Should Christians celebrate Halloween, or is that some man-made, pagan, demonic holiday that Christians need to avoid? Or is there really nothing wrong with me dressing up my son in a Superman outfit and passing out some candy to some kids? That is the question we want to address today on The Beat.
Coming up, hey, my friend! Welcome back to The Beat. My name is Alan Parr; thank you so much for tuning in.
If this is your first time here, it's a pleasure! If you want a free ebook, click the link in the description box below. If you enjoy this video, consider subscribing and hit that little bell notification so you won't miss a beat.
Okay, so here is another one of those questions in terms of, "Should a Christian be able to do this? Do I have the freedom to be able to do this, and is God going to be pleased with me if I do this or if I choose not to do this? " Once again, Halloween wasn't around in biblical times, so there is no clear verse in the Bible that says, "Thou shalt not celebrate Halloween.
" But the question is, are there some principles that we can look at in terms of how we conduct ourselves and how we behave on October 31st? I know you probably want me to give you a black-and-white yes-or-no answer, but as you know by now, I'm not going to do that. I am NOT God.
I am NOT the Holy Spirit in your life; I trust that the Spirit of God is going to lead you in one direction or another. But I do want to give you five things to avoid or consider, rather, when we are talking about this issue of, "Should Christians celebrate Halloween? " Number one: I want to encourage you to avoid what's called the genetic fallacy.
I'm going to read exactly what that is. Essentially, this is the fallacy of irrelevance that is based solely on someone's or something's history, origin, or source, rather than its current meaning or context. In other words, it's basically saying that, "Hey, because this thing had a pagan origin to it, then therefore I'm going to disregard what it means in our society today, and I'm just going to eliminate it and say, 'You know what?
This must be of the devil. '" Let me just say this: If you are going to do that, then there are a lot of things in our culture and in our society that you're also not going to be able to take part in. For instance, one of them would be your birthday.
Birthdays are not in the Bible; there's nothing in the Bible that says you need to take a day of the year and celebrate yourself, and it should be all about you. But we do that, and that's a man-made idea. So if you are okay with celebrating your birthday, which has a man-made origin to it, then you may also be okay with celebrating Halloween.
Another one would be the days of the week. Sunday—we don't see anything wrong with saying "Sunday," but Sunday was created in reference to the Sun God or Monday to the Moon God. So we use these words and phrases all the time, but we don't think and say, "Well, because it had some pagan origin to it, I'm not going to call today Sunday or tomorrow Monday.
" So I think it's a very, very weak argument to throw Halloween completely out simply because it had some pagan origins to it, particularly because that is not what it means in our current culture today. Nobody is trying to conjure up evil spirits and speak to the dead and do all those things. If you are, then I'm going to talk about that later in this video; that is not something that you need to be a part of.
The second thing that I want to encourage you to do is to avoid the misuse of Christian freedom. Now, I want to give this one early on in this video just in case you do not watch anything else. In this, I want to talk primarily to the older people because some people see Halloween as an opportunity to do some things and engage in certain behaviors that they would not normally engage in at any other time during the year.
Notice 1 Peter 2:16 says, "Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil. " Then Ephesians 5:13, Paul says, "For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters, but don't use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. " Essentially, what Peter and Paul are saying is you and I have been given this great, amazing gift from God to be able to have freedom and liberty to enjoy certain activities that are going on in this world that the Old Testament saints didn't have because they were under the Old Testament law.
But anticipating that some people would take it too far, Peter and Paul are saying, "You know what? I need to put this extra disclaimer and warning in here. Make sure that when you're using your Christian freedom and your liberty and you're enjoying the things of this world, that you don't see this as an opportunity to indulge in the desires, the sinful, fleshly desires of your flesh.
" Let me give you some examples. Let's say you're going to a Halloween party, but you see that as an opportunity to wear that cat suit that accentuates certain parts of your body that draws attention to certain parts of your body so that you know when you go to that party, it's going to make every man in there lust after certain parts of your body. Well, if you are not normally going to wear provocative material, then don't.
Use Halloween as an opportunity to carry out the desire of your flesh. Let's say you're going to a party and you don't normally drink to the point where you're tipsy or you're drunk. Don't use Halloween as a cover-up or as an excuse or opportunity to get drunk or to get tipsy when that's not normally your behavior.
Let's say you don't normally listen to or dance to vulgar music that has offensive lyrics. Don't use Halloween as an opportunity to say, "Okay, man, this is my time to go and party and have a good time and celebrate all this demonic stuff. " Listen, the idea here is do not come out of your Christian character on October 31st or the days leading up to that simply because you have the freedom and you want to celebrate Halloween.
Number three: avoid being legalistic about this entire thing. I've said this so many times before in my videos, but essentially avoid having a particular perspective, opinion, or personal bias about what you think the Bible says when the Bible clearly does not say anything specifically about this. Essentially, legalism in its most basic form is whenever we speak on behalf of God in areas that God has not spoken, and we push those personal biases on other people, making them feel like they are less spiritual or less of a Christian than we are because they are doing some things that maybe we don't feel comfortable doing.
We are acting exactly like the New Testament Pharisees that Jesus was in consistent conflict with. He described them as follows: their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God. Do you see that?
They take man-made ideas and man-made traditions that are not in the Bible—nobody says this is what God said. He says they take those man-made ideas and teach them as if they were commands from God. So, basically, in terms of this idea of Halloween, be careful that you are not legalistic in speaking where God has not spoken.
Number four: avoid violating your own conscience. The Bible talks about, "To him who knows to do right and does not do it, to him it is sin. " Also, if you look at 1 Corinthians 8 and Romans chapter 14, Paul makes it very clear that different Christians have different consciences in terms of what they're comfortable with and what they're not.
So, if you feel like you do not want to take part in Halloween, and you don't want to pass out candy, and you don't want to put costumes on, and you don't want to dress your kids up in any way, shape, or form, then by all means, you should not do that. You have every right to do that because if it's violating your conscience, then that is something that you need to pay attention to, because God may be trying to help you avoid a certain experience or getting involved in this, as it may not be right for you. Finally, number five: avoid anything that may appear to be demonic in nature.
As a matter of fact, Paul said in Ephesians, "Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. " So, if you are going to celebrate Halloween, don't go dressing up as ghouls, goblins, skulls, or bones, or as someone who's covered in blood and looks like they've murdered somebody. All of these are deeds of darkness that the devil celebrates.
So, if you dress up your kids, yes, you can dress them up as Superman, Superwoman, or their favorite superhero or whatever, because you should ask the question, "Am I getting involved in deeds of darkness by dressing my kid up as Superman? " Probably not. But if I'm putting them in some sort of skull and bones outfit, or if I'm an adult and I'm wearing something that is seductive in nature, would that be considered a deed of darkness that I need to avoid?
Probably so. The last thing I'll say is if you go to a church where they are having, let's say, a fall festival or something like that, use that as an opportunity to invite your unsaved friends to your church so that hopefully they'll see that, you know what, Christians can have a good time. Yes, kids are getting dressed up and having candy and whatnot, but hopefully that will be an evangelistic opportunity for them to actually come to your church at a later time because they see that the people are nice, the church is nice, and they felt welcome and whatnot.
Use that as an opportunity to invite your unsaved friends, and some of your kids have friends that may not be saved as well. In terms of passing out candy at your house, once again, use that as an opportunity to engage in relationships with your neighbors. Maybe these are people you haven't seen in a very long time, or perhaps you don't know your neighbors at all.
Maybe this is an opportunity for you to have that type of dialogue with them and form a relationship, or pass out candy that has a tract or a scripture verse attached to it or something. What I'm saying is take advantage of the opportunity. If you choose to celebrate Halloween, engage the outside world with your hospitality and the message of the gospel.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this; leave them in the comment section below. Please be respectful and don’t tell anybody that they’re going to hell because they’re celebrating Halloween. But I would love to hear your thoughts if you found this video helpful in any way.
Free to share it with a friend. Also, if you haven't done so already, I would love it if you would subscribe. Check out some of the other videos on this channel.
Thank you so much for watching! I will see you next time on The Beat.
