Celebrating the Evil Day of Halloween
The other day I read an article about a group of Christians who didn’t want to celebrate Halloween. So they created the obvious solution; rip off the idea, pull a Christian play on words, and use it for Godly purposes.
And so, like every cheesy Christian t-shirt that looked like a soda ad but was really a Bible verse—Jesusween was born.
Truly. I am not making this up. Jesusween is apparently a time to evangelize to those who are out trick or treating. To be clear, I’m not against some of the ideas behind Jesusween. I work at a missions agency—I believe sharing the reason for the hope within us is incredibly important. However, I strongly debate the need to call that “Jesusween” especially when you could just call it, um, I don’t know…having a conversation?
So when I saw a blog post at a local paper asking Christians whether or not they thought celebrating Halloween was evil, I decided to add my two cents as Christian who wore the costumes, ate the candy, and lived to tell about it.
Here you have it. It is literally worth 2 cents. Before taxes.
“While I think that Christians have the absolute right to abstain from celebrating Halloween, or whatever activity they’ve concluded does not edify their faith or further their walk with God, I think there is danger in judging or requiring other people to live according to one’s own convictions.
At the end of the day most of our celebrations and traditions have roots in some sort of past pagan ritual—including Christmas trees, the money in our pocket, and the name for God’s holy day, “Sunday.”
The point is that the origins of a tradition cannot make that thing inherently evil—especially when its been long obscured by time, culture and intention.
So while the connections made between Halloween and evil may be seemly obvious to some, we need to be aware that invisible evils, like a judgemental or legalistic spirit, may be more dangerous to our faith or the spiritual growth of others.
May we all strive for the same end (to be like Jesus), but have the grace to understand that everyone begins that journey from a different starting point. Jesus did not come to condemn but to save; even Christians who liked to dress up and get a little free candy.”
