“ Since the children have flesh and blood, He too shared in their humanity so that by His death He might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. For surely it is not angels He helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason, He had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that He might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because He Himself suffered when He was tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted.” (Hebrews 2:14-18 NIV)
As I write this, Halloween has ended as of six days ago. As a child, I remember going Trick or Treating. It was fun to get all the free candy, but I never really understood why we celebrated this day, nor why children dressed up and wandered the neighborhood gathering free candy. I can’t remember either of my parents ever explaining this to me. I guess we just accepted it as something everyone did, and we just joined in, without really understanding why.
As a child, I was also a bit confused about Christmas and Easter. As with getting the free candy at Halloween, I also enjoyed getting presents at Christmas, but all the elements that meshed together at Christmas was confusing to me. When my brothers and I were children, and our parents were still married, we attended a small Lutheran church, and we learned about the birth of Jesus Christ, and were taught that His birth was the reason we celebrated Christmas. What I didn’t understand about all this was how the whole Santa Claus, magic North Pole toy shop, elves, flying reindeer sleigh, Frosty the Snow man, etc., fit into a celebration that was supposed to be about the birth of the Son of God, the Savior of mankind. I remember when my I found out that Santa Claus was not real. One of my brothers found where our parents were hiding the stuff they had bought us for Christmas, and he showed the rest of us. I had always kind of suspected the whole Santa Claus thing was a lot of malarkey, and this confirmed it. The problem is, when I decided to throw out my belief in Santa Claus, I saw the whole Christmas thing as a package deal, so I also threw out my belief in Jesus. Since it all meshed together into Christmas, I decided all of it was nonsense. Fortunately, that was not the end of the story, as I did later come to faith in Christ, and I sort of understood how the whole Saint Nicholas morphing into Santa Claus thing came about.
Then there is the whole matter of Easter, which is supposed to be the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The Easter Bunny gets thrown into that mix, and Easter, as well as Christmas, and Halloween made no sense to me as a child. The good thing, though, is that at Easter, we also got candy. Sometimes it seems like all the holidays were just made up by the candy manufacturers to sell more product!
When I came to a real saving faith in Christ when I was 23 years old, and understood the origins of Halloween, and all the evil imagery and celebration of death, I decided I wanted no part of it. When Peggy and I got married we decided that we would not participate in Halloween. We did not allow our poor, depraved children to go trick or treating. One of them will probably show up on some TV Psychology Talk show one day bemoaning how they were psychologically traumatized as children by not being allowed to dress up as a Marvel character and beg the neighbors for candy! We did allow them to go to the Christianized version of Halloween, known as “Trunk or Treat” at church a few times. I have since come to the conclusion that I don’t really agree with this practice either, even though a lot of churches do it. I understand the rationale that churches use, and I do not have a judgmental attitude towards churches that organize “Trunk or Treat”. I just personally think that churches could use this as a teaching opportunity to point out to children the reality and dangers of evil, instead of creating a Christianized version of a pagan holiday.
Many people will just say it is all harmless fun, and a chance to dress up in costumes. I disagree. I think we need to understand what we are doing, and why we are doing it. The imagery associated with Halloween is evil and death. There is nothing pretty, entertaining or fun about evil and death.
The Scripture says that Satan, the Devil, holds the power of death, and that we are enslaved by our fear of death. We don’t like to talk about it, and when people we know die, we purposefully think of it in the abstract. That is because we are really enslaved by our fear of death. The death of a loved one, or acquaintance, or even a pet, should be a reminder to us that we too will die at some point. I do not say this to be morbid or depressing, but I think it is a healthy thing for us to face our own mortality, not so we can adopt a nihilist outlook on life, but to put us on the quest for understanding how death originated and what it means.
The naturalist (atheist) who interprets life in a purely materialistic sense will just say that birth and death are the natural cycle of life. That view gives me no satisfaction at all. Human beings need for life to make sense and have meaning. If death is just the end, then life is simply a meaningless, cruel joke. We would live our whole lives wanting life to have meaning and make sense, and then it would just end.
Fortunately, the Scriptures inform us that there is more to the picture than the naturalist’s simple formula of birth and death. Death is not the natural cycle of life. Death is an intruder.
When God made the first man and woman, He told them that if they disobeyed Him, the One who created them and gave them life, that they would die.
‘And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” Genises 2:16-17 NIV)
This makes perfect sense if you think about it. If God is the creator of all life, the source of all life, if you disobey what He says, you walk away from Him. When you walk away from the source of life, there is only one other path. You walk into death. You walk towards death, until death becomes your reality. When Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, they did not immediately die, as we understand death, but they turned and walked toward death, until death ultimately became their reality.
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23 NIV)
So, we see that death was not created by God as the natural cycle of life. We were not created to die. We were created to live. But when we voluntarily disobey the One who is our source of life, we die. We disconnect ourselves from the source of life. Death is our payment (wage) for our willful disobedience.
I believe the reason people make light of the evil and death depicted by Halloween is because they want to deny their fear of death. It is the attempt to suppress that fear and disassociate themselves from it. I believe that is also the reason people like to be entertained by horror films. It is a denial of the very real fear we have of death, a fear that is grounded in our reality. As much as we like to distract ourselves, we cannot get away from it. We all die. But death is not simply the end. It is when our physical bodies cease to function. But we are more than physical bodies. We are immortal souls that will exist in God, our Creator’s presence, or in eternal torment because we have forsaken the giver of life, and everything good. Just as when we walk away from God, the giver of life, we walk toward death, when we walk away from God, the creator and giver of all good, we walk toward evil and torment (the absence of all good.)
God has made a way out of all this mess, and a way back to life:
“ If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9 NIV)
That sounds overly simplistic, but it is the truth. You can learn the whole Bible, but if you don’t REALLY get that, you have missed the whole thing. If you REALLY get that, you can work your way backwards, and learn the rest.
Jesus Christ is the ONLY one who can remove our fear of death and hell, because He is the ONLY one who holds the keys of life. You do it His way, or you die, and then suffer in hell. There is no other option.
Danny's Stump 