What is the righteous response to a day celebrating evil and wickedness?
After my email on Monday comes the very logical question. Should good Christians opt out of Halloween?
Looking at my own history (which I shared in the email), I have been on both sides of that answer.
It’s very tempting to simplify down to a blunt Yes or No.
But I don’t think the answer is really that easy.
If you were to say “Yes, good believers in Christ should have nothing to do with such a day,” I wouldn’t argue with you. I completely respect that answer.
But I also think there is a more textured answer than that.
God made every day. So there is nothing inherently bad about one day versus another day. All are created by God and provide the same opportunity for worship and service – or for sin and error.
As I said on Monday, what I’m most worried about is that the cultural attitude toward Halloween, and the supernatural reality it represents, tends to diminish the seriousness of the underlying truth of Satan and his demons and what they are doing..
If you reject Halloween, but in doing so begin to feel self-righteous and above any supernatural “mumbo-jumbo”, then you could very easily slide into the same danger zone that I am concerned about.
On the flip side, if you engage Halloween you could (I’m not saying that many do this) use it as a foundation for talking about the ultimate supernatural topic and present the gospel.
Two opposites in extreme that prove nothing but illustrate that your stance on the day isn’t necessarily the most important thing.
In his first letter to the Church in Corinth, Paul speaks about meat that was involved in heathen sacrifice to pagan gods. He goes on to say that the meat is just meat (God made the cow), and the ceremony doesn’t do anything to it. This is a spiritual truth. The celebration does not taint the object.
But if you see the pagan idol in your mind’s eye whenever you look at the meat, and that really disturbs you, then don’t eat the meat – and Paul would gladly eat veggies with you rather than cause you such a problem.
We all have to make our decisions about the day. We have to assess how it impacts us and if we need to take precautions to protect our spiritual well-being.
But the bigger issue behind the day is remembering that Satan is a real being. And he has a veritable army of powerful spiritual beings who do his diabolical bidding. He doesn’t make us sin (we do that very nicely on our own), but he tempts us to settle for lesser truth than what Jesus offers. He raises strife and contention all over the world. He brings trouble and pain into our lives.
Paul even calls him “rulers of the darkness of this world.” Yes, Satan exercises dominion and authority and rule over this earth. He is active and effective in the affairs of men and women at every level of our society and institutions.
His objective is to thwart God’s agenda by any and every means possible. He doesn’t care about the collateral damage his methods create. Anything he can do to twist, or pollute or corrupt God’s plan is what he is whole-heartedly about.
On our own, we cannot defeat him. Only through the power of the blood is victory available to us.
Satan isn’t a cute costume. Being “devilish” isn’t cool. Laughing at his “antics” isn’t funny.
I think the big issue for Christians here is to get serious about the fact that we’re living in the middle of a warzone.
For a long time I’ve been searching for a way to express that. What I’ve done above sort of explains what I’m thinking about. But sometimes I think we need to imagine what it’s really like, vicariously experience the chill of terror at the approach of a minion of Satan. That’s what makes something “real” to us.
That’s why I wrote the Heavenly Realms series. It’s fiction – I have no special insight to the spiritual conflict. But I wanted a way to make the invisible spiritual world feel real to you. So I took the truth I knew from the Bible and spun it into a story that made it feel…. real.
The first story, Jarial’s Last Chance, looks at the big kahuna right away. How did Lucifer come to be Satan and lead such a host of angels into darkness? You can see it happen through the innocent eyes of one Archangel named Jarial.
You’ll visit the pre-creation Heavenly Realm where angels are busy getting ready for… they aren’t sure what. But something is going to happen. And some angels are more prepared than others. Jarial, happens to be on the less-prepared side of that spectrum. And when she realizes what’s going on, she’s almost frantic to make the most of what time is left.
But a good friend and fellow Archangel is on a very different path. Jarial has a really terrible choice to make, and will witness an event that will haunt her throughout Earth’s history.
It’s probably not how things went down. But it will give you some insight to the spiritual forces that came into play when Lucifer confronted God.
If you like Jarial’s story, then the story of Geleriel, a cherub assigned to guard the gate of the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve had been expelled will chill you to the bone. Inside the garden grew the tree of life. If one human ate of that tree, then they would live forever and never die. That would throw a real wrench into God’s plans of redemption.
So you can imagine what happens. A group of the Fallen angels try to get a human into the garden to take just one bite…. And Geleriel must decide what he’s willing to do to stop that from happening. It’s not easy. Evil will not be turned aside by mere wishes.
Then the last story, of Amariel, a simple angel who yearns for an assignment of significance. But when he’s given a choice of two tasks, he chooses the hardest task he’s ever faced.
Set in a modern day western culture, Amariel faces opposition like he’s never seen before. With ambiguous instructions, he’s never sure if he’s doing it properly and what the right outcome looks like.
But I assure you that this story ends on a triumphant note of such Biblical proportions that images of it propel my worship into Heaven literally every weekend. I literally cried for joy as I wrote it (thank goodness for spell-checkers!).
I’ve written these stories because I wanted to make the spiritual realm real for me. And I think it will make angels and demons far more real to you than the beautiful paintings of renaissance masters.
If you really want to plunge in, I recommend Heavenly Realms Volume 1– it bundles all three stories into a single economical file.
You don’t have to get the books to take the spiritual realm seriously. Anything you can do to remind yourself that there is more going on than your mortal eyes can see will be of great eternal benefit.
I only ask that you do something. The body of Christ cannot become lax about the spiritual battle raging all around us. We must be vigilant and follow the instruction of the Apostle Paul and “Stand Firm!”.
I can’t wait to see how you decide to handle Halloween this year.
Dennis
