what Jesus said? Whatever the case, it makes sense to pray. We’ll wade into these waters of angels and demons a bit here, but not all the way, because the most important thing in the spiritual battle is to do the one thing that helps, and that is to pray.

If you believe that Jesus is the son of God, the second person of the Trinity, you get a bonus package of all that comes with him, and Jesus believes in angels and demons very much. He spoke of guardian angels who never take their eyes off God and are always ready to hear our prayers. Jesus said, “See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father.” (Mt 18:10)

The Jewish tradition believed in angels who stayed with God and demons who rejected him, and these beings have a large role to play, larger than we can comprehend, and one appears at Jericho before battle. This may be the most truly badass moment in the Old Testament, if you like badassery, as most Americans seem to (a current bestselling book on how-to-self-worship is titled: You are a Badass).

Joshua and the army are camped near Jericho, having just celebrated Passover. The drums of war can be heard in the pages, and suddenly this happens:

While Joshua was near Jericho, he raised his eyes and saw one who stood facing him, drawn sword in hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, “Are you one of us or one of our enemies?”

He replied, “Neither. I am the commander of the army of the LORD: now I have come.” Then Joshua fell down to the ground in worship. (Joshua 5:13-14)

This commanding angel of the army of God flat out says “No” when Joshua asks him which side he’s on. Neither Arnold Schwarzenegger nor Sylvester Stallone could play this role. Is this an angel? Is this God himself? The entire Bible has angel footprints all over it. So what are they? We don’t get a hint in Genesis about when they were created, but Jewish tradition and the church fathers seem to think it’s somewhere between “Let there be light” and the creation of Adam.

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