How to offer a Gospel-motivated response to Halloween Counseling Solutions

How to offer a Gospel-motivated response to Halloween

Posted: 11 Oct 2011 09:05 PM PDT

Halloween, from a degree of difficulty perspective, is the most challenging of all of our holidays.

Each year we are forced to think about it whether we want to our not.

The candy department in our local Walmart begins turning orange and black in September.

It’s kinda in your face.

You have to deal with it. You must deal with it.

For the record, Halloween is no different than any other thing in our lives. It demands a Christ-centered response. Halloween is a discipleship opportunity.

The good news is that Christians have the ability to bring a right response to this holiday because we are illuminated by the Spirit of God to think clearly about all things pertaining to life and godliness.

We also have the authentic, plenary, sufficient, and inerrant Word of God to center our discussion around. If there was ever a people group who possessed what it took to think about such things as Halloween, we are that people group.

Therefore, there is really no excuse for any Christian not to give some reflective thought to an event that dominates our culture for a few days each October.

Christian responses are all over the map.

Howard leads his family by declaring Halloween as movie night. He herds his family upstairs. The lights are turned off and the family is huddling around the TV watching The Sound of Music for the 42nd time.

David calls Howard a legalist. He allows his kids to dress in costumes for a night of “harmless fun.” You only live once; let them enjoy it. Besides they can share Christ with the other kids, David says.

Luann pretends it does not exist. She’s a single mom, multitasking at a level that very few of us can comprehend. She does not need another battlefield to walk onto with her children.

The Smiths struggle with the fear of man (Proverbs 29:25). Though they personally do not care for Halloween, they typically succumb to the naggings of their children as well as the pressure they perceive from their friends.

And then there is George. He’s your stereotypical lazy and passive dad. He doesn’t care. As long as it doesn’t interfere with his life, he’s good. “What’s the big deal? When I was a kid…”

He then goes off on a rant about how hard he had it as a kid and then ends with, “…look at me. I turned out okay.” Leah has never been courageous enough to honestly tell him how he has “turned out.”

In the men’s group, Paul is waiting for the discussion to turn to him. He loves throwing out the “Reformation Day card” because he’s pretty sure most of his friends have not thought about it.

Though his answer is not a bad one, the self-righteousness that flows out of him and the disdain he has for those who don’t do it like him is stifling.

Halloween is in our hearts

Here is a short test for you: What did you think when you read the brief stories about the different responses to Halloween? What did you think about Howard, David, Luann, the Smiths, George, and Paul?

Those are two important questions. Before you begin thinking about any subject, including Halloween, the first place you must address is your own heart. This is huge.

Do not miss this.

If you do not address your own heart first, then you will not be able to think clearly or rightly about any subject or any person regardless of what it is or who they are.

I point this out to you because it is easy for Christians to emote about Halloween in non-constructive ways. Passion is great, but our passion must be tempered by humility or our passion will create disunity rather than unity.

Even if you are categorically opposed to Halloween you need to remind yourself that you have a little bit of “Halloween” in your heart. We all do. None of us are entirely sanctified to the point of sinless perfection.

The darkness of Satan impacts our lives throughout the year, not just on October 31. Guard your heart before you pontificate about Halloween. Make sure your communication is redemptive.

Halloween should not be about winning arguments, splitting hairs, or flaunting our spiritual knowledge. Our main goal must be to be used by God to redeem people.

Halloween is just another opportunity for us to put Christ on display by our attitudes, words, and our actions.

Therefore, before we offer our opinions about Halloween it would be wise to make sure our opinions are born out of humility, realizing that all of us occasionally give into Satan’s lies and temptations.

I have friends who represent all of the stories I’ve listed above. You may have some friends like that too. Though I do not necessarily agree with all of their approaches, I want to make sure that I’m addressing my heart first before I speak redemptively into their lives.

Once I readjust my heart, realizing that I’m the biggest sinner I know, then I can think about how to engage them about their attitudes and practices regarding Halloween (1 Timothy 1:15).

Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when there is the log in your own eye?

You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. – Matthew 7:3-5 (ESV)

Different responses for different people

If humility is ruling my heart, then I’m assured that God will give me the grace and the wisdom that I need to engage my culture and my friends redemptively regarding Halloween (James 4:6).

As you know, you cannot cookie-cutter your responses to your friends. You treat and interact with each one of them differently. This is how we see the Savior engaging His friends in the Bible. He discerned the person and the situation and then customized His Gospel approach accordingly.

If I were close friends with Howard, David, Luann, the Smiths, George, or Paul and had the context to speak into their lives, here are a few things I would want them to consider:

Howard – At some point Howard is going to have to deal with Halloween. He cannot bury his head in the sand and pretend it does not exist. While his kids are young, he can herd them upstairs, but his children will not be young forever.

He needs to be wiser in his parenting approach. I’ve already written some thoughts on incrementally introducing your children to the world. Howard needs to get out in front of his children, teaching them about life and culture.

Halloween is a perfect opportunity for him to do this. If he does not do this, then the culture will not only teach his children their ways, but the culture will put pressure on his kids to follow their ways.

It could be that some of his children may not be able to withstand the pressure put on them by their culture, because they have never been taught, encouraged, or discipled.

Though they will be able to recite The Sound of Music, they will be at a loss when it comes to cultural engagement.

David – Immaturity is not a good answer to the “Halloween dilemma.” David is over-reacting to Howard’s unwillingness to engage by letting his children become the antithetical poster children.

I’ve engaged many David’s in my life. They usually come out of fundamentalist/legalistic environments and over-correct their practices through misuses of grace.

At other times people like David come out of the pagan world and have not come to the place of reflecting on Halloween. There are many things to learn about the life of Christ and you’re not going to learn them in a week. Therefore, they follow the culture.

Discipleship Tip: The things that you have learned from walking with the Lord for 20 years, do not expect those who have not had your exposure to Christ to know and practice what you know and practice.

David’s immaturity and self-deception is particularly noticeable by his comments:

Harmless fun – it’s not harmless in that he is teaching a worldview to his kids. Halloween, like all things, comes with a worldview. Van Til taught us that there are no neutral facts. He’s right. Halloween is not neutral.
You only live once, let them enjoy it – this statement is tied to the former, in that David has a “fun worldview,” not a God-centered one. If you only live once, which we all do, then personal enjoyment is not the main purpose of life.
They can share Christ with other kids – unless is kids are little apostles, I’m pretty sure they will be over-fixated on getting all the candy they can get, rather than evangelism. Even if they were going to do evangelism, surely David could find a better venue and time for them to do it.

His over-spiritualized, fun-centered worldview is more of a justification that releases him from the hard work of parenting.

Luann – Being all alone in this world is asking too much from anyone. This is part of the reason there is a local church. Luann needs the body of Christ surrounding her, helping her to parent her children.

She is too overwhelmed to think about Halloween, while hoping it will not be a big deal this year. I can’t bust on Luann. I want to pray for her, while enlisting the local church to come alongside her.

The Smiths – Somebody needs to come alongside the Smiths and carefully walk them through the underlying issues, which are the real issues in their personal lives, marriage, and family.

How to respond to Halloween is not their main problem. Halloween is a temporary, seasonal litmus test that they fail each year. This failure points to the deeper issue of insecurity, which points to their weak relationship with God.

Like Luann, they need friends, biblical friends who love them enough to come alongside them to help them mature in Christ. You can bet that if they cave to the cultural expectations and pressures surrounding Halloween, then they are failing in many other areas too.

Before we blast them for going trick or treating, let’s make sure we have a solid understanding of the situation. They need our affection as modeled through careful discipleship.

George – George is slowly losing his family and he does not see it and probably does not care. George and Paul, see Paul below, are the two most difficult people in this list to help.

George is the anti-Gospel man. The Gospel is about going, being intrusive, getting to the heart of the problem, and seeking to transform lives. George is not doing any of these things. George is about George.

He needs God. He also needs friends who love him enough to get into his business. Leah, his wife, would love for you to love George enough to get into his life.

Paul – George’s opposite, but just as bad of a person in our list of friends, is Paul. He is arrogant, condescending, and self-righteous. He loves being right, being in control, and coming across impressive.

Pursuing and creating redemptive relationships is not what he is about. From the outside looking in, he appears to have the best answer, but his heart is self-absorbed.

The apostle Paul spoke to people like this in 1 Corinthians. The Corinthians were more about being right than being redemptive.

Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that "all of us possess knowledge." This "knowledge" puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God. – 1 Corinthians 8:1-3 (ESV)

Some folks in Corinth knew that it was not a big deal to eat meat, but their attitudes were all wrong. Having the right answer is only part of the solution. Having the right attitude is essential.

Knowledge can puff up, while love builds up. Our friend Paul should be more careful, more engaging, more involved, and most definitely more humble.

Do you see Halloween more as a point to be right about or as an opportunity to be redemptive?
Are you willing to engage your friends redemptively or are you tempted to steer away from them because they are different than you are?
Do you see yourself in similar fashion as the apostle Paul, the chief of sinners?
How does the truth in 1 Timothy 1:15 govern your heart during the Halloween season?

Halloween is a discipleship issue

Like all things in our lives, Halloween is a discipleship issue. It is not something to argue about or divide over. We are to divide over the Gospel when there is error, as Paul taught us in Galatians. We should not be dividing over Halloween.

Recently one of my small group members humbly asked us about our views on Halloween. We have differing views and she knew that. Her humility was stellar and an excellent example of the active and on-going grace of God in her life.

Rather than making her feel stupid, different, or wrong, it was a great opportunity to walk through what we believe, why we believe what we believe, and how we practice it. That conversation is still on-going.

Conclusion

I imagine that many people would read this article to learn about the history of Halloween, how it’s of the Devil, and why we should steer clear of it.

While I could have taken that approach, it would have been more of the same when people talk about Halloween. That information is in the public domain and easily accessible.

I typed in Christian perspective on Halloween and got over 3.5 million possibilities in 0.17 seconds. If you want to garner a Christian perspective on Halloween, please take the time to do the research. We all need to do that.

My point in writing this article is to talk more about our attitudes toward others who differ from us and how we should be thinking redemptively as far as personal, family, church, and cultural engagement.