Dale Partridge - October 21, 2020


Real Christianity #116： Should Christians Celebrate Halloween？


Episode Stats


Length

24 minutes

Words per minute

141.57385

Word count

3,483

Sentence count

201

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

7

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Is Halloween a holiday that Christians should embrace and/or celebrate? What are churches to do about it? Are we to use Halloween as an outreach event? What does the Bible say about these matters? In this episode of Real Christianity, Pastor Dale answers a listener's question about Halloween.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Welcome to this episode of Real Christianity. My name is Dale Partridge, where each week
00:00:13.080 I offer 15 to 20-minute answers to tough theological and pastoral questions. This is
00:00:19.060 a 100% recorded audio ministry of relearn.org. And for those who don't know, our mission
00:00:26.360 at relearn.org is to educate and equip ordinary Christians to plant biblical, confessional,
00:00:32.440 and missional house churches. For more information, just visit relearn.org forward slash house.
00:00:42.840 Big question. Is Halloween a holiday that Christians should embrace and or celebrate?
00:00:51.100 What are churches to do about it?
00:00:54.260 Are we to use Halloween as an outreach event?
00:00:57.760 What does the Bible really say about these matters?
00:01:01.600 We're going to be discussing this and more, but before we begin, I just want to make one
00:01:05.840 quick announcement.
00:01:07.760 St. Justin's, as many of you know, is a companion ministry of ours, and it's a church planting
00:01:16.200 school.
00:01:17.500 Many of you have realized that many churches are no longer meeting in person and in large
00:01:23.580 crowds, and this has caused more and more Christians to be interested in planting a
00:01:28.220 house church with a few other Christian families.
00:01:31.380 That said, we really believe that nobody should plant and pastor a church without training,
00:01:39.020 and for that reason, we created St. Justin's School of Biblical Church Planting, which
00:01:44.060 is basically a one-year diploma program for men. We teach students, I should say, to exegete, to
00:01:52.140 preach, to shepherd, and to plant a biblical house church in their local community. In fact, we just
00:01:59.080 launched a brand new three-minute video about the program that you can watch right at the homepage
00:02:06.180 at stjustins.org. That's just stjustins.org. The 2021 class space is very limited, but there are
00:02:18.060 a few spots left. And if you're interested in learning more, you can just apply online
00:02:23.880 before December 20th, 2020. We'd love to have you maybe pass that along to somebody else that you
00:02:30.660 might know who may be interested in planting a house church in the coming year. All right,
00:02:36.760 so let's get into the episode. Today's question is from Valerie in Houston, Texas, and she asks,
00:02:42.940 Hello, Pastor Dale. My family has been celebrating Halloween for years. We have three kids who dress
00:02:49.980 up and carve pumpkins. However, over the past few months, we have been feeling convicted
00:02:55.340 about celebrating Halloween? Do our convictions align with Scripture, or are we just worrying
00:03:02.860 too much? Hey, Valerie, thank you for the question. We actually get this exact question
00:03:09.000 every year. We've probably done an episode on this specific issue for a few years running now.
00:03:16.200 Every year I make an Instagram post that causes a lot of controversy talking about
00:03:20.840 the idea of Halloween. Christians wonder, you know, where they should draw the line. Should we
00:03:27.500 be buying the decorations and carving pumpkins and going trick-or-treating?
00:03:32.900 So let's just start with the most important question first. What is Halloween? Where did
00:03:39.740 it come from? And why is that important? Halloween originated with the ancient Celtic
00:03:47.620 festival, Samhain. And this is 9th century Ireland, is basically where most people track it back to.
00:03:54.600 It's a celebration of all things dying for the year, crops and, you know, think about just the
00:04:01.320 farm life, the agrarian culture. And it's things dying in preparation for winter. In the 8th
00:04:09.460 century, about a hundred years earlier, Pope Gregory III designated November 1st as a time to
00:04:17.920 honor All Saints. It's called All Saints Day, and likely due to its proximity to All Saints Day,
00:04:26.020 All Saints Day began to incorporate some of the traditions of Samhain. The evening before
00:04:32.600 was known as All Hallows' Eve, and later we call it Halloween, and later the Catholic Church
00:04:38.500 deemed the day All Saints Day, but the Catholic Church, the website of the Catholic Church,
00:04:45.760 I should say, makes it clear that Halloween is a secular holiday, and it's not All Saints Day.
00:04:51.560 All Saints Day is a holy day in the Catholic Church, and they actually require members of
00:04:57.520 the Catholic Church to attend Mass, so it's kind of a major day for the Catholic Church.
00:05:02.660 Now, the secular Halloween was to be believed as the night that released the dead spirits who control nature that have been held captive underground by the vegetation of life over the previous months.
00:05:22.220 Now, those spirits come back to life on this night is what it's supposed to represent.
00:05:28.840 And this is the origin of the jack-o'-lantern, right?
00:05:31.340 The idea is that the dead pumpkin has come alive from the spirit of something else.
00:05:39.220 Halloween, historically, is a night in which people would circle around bonfires, dress
00:05:46.040 up in costumes to scare these spirits or ghosts away, and have a seance to welcome the dead.
00:05:54.840 And that's just what it was.
00:05:56.420 As you can see that clearly on the Wikipedia page about Halloween or on the History Channel's website, they talk about it.
00:06:04.220 There's no argument over these facts.
00:06:06.260 That's what the historical narrative of Halloween is about.
00:06:09.660 Over time, Halloween has evolved into a day of activities, and we've sanitized the holiday to make it less overtly evil and more palatable to a Western culture.
00:06:22.060 think trick-or-treating or carving jack-o'-lanterns or festival gatherings or dressing
00:06:26.440 up in costumes and eating candy. However, Halloween is still very much holding its
00:06:35.400 spiritual roots, which is becoming more and more obvious to the Christians in a society that has 0.81
00:06:39.940 lost its moral convictions. In other words, I really do believe there is a demonic element 0.99
00:06:46.120 of Halloween in play here. And I'll tell you why. If you simply look up the satanic calendar on
00:06:53.540 Wikipedia, it's fascinating that you'll see four central events. Number one is your birthday. So
00:07:04.040 on the satanic calendar, your birthday, which is a celebration of self. And I'm not saying that I'm
00:07:11.600 against birthdays, but this is just one thing that it's talking about your celebration of self.
00:07:16.120 Um, you know, then there's, uh, what's called a, uh, Walpurgisnat, um, which is the evening of
00:07:23.540 April 30th. And that is a major satanic holiday, Walpurgisnat. It's like a, um, it's a, um,
00:07:32.180 uh, a German name, I believe. And just one day later, May 1st, so you have this one on April
00:07:38.240 30th, and then just one day later on May 1st is St. Walpurgis Night, which is intercessory prayer
00:07:48.900 for warding off witchcraft. So that was, what's going on here is that basically there was a knight
00:07:54.500 declared St. Walpurgis Night, and that was a knight by the church of intercessory prayer
00:08:01.960 for warding off witchcraft. But then later, the demonic alternative was Walpurgisnat,
00:08:11.160 and that becomes this satanic event just one day before. If you move down the calendar later in the
00:08:17.560 year, you have another satanic holiday on December 24th, just one day before Christmas, right? So
00:08:23.940 that you have December 24th is the Grand High Climax, and this is a night of indulgence and 0.85
00:08:30.360 sex, and demon revels with a focus on birth and children. And just one day later, again,
00:08:35.360 is Christmas, and that's the remembrance of Jesus' birth. Halloween, you have an October 31st,
00:08:42.280 and then just one day later, you have All Saints Day. Also, some people also put in relationship
00:08:50.060 with this as much later as the Reformation, October 31st stuff, but we'll talk about that
00:08:54.200 in a bit. But October 31st, you have Halloween, and then you have one day later, you have All
00:09:01.140 Saints Day, identified by the Catholic Church. So basically, there's either a major coincidence
00:09:06.940 going on, or there's some sort of strategy in play to offer these pre-day, pre-historical
00:09:15.000 Church Day events, offering satanic alternatives one day earlier. And so it's just a fascinating
00:09:23.840 observation that I've made. Now, the vast majority of people who celebrate Halloween are families who
00:09:30.300 are simply unaware of its dark history. And that said, Christians, we do need to be aware
00:09:38.120 about the relationship between Halloween and Satanism. Just because it's become an American 0.82
00:09:44.580 holiday where most of the culture participates doesn't mean there's no spiritual involvement
00:09:49.140 and what's happening. So again, let's just look back to the core question. Should Christians
00:09:55.720 celebrate Halloween? So before I share my position, let me share Anton LaVey's position.
00:10:03.940 Anton is the founder of the Church of Satan and the author of the Satanic Bible. In an interview
00:10:11.240 a few years ago in a discussion about Halloween, he said, and I quote,
00:10:17.420 quote, I'm glad that Christian parents let their children worship the devil at least one night out 0.62
00:10:22.600 of the year, end quote. The reality is, Halloween is viewed as a satanic holiday by Satanists. 0.61
00:10:31.980 So, here are three reasons that I have, you know, for our family and why we personally don't believe
00:10:40.800 Christians, or at least have the conviction for ourselves, to celebrate Halloween. But again,
00:10:47.060 at the end of the day, these are simply principles because the Bible doesn't speak specifically
00:10:51.960 on participating in Halloween, but your level of participation becomes a matter of conscience
00:10:58.780 before God, and we're not to violate our conscience or convictions. My hope is to give you an
00:11:04.200 understanding, and this isn't a carte blanche answer. There's a variety of factors you need
00:11:10.260 to take in consideration—the age of your children, the place that you live, how much
00:11:15.940 participation you feel comfortable with, what are your convictions, etc., etc. So I'll give you my
00:11:21.280 three reasons. First is Halloween is a celebration of death. So this is point number one. Halloween
00:11:28.500 is a celebration of death. And this is why your local Home Depot and Target stores are covered in
00:11:35.660 morbid, decaying witches and skeletons. It's a season to make children more comfortable with
00:11:42.600 evil and the distortion of God's image. It's a night to elevate nooses and demons and gore and
00:11:50.000 horror and fear. And an appetite, you have to realize this, an appetite for horror movies in
00:11:58.740 your teens is cultivated in your childhood. If you're comfortable with a playful form of
00:12:05.080 human perversion and degradation, then you'll eventually become more comfortable with a less
00:12:10.740 playful form of it later. And we have to remember that Satan is a patient incrementalist, and he's
00:12:17.460 aiming at destroying your children, even from a young age. As Christians, we don't look forward
00:12:25.280 to death, okay? We don't celebrate death. Death is actually our final enemy. It's been conquered
00:12:32.680 by Christ in part, but it's not something that we celebrate. We celebrate life. We don't look
00:12:40.240 forward to the rising of the dead to torment humanity, but the resurrection of the dead,
00:12:47.140 some to judgment and justice, and some to eternal life. And so, Christ conquered death on the cross,
00:12:54.160 therefore we don't celebrate what Christ came to conquer. 2 Timothy 1.10 says,
00:13:00.320 "...and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior, Jesus Christ,
00:13:04.440 who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.
00:13:10.180 Hebrews 2.14 says,
00:13:12.340 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same
00:13:18.000 things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power over death, that is,
00:13:24.360 the devil. There was actually a study done on NCBI, their website, that showed an obvious link
00:13:32.420 between horror movies and suicidal behavior, including suicidal ideation, hopelessness,
00:13:39.220 self-harm, low self-life satisfaction. And we know that suicide and depression are on the rise
00:13:45.960 in this broken and hurting world. And why would we want to place our children in any environment or
00:13:51.260 annual tradition that nurtures a desire for an affinity of fear or morbidity?
00:14:01.460 The enemy is strategic, and we have to remember that.
00:14:05.200 You don't go from a clean and moral childhood to all of a sudden enjoying, not just watching,
00:14:14.360 but enjoying movies about fear and gore and death.
00:14:18.460 There's a process that allows you to get there, and I believe the entire Halloween season
00:14:23.860 is designed to kindle that process in our children and families if we're not careful.
00:14:30.460 Number two is Halloween is a celebration of darkness.
00:14:35.080 So first, it was a celebration of death.
00:14:37.060 This is a celebration of darkness.
00:14:40.780 Beside the reality that it's a nighttime holiday, it's also a holiday that celebrates
00:14:46.400 spiritual darkness.
00:14:48.100 And let's just look at a few verses that speak to spiritual darkness.
00:14:52.840 Ephesians 5.11 says,
00:14:54.900 Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.
00:14:59.680 Again, these are principles.
00:15:00.780 I'm not bringing them fully into context here, but 1 John 1.5, this is the message that we
00:15:05.760 have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him no darkness at all.
00:15:12.060 1 John 1.7, but if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with
00:15:17.960 one another.
00:15:19.860 Matthew 5.14, you are the light of the world.
00:15:23.460 A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.
00:15:26.900 John 8, 12, again, Jesus spoke to them saying, I am the light of the world.
00:15:31.140 Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
00:15:36.480 John 12, 46, I have come into the world as light so that whoever believes in me may not
00:15:43.160 remain in darkness.
00:15:45.300 John 1, 4 through 5, in him was life and the life was the light of men.
00:15:51.340 The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.
00:15:54.560 Ultimately, darkness is the opposite of light. After coming to Jesus,
00:16:00.640 Christians love the light because we know first and foremost that spiritual darkness
00:16:06.940 stands against God. And second, we know that we're safest as Christians when we walk in the light.
00:16:15.420 We also know that although he disguises himself as an angel of light, Satan is the prince of
00:16:21.480 darkness. Now, he's no more the prince of darkness on Halloween than he is on any other day,
00:16:28.860 meaning that your sensitivity and awareness of darkness shouldn't change just because it's a
00:16:35.020 holiday. It's always that dark. But at the end of the day, this point that I'm trying to make here
00:16:41.420 is that Halloween is a celebration of darkness. We are people of light, and light has no fellowship
00:16:49.580 with darkness, and we need to be careful about what we associate ourselves with. I think about
00:16:55.320 this as maybe an in the world, but not of the world. How do we distinguish and differentiate
00:16:59.340 ourselves? But Halloween is for sure a celebration of spiritual darkness. Number three, my last point
00:17:06.800 here is Halloween is a celebration of evil. I'm not saying that all non-Christian or even Christian
00:17:13.960 Halloween celebrations are overtly celebrations of evil. I'm saying that Halloween specifically 0.98
00:17:20.360 is rooted in evil and generally elevates things that Scripture directly tells us to not elevate.
00:17:28.600 1 Thessalonians 5.22 says, abstain from every form of evil. It's a command in Scripture.
00:17:36.400 And we got to remember, in a world filled with suicide, murder, wickedness, and fear,
00:17:42.460 we can't believe that dressing up these horrors in cute decor one night per year
00:17:51.640 makes them any less of what they really are, which is evil.
00:17:57.260 And, you know, one thing I've noticed is that parents can struggle with viewing Halloween as evil
00:18:03.140 and truly believe it's an innocent holiday.
00:18:07.600 and this is because they have the mental and emotional faculties available to discern the
00:18:14.320 moment, meaning that they can understand that a ghost is fake or that a witch in a cauldron is
00:18:20.200 folklore. But what they don't often realize is how influential and formative these moments and
00:18:27.520 visual images can be for small children. And I know our friends, for example, had a five-year-old
00:18:33.640 who was traumatically scared just from one night of trick-or-treating and has changed
00:18:38.500 that child's thinking about the holiday for several years coming. I've had my own kids ask
00:18:45.360 me about the ghosts and if ghosts were real after seeing them in Home Depot. So these are
00:18:53.060 real things that we need to be aware of, the differences between parents and children.
00:19:00.880 Now, just to quickly address two other common questions.
00:19:05.600 First is, is it okay to use an irredeemable event like Halloween as a church-sanctioned evangelism tool?
00:19:15.420 And I think so, as long as the alternative that the church offers is truly an alternative.
00:19:22.860 The current solution for Halloween in the church is almost identical to the world solution.
00:19:27.040 The only difference is that it's less immodest, meaning that the girls aren't walking around in, you know, their, you know, nakedness for the most part.
00:19:37.160 The blatant evil is toned down, and it's experienced on the church campus or parking lot instead of, you know, some Halloween party or on the streets. 1.00
00:19:45.980 I think a good alternative would be something like a harvest community dinner on the lawn with
00:19:54.680 a movie and a gospel presentation at the end, a place to come and eat free food, have a night by
00:20:01.120 the fire pit, watching a movie outside with other Christians. However, I personally wouldn't have 0.96
00:20:06.680 the kids dress up. I think the mere fact that kids aren't dressed up on Halloween becomes a
00:20:12.580 wonderful cause for curiosity to an onlooking world and invites a good conversation about
00:20:18.580 the gospel and why they're not conforming to the world in that capacity. So that's one question.
00:20:26.160 The second common question is, what does our family do? Like, what do we do about it? Do we
00:20:32.660 just sit at home, lock our doors, turn off our lights? Do we do anything special? As of now,
00:20:39.720 We usually just gather together with our house church community and invite other maybe friends and family that aren't in our church for an apple-pressing pumpkin pie-eating evening, and we celebrate and discuss the five solas of the Reformation, which again is initiated by Martin Luther on October 31st, 1517.
00:21:03.420 and so we've just turned it into a Reformation Day discussion, has no links with Halloween,
00:21:10.900 no dressing up, and that's just how we've been able to do that, and hopefully that's
00:21:17.240 helpful for you.
00:21:18.780 Another question I should just mention briefly that people ask is, well, if you're not going
00:21:23.620 to celebrate Halloween, why are you going to celebrate Christmas?
00:21:25.600 Because Christmas has pagan roots too.
00:21:27.620 One thing I want to say just briefly on that is that comparing Christmas with Halloween
00:21:31.860 is very different.
00:21:33.420 Halloween doesn't have any redeeming qualities, where Christmas is a celebration of life,
00:21:40.020 it's a celebration of giving.
00:21:41.700 Sure, it might have some secular roots to it, but these are virtuous qualities, so they
00:21:49.940 are very different.
00:21:51.060 Halloween is a clear celebration of death, of evil, of darkness.
00:21:57.660 Some of these other holidays are much different, and you have to use your conscience and
00:22:03.340 convictions to make you a decision on how you're going to treat each specific holiday with your
00:22:11.540 family. But the bottom line, I want to get the point across is guard your little ones during
00:22:17.840 this Halloween season. Train up your older ones to be a light and defend the truth in the world.
00:22:23.820 And if given the opportunity, share the gospel and learn how to use Halloween and every other day
00:22:29.740 to redeem those who don't know Christ.
00:22:34.640 So hopefully this is a helpful short little episode
00:22:36.940 for you guys on answering that question.
00:22:39.720 As always, I'm going to leave you guys
00:22:41.660 with just two resources
00:22:42.880 that'll further your understanding of this topic.
00:22:45.780 You can find them on the post page
00:22:48.140 for this episode at relearn.org.
00:22:49.680 This is episode 117,
00:22:52.280 and it's titled,
00:22:53.220 Should Christians Celebrate Halloween?
00:22:55.720 The article is Christians and Halloween,
00:22:58.360 This is on Grace to You's website, which is John MacArthur's church.
00:23:02.880 Pretty comprehensive article on the topic.
00:23:05.620 I thought I had some great points.
00:23:07.600 Another article, actually I say it's a video, is Thoughts on Halloween with John Piper.
00:23:13.200 Brings another perspective that I think is helpful.
00:23:16.240 So hopefully that will be a great resource for you guys.
00:23:20.440 If you guys are a regular listener to the Real Christianity podcast, we thank you so
00:23:24.520 much for your commitment and loyalty to this program. Would you guys leave a review if you
00:23:31.420 have not already? You don't have to write anything. If you do write something, I will read it. But
00:23:35.880 all you have to do is just tap the stars in the podcast app. Another thing is consider following
00:23:40.760 us on Instagram, just at relearn.org. You can also follow me personally on Twitter,
00:23:46.040 just at Dale Partridge. You can find me there. And on that note, I think we'll close up this
00:23:51.660 episode. My name is Dale Partridge, and I will see you guys next week.
00:24:21.660 by visiting relearn.org forward slash house.
00:24:24.660 Lastly, do you have a theological question
00:24:26.800 you would like answered on the show?
00:24:28.460 Submit your question at relearn.org forward slash question.
00:24:32.420 Thanks for joining us on this episode of Real Christianity.
00:24:35.000 We will see you next Wednesday.