Halloweenie's
Each and every year, my family gets more and more turned off by Halloween. Seems each year the TV commercials get scarier, bloodier, more gruesome, more dark. Seems every year we become more and more determined as a culture to celebrate all things creepy, crawly, dead, rotting, or zombie. And, as the Twilight Saga has shown us, we can even make these things "sexy."
One hardly needs to produce a wealth of research to support such a claim. Just check out the box office big hitters each year and the conclusion becomes obvious - WE ARE ABSOLUTELY OBSESSED IN OUR CULTURE WITH VAMPIRES, GHOSTS, GOBLINS, ZOMBIES, WITCHCRAFT, WARLOCKS, BLOOD & GORE, AND ALL THINGS "DEATH." Why, we even make the best-selling children's books and movies about these very things!
The trend is disturbing enough among the culture at large. But, it plunges me into deeper concern when I see Christians diving right into this cess pool of all things "death." Some believers in Christ find these things somewhat innocent. I remain unconvinced that gawking Christians and their children and teens will arrive on the other side of this Vampire-Hooligan-Zombie parade unscathed.
My conviction on these things is biblically-derived. When the Lord of all Creation was preparing His people to enter the land He had promised them, He gave them these instructions:
When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you. You shall be blameless before the Lord your God, for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this (Deut 18:9-14).
Wow! That list of abominable practices sounds like a "Who's Who" of Hollywood Blockbusters and Best-Selling Children's Books! Just want to draw out a few obvious principles here from God's Word:
- All these practices are seen by God as "pagan." They are not for God's people.
- These practices, such as witchcraft, sorcery, necromancy (fascination with the dead), mediums, and so on are clearly linked together by God with idolatry (offering your children as a burnt sacrifice to a false, dead god).
- These practices are listed as the reason (at least one of the reasons) why God is going to allow Israel to defeat, kill and drive these people out of the land!
The reason these things are forbidden by God is given in the following verses of Deuteronomy 18 (vv. 15-22). It goes something like this: I, God, have determined to speak directly to My people through the mouths and pens of My prophets. Since I, God, am revealing Myself directly to you, you do not need to look elsewhere for any answers or any philosophies of how to live. Hear My voice through My prophets. And, O, by the way, I am sending you a prophet one day who will be My final word on all of life and godliness. To reject that prophet is to reject Me.
Of course, that Prophet came and His Name was and is Jesus (Heb 1). Now, friends, I do not mean to tell you that if you take your kids trick-or-treating you are evil and dark. But, I do mean to challenge this notion that you can continue to feast on zombie-type entertainment, and allow your children to feast on Harry Potter foolishness, and not eventually get burned. Read Deuteronomy 18 a few times. God sounds very, very serious to me.
Maybe this Halloween we could all use a dose of the little Children's Song: "O Be Careful Little Eyes What You See."