Matthew 25:41 and Mark 7:26

“Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41).

“Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter” (Mark 7:26).

Question:

A young man emailed me about what the terms “Angels” and “Fallen Angels” and “Demons” mean in Unity.

Comment:

Unity’s most fundamental principle is that of “One Presence, One Power.” Since one of the primary qualities of the Divine is omnipotence, there cannot be a power that is not God. Since another of the primary qualities is omnipresence, there cannot be a place (hell) defined as the absence of God. All power is of God, and God is everywhere present.

What, then, of demons and ‘fallen angels’? Certainly they are referenced often in the pages of the New Testament. The two passages you cite offer fine examples of the different ways they may be understood. In the passage from Matthew, Jesus is illustrating his central teaching that choices have consequences. We create our future experiences—both physical and spiritual—according to the choices we make today. Negative choices—such as refusing to feed the hungry—will lead to negative experiences.  The ‘eternal fire’ can be a very real experience—not a future punishment, but a present realization. And it is a fire, not of punishment but of purification. We are freed from the fire when the negative energy that prompted the negative choice is burned away, leaving us purely expressing the Christ that is our true identity. In the passage from Mark, it is the Syrophoenician woman who understands her daughter’s negative condition as the result of a demon—a common superstition at a time when the healing sciences were little known and poorly understood. Since all healing happens in consciousness, Jesus does not attempt to contradict her, but works with her level of belief to achieve a healing. 

In both cases here (and in all cases in the Bible), demons are evoked to embody our own negative energies—the fear-based beliefs we have accumulated in the course of our human experience. They are not ‘real’ in the realm of the Divine. But our belief in them gives them an apparent reality in this dualistic human experience. And that belief gives them the power to affect us, until we allow the new teachings of Jesus Christ to reclaim that power and dissolve the illusion.

Blessings!

Rev. Ed