Is Halloween really the Christian’s worst nightmare of holidays? Does the devil work overtime, snatching the hearts and minds of our children on that night? Can Christians, in good conscience, participate in Halloween activities? Because we had a decorative flag with a jack-o-lantern on our house I was told by a fellow pastor that I was “celebrating Satan’s holiday”. Was I?

 

                To be sure Halloween celebrations have changed since I was a child. We would wear cheap plastic masks and walk around the neighborhood gathering candy. It was just as simple as that. We had no deep concerns or doctrinal questions. In fact, at one church out in the country where homes were further apart than in the city our church organized a hayride to take us little “trick-or-treaters” from house to house. As I recall I was dressed as Frankenstein and one of my brothers was Dracula. We had a couple of girls dressed as witches. It was a memorable time for me, and I can’t see that I was in great danger of apostasy.

 

                Fast forward to today and you will find that the costumes are more varied and can be very scary in some instances. Adults take great pride in decorating their yards with skeletons, tombstones, dinosaurs, and ghosts among other things. Is that just one more sign of the coming apocalypse? Does it show our nation’s distance from God?

 

                Honestly, I don’t fret over Halloween and how people participate in it. I trust Christian parents to raise their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord; to take them to church and model the Christian lifestyle at home. I trust them to know their children’s personalities and to make informed decisions on their participation in the events of Halloween: don’t go trick-or-treating at all or dress as cartoon characters or other non-scary things or put on a mask and go boo! Here’s the reason I feel that way.

 

                That isn’t how Satan works. Satan is a liar and the father of lies. He is the great deceiver. He doesn’t win the hearts and mind of people by showing his true self. He appears as an “angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). He comes to us as an attractive choice or false joy. If the devil were to come to us as a malevolent creature jumping out of a closet to kill us or as green-faced witch swooping down on us from above, the church altars would be filled with people begging God’s protection and giving themselves to the Lord in droves. In some ways I wish Halloween was an accurate picture of Satan so our children (as well as ourselves) would be very frightened of him and his work.

 

                Let me describe a true moment of horror on TV: A famous television news person leans toward a 5-year-old boy who has long haired and is wearing a dress and says, “you are a very pretty girl”. That is scary. That is Satan at work. Want another one? A judge in England ruled against a man whose defense in the case was that he couldn’t participate in a certain action because of his religious beliefs. The judge stated that “the Bible is not compatible with human dignity”. That, Christian, is frightening.

 

Say good things about your Savior and His Church on the Bluff.