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In a commentary on Ecclesiastes 9:15, Martin Luther cites the story of Themistocles, the soldier and statesman who commanded the Athenian squadron. Through his strategy, he won the Battle of Salamis, drove the Persian army from Greek soil, and saved his city.

Beginning Nov 1st, 2009 (Daylight Savings – Remember to set your clocks back Saturday night):

• Sunday Services: we’re changing from 9:30am to 10:00am.
• Wednesday Bible Studies: changing from 7pm to 6:30pm.

The Halloween that is celebrated today in the United States is a day when children and adults alike dress up and collect candy. Some people create “haunted houses” to thrill teenagers. People dress as princesses, insects, “witches”, zombies and aliens. Some teens play pranks, throw rotten eggs at one another, etc. Its one of the larger commercial holidays with sales of candy, costumes, decorations, etc. So, what does that have to do with paganism? Very little, really. Actually, pagans don’t even celebrate Halloween as a spiritual holiday.

The reality is that “Christianity” or more properly, Roman Catholicism, actually created Halloween! Well before the year 1,000AD, as true, Biblical Christianity as well as Roman Catholicism was spreading throughout Europe, the Roman Catholic clergy had difficulties convincing the general populace to stop celebrating all of their pagan holidays. In most cases, the Church made up holidays that occurred around the same time of year as the old pagan festivals in attempt to seduce away and force outward compliance with Catholic rituals. This failure to get people to stop pagan celebrations on their own came from the Clergy’s ignorance of the Scriptures and subsequent failure to communicate the Word of God to the people in their own tongue. To the people who participated, the pomp and rituals of the Church were just another “holy” set of spiritual activities and they added them to their pagan “holy” rituals to cover all the spiritual bases. True Christians, though more rare, indwelt by the Spirit and informed by the Word of God walked a more moderate  and thoughtful path.

The earlier pagan holiday that was celebrated in the Fall was called by the Celtic and Brythonic cultures, Samhain (Celtic, pronounced “so-wain” or “saywin”), and it meant “Summers End” – Sam - summer, fain-end, and was celebrated on the first three days of November. Some scholars think this is when their new year began.

Samhain was a holy time when pagans thankfully celebrated the bounty of the harvest and gave their thanks to the goddess of the harvest, Mongfind. (Much like our Thanksgiving). It was also a holy time when it was thought that the veil between this world and then next was thinnest and that their beloved deceased relatives and ancestors could come back and visit for a brief time, giving their advice and guidance to the living. They would hollow out turnips and put candles in them so the spirits of their loved ones could find the way home. It was also a time to contemplate the brevity of life and life on the “other side”.

I should point out that the Apostle Paul was a lot easier on people that did this in his time than he was on the Jews/Pharisees of his day who believed all the right things about God, and who would never participate in such pagan rituals. He commended the pagans for their thankfulness for the harvest, and pointed them to the one True and living God. See Acts 14 for one example. Certainly Scripture condemns communication with the dead, but right thinking on this comes about by fellowship with the living Christ through the Spirit in the Word, not by making up rules and alternate Church celebrations.

In any case, in typical reactionary fashion, the Clergy told the people to dress up with scary costumes in an alternative holiday to scare away the spirits of the dead relatives, and thus was born, “All Hallows Eve”…Halloween.

Neopagans (renewed modern paganism) are baffled by the fear by many Christians of Halloween as a pagan festival. Halloween is not a pagan festival historically, it was a long time ago a Catholic holiday. Pagans are of two minds toward it. Some put on the costumes along with the rest of America and go out and have fun collecting candy, then they go home, change and go to celebrate their own pagan Samhain. Other pagans are deeply offended at what they see as a total perversion of their high holy days by the commercialism and sacrilege of the scary costumes, etc, just as we are offended by the Easter bunny on Resurrection Day. But in most cases pagans do not celebrate Samhain on October 31st in any case.

In America, Halloween is generally not connected in people’s minds (and that’s the key: intention) to “All Hallows Eve” the Catholic holiday, and it certainly is not a pagan holiday. It is a secular holiday with many different expressions. Is it wise for Christian children to dress up like ghosts, or monsters? I’d think not simply because they can frighten even younger kids, but we shouldn’t make the argument it is pagan and therefore “evil,” or even a celebration of the Catholic holiday. Is it ok to dress up like prince or princess or an apple or other fun thing? I think its great. Can adults dress up as a monster and go to a scary party? That’s a matter of personal conviction. For me it’s not a problem, but I’d rather hang out with my kids anyway.

I don’t know of a single person who got sucked into paganism by celebrating Halloween. I don’t know of a single person who got sucked into Roman Catholicism by wearing a scary mask. I do know many people who got sucked into self centered materialism by being told that getting a college degree was wonderful and the key to succeed in their careers, just to give just one example of things we take as morally good but may not always be. (I’m not against college, but I’m challenging the knee-jerk reaction of:  Halloween is evil and college is good.) Which is really worse: To acknowledge that there are real spiritual realities that affect our everyday life, and an afterlife, but be mistaken about its source and “Who” is out there, or to be a functional naturalist/materialst, effectively denying by one’s daily life that there is a personal, intrusive God who actively sustains all things and who judges the thoughts and intents of the heart? I would submit that many kids raised in Christian homes actually possess the latter worldview.

To the vast majority in our culture Halloween is a secular holiday with no spiritual significance. As Christians we can enjoy the bounty of the true and living Lord of the Harvest, carve up His pumpkins and have some fun too, with age appropriate wisdom.

If Paul could tell his gentile readers (former idolators) to eat meat that was offered to a real idol (and Paul said a real demon was receiving such worship) 5 minutes ago, “without raising questions of conscience”, then we should be able to carve a pumpkin that is separated from pagan harvest festival practices by a thousand years. As Paul says,

Eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience,  for, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.” 1 Corinthians 10:25-26

Christians should be winsome, not fearful. We need to take our security and salvation with great seriousness, and ourselves not so seriously. There are hills to die on and hills just to light a fun bonfire and roast marshmallows on, and we ought to have the wisdom and good humor to know the difference.

The clearest statement of this and the fact that condemnation and judgment are fundamental to the gospel, see Romans 2: 16, “…on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus.”

The questions one should ponder are these: What gospel do I believe and trust in? What gospel is being preached nowadays? Is it a complete gospel? Is it the gospel of Paul? Is it a gospel that can save? Or is a gospel of therapeutic help that just helps people to stop feeling bad?

The true gospel cuts and it hurts, long before it offers redemption and hope. It must do so to scrape away and remove the blinders of self-deception we all maintain with loving care and attention. Don’t rush it. Don’t rush to show the beauty of salvation to a person still blind. The beauty won’t be seen and it won’t be appreciated.

They respond with something like:

• “God is bigger than his word.”
• “God is bigger than your systematic theology.”
• “If you think you’ve got a handle on God then you don’t have the real God in mind.”

First, these phrases are not original with them. I’ve heard these phrases before. Second, I think the idea behind them reflects a profoundly deficient view of the ability of God to express Himself intelligently. While these folks might think that they’re protecting the “mystery” of the Divine, they’re unwittingly calling God an incompetent bozo who is unable to clearly reveal His character and will in human language. Third, these phrases percolate within the post-modern and emergent mind-set.
Here is a profound answer from Philipp Melancthon, the reformer who worked alongside and who succeeded Luther:

Now, although all the minds of men and of angels stand in wonderment in admiration of this mystery, that God has begotten a Son and that the Holy Spirit, the Sanctifier, proceeds from the Father and the Son, yet we must concur in this, because, as has already been said so many times, we must believe concerning God as He has revealed Himself. The heathen wander about in their hearts seeking a god according to their own speculations; but the church knows the eternal and almighty God, our Creator, as He has revealed Himself. Although we cannot probe this mystery to the depths, yet in this life God has willed that there be at least a beginning of knowledge of this subject and that our worship be distinguished from the worship of false gods. He has given in His Word a revelation by sure testimonies. In this Word, like a fetus who draws nourishment in the womb of the mother through the umbilical cord and the organs of reproduction, we sit enclosed, drawing our knowledge of God and of life from the Word of God, so that we may worship Him as He has revealed Himself. (Loci Theologici, Vol. 1 Chap 2)

Jesus consistently held the nose of his questioners and accusers to the grindstone of the Word…”What do the Scriptures say?” “How do you read it?” “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.” Jesus took a high view of the understandability and precision of Scriptures. Can we, in good conscience, do any less?

But it raises a question for the thinking, biblical Christian,,,

Our modern American culture is increasingly embracing the message that racism is wrong. As followers of Christ we know that is it wrong to be biased against anyone based on their “racial” background, and it is right to care for people regardless of that background (see the story of the Good Samaritan, for example). Here’s the problem as I see it: Biblically, there’s no such thing as “race”. Or more accurately, we’re all one race, sons and daughters of Adam and Eve out first parents. The idea of different “races” comes not from a Biblical worldview, but from a naturalistic view of origins that has crept into and pervaded our thinking. So racism isn’t just morally wrong, the idea itself is bad anthropology, a categorical error, and I think that error is the rotten root producing the poison sap of what we call “racism”. The term itself is wrong-headed because the concept is flawed. Race as a valid term can only apply to differentiate between kinds of creatures, like humans, cats, dogs, horses and earthworms. We ought to all be racists in the proper sense of the word, since we should distinguish and discriminate in our behavior to these different kinds. We should not marry cats and we should care for dogs and horses as good stewards of the creation.  If I have to choose between the worth of a human and worm, I ought to choose the human.

The concept of race is itself a non-real, categorical deviation from the truth, the term itself doesn’t properly apply to human beings, and we ought to recapture and stand that category upright again: we’re all one race, one blood, with wonderful variations of height, skin tone, hair, etc. Diversity within unity according to God’s creative power.

We really should use different terms than “racism” and “racist”.