54 pages • 1 hour read
This Present Darkness
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Themes
The Reality of the Spiritual World
This Present Darkness literalizes the battle between good and evil. The text affirms the reality of angels and demons as well as the existence of a spiritual realm that exists alongside and can interact with the physical world that human beings inhabit.
To drive the plot, Peretti writes the angels as though they were people with superpowers and the demons as though they were monsters and goblins from a fairy tale. This draws on biblical stories in which angels appear to interact with human beings, such as when the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary to foretell Jesus’s birth. In the novel, angels do not interact directly with humans, but the townspeople who are Christians can sense their presence. The angels themselves have an amalgam of human and supernatural abilities. While they appear like men, they are invisible to human beings, and they have capabilities of flight and can pass through any material substance. In the middle of a battle, for instance, Tal “vanished into the ground” (261) in order to escape, and there are countless instances of the angels flying all over the land.
The demons contrast with the angels since they share many qualities—invisibility, flight, the ability to move through objects—but they have one very obvious difference. All the angels have names, but only the high-ranking demons have names; the lower demons are called by the kinds of vice they embody or the sin they encourage. When the demon Complacency seeks out Lucius, he passes through all manner of demons who are named in this way: “Complacency passed Deception… the proudest, haughtiest demon of them all, […] Many others were there: Murder, his talons still dripping with blood; Lawlessness, his knuckles honed into spikelike protrusions and his hide thick and leathery; Jealousy, as suspicious and difficult a demon to work with as any” (49).
By dramatizing the battle of good and evil in this way, This Present Darkness emphasizes that the world human beings inhabit is equally populated by spiritual forces and beings that work for the good or the downfall of the human race. The malevolent forces of the demons are countered by the benevolent activity of the angels. However, the thing that shifts the battle decisively toward the side of good is the people of Ashton’s prayers, which heal the angels and allow them to triumph. The moral of the story is that the power of faith is the strongest force for good—even stronger than supernatural or spiritual powers—and ordinary Christians must maintain a strong prayer community to keep evil at bay.
Christian Teaching in Opposition to New Age and Occult Practices
For the most part, the novel is concerned with two opposed sides that have specific intentions for the town of Ashton. On one hand are the spiritual beings at war with one another: the demons attempting to take over the town and the angels sent to guard the people and fight back.
On the other hand, the opposing sides are defined at the human level by their commitments to these opposed ideologies: Christianity, which champions good, and New Age spirituality, embodied by the Universal Consciousness Society, which is aligned with evil and the occult. The most explicit mention of New Age ideas comes in Kaseph’s speech at the organized dinner where Susan’s betrayal is discovered. Speaking to the gathering, Kaseph announces: “As a decisive and powerful tool of the Universal Consciousness Society, Omni Corporation is about to establish still another foothold for the coming New World Order and the rule of the New Age Christ” (257). The ideas of the Society, especially as espoused by Oliver Young and Juleen Langstrat, are portrayed as bringing the anti-Christ into the world.
One of the reasons why Hank and Marshall take such issue with Oliver is that he uses his platform to insert his own ideology into his sermons and counseling. Langstrat, however, is the most devoted to the idea of the Universal Mind and actively encourages others to embrace it. She tells Sandy, “Release your true self […] it is infinite […] at unity with all existence […] your body is an illusion” (135). The reason this is opposed to Christian teaching is that it finds the source of peace and salvation within the individual rather than with God.
Hank often speaks about his mission from God to be in his position in Ashton, and that it is only “by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit” (71) that he is able to do anything at all. Christianity is about sacrifice, loving one another, and recognizing the radical dependence everything has on God as the source of all things. Even the power of the angels is not derived from themselves: They need the power of the Spirit and the prayer of the saints in Ashton (i.e., the townspeople) to accomplish their goals. Christianity is presented as a community while the Universal Consciousness Society looks solely to the individual. Ted Harmel tells Hogan: “[The Society] doesn’t listen to reason, or to the law, or to any set of morals but its own. They don’t believe in any God—they are God” (191). None of these views align with actual New Age spirituality; the cult-like group in the novel is meant to emphasize the danger of worshiping false gods and placing the individual on the same level as God.
Personal Responsibility and Moral Corruption
Moral corruption in Ashton opens the way for the demons who infiltrate the townspeople and influence their actions. The only people who end up on the wrong side are those who choose to be influenced or who selfishly look after their own desires. The most blatant examples of this are Alf Brummel, Oliver Young, and Alexander Kaseph.
As police chief, Brummel is supposed to uphold the law but is a perfect example of a corrupt law enforcement official who has replaced the ends of justice and service to the community with seeking individual gain. In league with Langstrat, Brummel attempts to get Hank ousted from the Church, threatening him with legal action on behalf of the excommunicated church member Lou Stanley, and then trying his best to fix the vote of no confidence that would have forced Hank to resign from his position as pastor of the church. Brummel proves to be a turncoat in the end, betraying the Omnicorp members in an attempt to save himself, but his selfishness proves to be a means by which the conspiracy is able to discover a great deal of information.
Oliver Young is even more knowledgeable than Brummel and understands precisely what he is doing in leading his own church astray, even explicitly denying the faith he is supposed to uphold as a pastor. When confronted with his hypocrisy by Marshall, Oliver responds by stating: “We are God […] Someday all men, even yourself, must realize their own infinite potential, their own divinity” (238). Oliver shows no regard for the people who attend his church and the beliefs they hold; he views them purely as pawns he can influence in order to achieve his goals.
Worst of all is Kaseph, who arranges for people to be killed or die tragically in accidents. Kaseph is comfortable with discarding anyone who might get in his way, most recently the woman known as the Handmaid, who attempts to thwart their plans and escape. Kaseph has fallen so far that he is willing to even engage in human sacrifice: “Prepare the altar […]. There will be a special offering for the success of our endeavor” (261). These three men—leaving aside other figures such as Langstrat, who invoke demons as spirit guides, or Shawn, who tricks Sandy into abandoning her family—all allow demons to influence them (or possess them) due to their unethical, immoral, and treacherous personal conduct.
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