Ep. 1410 | The Great Halloween Debate: Where I Land May Surprise You
00:00First things first, our pro-life Christian pregnancy and period tracking app is now out in the world.You can download Anna Kate iPhone users, Android users.It'll be ready for you soon.But if you have an iPhone, you can download Anna Kate today.You can go to Anna Kate.com for more information.We'll also link right to the app so you can go ahead and download it.You will get biblical encouragement.You will get scientific insights into both your body.
00:30And if you're pregnant, your pregnancy, you will have daily scriptural encouragement as well as resources on what's going on in your body, motherhood, marriage, all different subjects that have to do with a woman's spiritual and physical health. There's also an interactive prayer board. This is one of my favorite parts that you can leave a prayer request and you can ask others to pray. People can check if they've prayed. You can update your prayers. You can see the prayers of other people so you can pray for them.This has just helped me feel so encouraged as I've been testing this app with other peopleand seeing what people are going through and need prayer for.There's also a pro-life Christian directory of women's health practitioners,from OBGYNs to nutritionists.If you are a practitioner, then you can join our directory,and we will link the way to do that in the description of this episode.I am so thankful for all of you who are already so supportive,
01:25who have maybe already downloaded the app today.If you have it yet,Anna Kate for women for life.We're tracking what's true together from period tracking to pregnancy to postpartum.Download Anna Kate today.All right.Today's episode is about Halloween.Should Christians celebrate Halloween?
01:47How do we approach Halloween?We've got all of that on today's episode of Relatable.Hey, y'all, welcome to Relatable.Happy Monday.Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend, that your week is off to a.great start. Hopefully it's getting a little bit cooler and fallier where you are. We have had so manyfake falls where I am. If you are anywhere south of the Mason Dixon, you have probably experienced thesame thing. Also, my friends in California, you've been telling me about your heat woes. San Diego is
02:26not used to the 105 heat that y'all had a couple weeks ago, so I hope that y'all are surviving.And if all else fails, you can be like I am today. It's probably going to be 85 degrees. I got my fallcostume on. Okay, that's what I do every year. I say, darn it, I am just going to dress like it'sfall. I will will it to be autumn even before it happened. So I've got my fall costume on. And speaking ofcostumes, we will be talking about the completely non-controversial topic of Halloween. EveryChristian agrees on this, right? We all are unified in this doctrine about Halloween, correct? No,this is very contentious. I've been talking about this probably every year of my podcast. I would say,since 2018.
03:07And so most of you are familiar with my take on it, which as much as I hate this word,I would call it nuanced.The reason I don't like that word is because I feel like sometimes it is overused to justifyconfusion and moral confusion and an unwillingness to go towards the truth.Oh, it's nuance.Oh, it's nuanced.But some things are actually nuanced.Some things have multiple layers to it.
03:31And let me just start out this episode by saying that it is okay if we don't allagree on this. Now, some of you are extremely passionate about me being wrong on this. Some of youhave changed your mind. Some of you agree with me. But this is, I just want to say up front,in my opinion, a Christian liberty issue. This is not a primary issue. I don't even know if it'ssecondary, maybe tertiary, maybe sometime after that. But this is not a salvation gospel issuein my book, in Ali Beth Stuckey's subjective book. But it is an important thing for us.to discuss because it has to do with how we engage in the culture, how we are salt and light.Does it look like extracting ourselves from this particular day in the mainstream sense entirely?
04:17Or is there a way for us to redeem it? Is there a way for us to use it in a way that glorifies God?Is it okay to dress up as long as it's not scary? And then also what else happened on October 31stthat we as Protestants are so thankful to God for. That, of course, is the Protestant Reformation.So we'll be getting into all of that today.First, a reminder, God's eternal plan of redemption.It is going off without a hitch.Today and every day is a day that the Lord has made so we can rejoice and be glad in it.Because every day we are living in light of the reality of the resurrection.
04:54So even if nothing else seems to be going right, everything seems to be falling apart aroundyou or everything seems to be falling apart in the world, you have all reasons.for anxiety and fear and paranoia and sadness and depression and all of these very real emotionsthat you may feel are haunting you. The truth is we always have a reason to rejoice. James 1tells us this crazy thing that we should find joy when we are facing trials of many kinds.Joy when we are facing trials. So the joy that we are told to have as Christians is actuallynot dependent upon whether our life is going good or not. We are actually told specifically,hey, when things are really hard, when you're being persecuted specifically for your faith,
05:38when you're going through these difficult things, when you're living through just theconsequences of the fall, or when you're living through the consequences of the sins of others,whatever it is that you're going through.Could be sickness.It could be all kinds of things that have befallen your family.You're actually to find joy because in those trials, we are learning perseverance.We are gaining steadfastness.we are cultivating faithfulness and God really cares about our holiness.
06:07He really cares about our sanctification.He really cares about working out our salvation with fear and trembling and he willreally stop at nothing to glorify himself by sanctifying his people.And sometimes that's scary because not a single one of us wants anything to go wrong.We don't want to be sad.We don't want anything bad to happen to us, of course.And so we just have to trust the Lord and to trust that his gospel,is enough for us to be joyful or his gospel is enough for us to be grateful the future that we have
06:39with him because of our salvation by grace through faith in Christ is enough to be hopeful is enough to evenbe happy and so we live in light of this reality which is absolutely fixed it doesn't changeit doesn't undulate it doesn't wax and wane and so that is the steadiness that we have in ChristHebrews 13 8 I love this verse and it was a verse that Ito a lot, especially during COVID when it just seemed like, okay, hang on a second, what the heck is goingon, what world are we raising our kids in? And that is that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday,today, today, and forever. Yesterday, today, and forever, isn't that what everyone is looking for?For some kind of stability, some kind of solid place to put our feet that we can trust in?
07:24As well as Job 42, too, nothing is too hard for you. No plan of yours can be thwarted.we can totally trust in the Lord.His eternal plan of redemption is never thrown off.It is never off track.It never takes a detour.It never takes an unexpected turn.God is sovereign over all of it.He cannot be hindered.
07:44He cannot be interrupted.He cannot be surprised.He does nothing arbitrarily.He does nothing accidentally.He is working all things together for the good of those who love him who are calledaccording to his purpose, Romans 828.So whatever you are going through today,just cling to those things.
08:00I've talked to so many of you who have told me that that reminder that God's eternal plan of redemptionis going off without a hitch has been such a buoy to you. And of course, that's not my truth. That's notAli Beth Stuckie's ism. That is biblical truth. That's what biblical truth does. It gives us clarity. It givesus courage. And it helps us hold on when things feel really, really chaotic. All right. Let's get into this, y'all.Let's get into Halloween with Christian love and charity. Can we do that? Can we do that? Can we dowhen we're talking about this? Because I know I'm going to get some spicy messages about yourdisagreement, which is okay. But let's try to approach this as charitably as we possibly can.It's one of those topics that we debate every year. Is it harmless? Is it a celebration of
08:47darkness that Christians should have no pardon whatsoever? Can we celebrate Halloween or not?How do we glorify God on October 31st? So what does scripture actually say about these things?First, let's talk about the camps that Christians fall into when it comes to Halloween.They're really four different categories of Christian participation or Christian viewing ofHalloween.The first one is abstinence, totally abstaining from anything to do with Halloween.They might have a harvest festival.They'll celebrate fall, as we'll talk about.
09:21They might celebrate Reformation Day.But this view says, look, this is a lot of darkness.This is a lot of death and decay.witchcraft, all of those things are satanic. Why would I participate in a day that glorifiesthat which calls evil? Why would I even attempt to navigate that in a way that could possiblyconfuse and scare my children? So that's one view of it. And then the second would be theopposite of that, which is full participation. There are those who think it's no big deal to bescared for your kids to be scared that they might say they know that it's not real. Their kids know that it's not real.
09:58they know that it's just fun and it's a way to maybe not make them, I'm trying to, you know,I'm trying to steal man their position here. It's a way to not make them scared of things and toshow them that, you know, Satan actually doesn't have power, that this is, Satan doesn't have thekind of power that they need to fear as Christians. And so it's really just not that serious.It's okay to be a little bit scary. It's okay to even make fun.of mummies and skeletons in all of that, that it's not actually demonic and Christians put toomuch stock into the idea of everything being satanic. So that would be possibly one position,the full participation. And then the third position that a lot of Christians take is partial
10:46participation or participation in the parts of Halloween that are not as obviouslyhorrifying. So maybe some trigger treating, some getting some, getting somecandy allowing their kids to dress up as certain things that are not scary. I will say this ispart of what I did growing up. My mom would never let me dress up like a witch or never let medress up like anything scary. She would never decorate our house for Halloween. I always wanted herto decorate our house for Halloween. She wouldn't do that. She would just decorate for fall and sheallowed me to go trick-or-treating, but we never could watch scary movies or glorify anythingscary. She was very serious about that. And so this is another thing that. And so this is another thing that.
11:28Christians do. They partially participate, but they try to avoid the things that are really,really dark. And then the fourth form of participation is what I would say my mom really does,which we'll get into a little bit more. And that is participation, probably partialparticipation with redemption. So not only participating in the parts of Halloween that are justkind of fun, the candy and the lighthearted costumes, but also using it.as an opportunity for evangelism, using it as an opportunity to share God's word with people.And we'll get into how my mom has done that and how she does that to this day.So those are kind of the four categories of how Christians are thinking about Halloween.
12:15And we'll get into specifically what they could look like, what's right about them and what'swrong about them.But let's back up first.Let's talk about the origins of Halloween because this is highly debated and really lays thegroundwork for how we can discuss and how we can debate what really is the best view when itcomes to our participation in this day. First, let me pause, tell you about our first sponsorfor the day, and that is fellowship home loan. So we're looking at the first buyer's marketin years for the housing market. That is really good for you. Rates have gone up, but that means
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13:28Start your application at fellowship home loans.com slash alley.And right now, you'll get an additional $500 back at closing.Fellowship home loans, mortgage lending by the book, nationwide mortgage bankers, DBA Fellowship Home Loans, Equal Housing Lender, NMLS number 819-382.Okay, so where does Halloween come from?We talked about this on an episode, on episode 697, okay?So quite a bit of time ago, a few years ago.And I talked with the guys from Coltish, the Coltish podcast,because they've been talking about the origins of Halloween for a while on their show.
14:14And they talk about how the origin story is very murky.The traditional account traces it partly to Sowin.an ancient Celtic festival marking the end of the harvest and beginning of the new year aroundNovember 1st. Now, according to this account, the Celts believed the boundary between the livingand the spirit worlds became thinner at this time, leading to rituals intended to appeaseor ward off spirit. So obviously a pagan mentality there. But according to Desiring God,that's John Piper's ministry, they note that Christianity has also contributed six.significantly to the holiday. The church established All Saints Day, eventually celebrated on
14:58November 1st, with the preceding evening becoming all Hallows Eve, or Halloween. Hallow meanssacred or hallowed means sacred. Some historians argue this date was chosen to supplant or replaceSowan, although that connection is disputed. So that's kind of the murky part of this.Medieval and early modern Christian customs also contributed to traditions resembling trick-or-treating,So souling was a practice where people went door to door receiving soul cakes in exchange for prayers for the dead.Obviously, that is not a biblical practice.So even if Christians were contributing to that custom, that is not a good thing.And Britain and Ireland, a separate practice, guising involved costume young people performing songs, poems, or tricks in exchange for food.
15:43These traditions eventually crossed the Atlantic mixed with other customs, including Guy Fawkes Day, bonfires, masks,pranks by the early 20th century, American Halloween had developed a reputation for destructivepranks helping spur the more family friendly practice of trick or treating. By the mid-20th century,Halloween had largely become a commercialized children's holiday centered on candy costumesand neighborhood festivities. So like so many of our holidays today, St. Patrick's Day, Valentine's Day,it started as one thing that it became commercialized. It became a way tosell things, sell candy, sell cards, sell costumes, and sell movies, and that's really what itbecame. By the 1970s and 1980s, horror movies, new age influences, broader cultural changes
16:33helped push Halloween imagery increasingly towards gore, sexuality, witchcraft, the occult.So that is more of a modern iteration, a modern evolution of Halloween.So Halloween is difficult to reduce based on all of this to either an ancient pagan holiday,or a Christian holiday.It developed over centuries from a mixture of pagan,Christian folk, immigrant, commercial traditions,and whatever its origins are,Christians still just have to evaluate.
17:03What are the modern practices?What are the meanings?And how should we as Christians respond,according to Scripture?Now, there's something else that happened on October 31stthat has nothing to do with Halloweenand has nothing to do with Catholic traditions of Halloween,of praying for the dead and things like that.
17:22And that has to do, that is the Protestant Reformation.We've talked about the Protestant Reformation many times on this show,specifically on our Halloween episodes,because this is a day, regardless of how you feel about Halloween,if you are a Protestant, we should know more about and we should celebrate.Martin Luther nailed his famous 95 Theses to the Wittenberg Church Door,or that's the, that's the lore anyway.We know that his 95 Theses existed.
17:50We don't know exactly how he pinned it to the door and what really that looked like.But he nailed, he posted somewhere his 95 Theses on October 31st, 1517.He was confronting through these 95 Theses, two religious observances that promoted false saintliness and exploited people's fear of judgment and purgatory.So monks, priests, bishops, and popes and Rome taught on biblical.doctrines like the selling of indulgences. The selling of indulgences is the belief that if youpay a certain amount of money to the Catholic Church, then your loved ones who have died mightspring themselves out of purgatory and earn their way into heaven, which of course is completelyanti-gospel. The treasury of merit. Again, this is just earning favor with God. This is trying to
18:41reconcile yourself to God and remit your sins through payments and through your ownfinancial sacrifice, and that is, again, the opposite of what the gospel teaches.They also taught during the time salvation through good works that in order to skippurgatory or in order to spend less time in purgatory, in order to go to heaven,you have to earn your way to God.While Luther never wanted to be a revolutionary, he wasn't trying to start his own denomination.He wasn't trying to start some kind of mutiny against Rome, but he saw this.a learned man and he realized, okay, right now the Catholic Church is teaching doctrines that are
19:24simply anti the book that we say that we believe in. They're anti-Bible and even more fundamentally,they are anti-gospel. He also took issue with the authority of the Pope that seemed tosupersede the authority of scripture, which really was causing so much confusion when it cameto people at the time not really knowing what is true about Christianity because most people,during this time could not read. And because they could not read the Bible for themselvesand because they were going to Mass that was only taught in Latin, they really had no ideawhat was going on. They had to trust the Pope. They had to trust their priests. Okay, if you saythat I have to pay money to get this person out of purgatory, I guess that's true. And to Luther,
20:10and understandably so, rightly so, he saw this as completely anti-Christianity. This is nottrue to the claim that the Catholic Church is simply the earliest church and is simply reflectiveof the faith and the practices of the apostles. That is clearly not true. It wasn't true in Luther'stime. And he saw that. So that was the context that prompted Luther's desire to refocus the churchon salvation by grace through faith on account of Christ, by the imputation of Christ's righteousnessto us. So that is what we as Protestants believe that Christ, when he died on the cross for our sins,when by grace through faith, we believe in him.We are given his righteousness.
20:53We are justified all at once.justification is not a process, but we are justified when we are saved.And then we get the righteousness of Christ.And because we get the righteousness of Christ, by Christ sacrifice,we are totally reconciled to God.We have boldness and access with confidence to him right then.We don't have to earn it.There's nothing that we can do to pay our way.
21:13But that is the gospel.By grace alone through faith alone.Luther was passionate about this.And it is obviously God's providence that as Luther was raising a respectful ruckus about all thesefalse doctrines of Rome, that the printing press was also invented. So he took pains to translatethe Bible into German, into the common language. So more people would be able to read it. Andbecause of the invention of the printing press that providentially coincided at the same timeas Luther and others throughout Europe, speaking about the truth of the gospel, the gospel,
21:48and God's word spread like wildfire.And once the truth was unleashed, that's really what started the Reformation.It wasn't one person leading a mutiny against Rome.That's not what he intended to do.But that is what happened.And of course, I believe by the total and complete grace and power of God that happened.And I'm so thankful for it.Here's one thing that Luther said that was just completely counter to so many beliefs at the time.
22:13He said, God receives none but those who are forsaken.Restores health to none, but those who are sick.sight to none but the blind and life to none but the dead okay the dead can't earn their way to godhe does not give saintliness to any but sinners nor wisdom to any but fools in short he has mercy onnone but the wretched and gives grace to none but those who are in disgrace therefore no arrogant saintor just or wise man can be material for god neither can he do the work of god but he remains confined with hisown work and makes of himself a fictitious ostensible false and deceitful saint that is ahypocrite. You can't earn your way to God. You can't earn your way to God. The early reformers key
22:53tenets were this, justification by faith alone, by grace alone, through faith alone. It's essential tothe gospel. The gospel is essential, they argue, to Christianity and to salvation. The gospel isessential to a church's being a true church. To reject justification by faith alone, the reformersbelieved is to reject the gospel and to fall as a church. By grace alone, these are thethe five solas. You see, I have this little token right here on my necklace, and this is theMartin Luther's rose, and it has the five solas around it. It's funny. Some people think that this islike some kind of Catholic emblem from afar because they can't really see it. I'm like,it's actually the exact opposite. It's the five solas. By grace alone, through faith alone,
23:40and Christ alone, according to scripture alone, for God's glory alone. Good works are important,but they are an outworking of that faith that justifies you.They do not earn your salvation.That's how we reconcile Ephesians 2 with the passage in James that says faith withoutworks is dead.And also by grace, you have been saved through faith.This is not your own doing.It is a gift of God that can't be earned through works.
24:04Paul says it over and over again in Ephesians too.We reconcile that by saying that faith is the initiator, the source of those good works,and that the good works are a product of that faith,not a prerequisite for it.So those are the five solas that Protestants, that Protestantism relies on.That is something that we should all know about, that we should all celebrate onOctober 31st, no matter what the origins of Halloween are, no matter what four categoriesyou fall into, we can know for sure that if we are celebrating the beauty of the truths
24:39of the Reformation, then we are glorifying God.because we're celebrating the gospel and we're celebrating more people knowing about the gospel.Now, I know a lot of my Catholic friends out there who I really respect and I really love and agree with on so many different things.They'll say, how can you celebrate this?I see this every year.How can you possibly celebrate this when there's so much division now and Protestantism has allowed for all of these different heresies?Well, first of all, I would say there's divisions within the Catholic Church.There are things that I believe not to be biblical and not to be true dogmas, especially
25:16Marian dogmas, that I believe not to have any support in scripture whatsoever in the CatholicChurch.So there's not unity.There's not infallible truth necessarily or infallible truth, not even not necessarily,but within the Catholic Church.And so you don't really have that on Protestants, but also division in pursuit of the truthis worth it.Like it's the same argument for, oh, how good?
25:41would you be happy for the Revolutionary War and the establishment of America,when now you have all these different states and you're not just under one kingdom?Like, that's basically the same argument.We would say that having these states and having these state and local governmentsthat are democratized and are not ruled completely by the federal government,even with all of our disagreements between states and between parties,is better than being ruled under tyranny.And so it's a similar principle.
26:08It's a similar argument, even though there are.churches that claim to be Protestant, that claim to be a part of a particulardenomination, that don't preach the things that are true.We're thankful for the freedom and for the autonomy to preach God's word, to know God'sword, and to believe God's word in its entirety as the only inerrant source of wisdomthat we have.All right.So no matter where you fall in Halloween, like Protestants, we can unify on that, the love
26:39of the gospel and the celebration of the gospel.Now, here are those four categories again, which includes what I think Christians should not celebrateat all, what we should absolutely not do. And what I think from my opinion, we can actually do when itcomes to Halloween. Let me pause, tell you about our next sponsor. It's seven weeks coffee. SevenWeeks Coffee is America's pro-life coffee company. We love seven weeks in our home. It tastes great.We love that it's a family-owned company. Love, love, love that 10% of every sale of seven weekscoffee goes to pregnancy centers. They have raised over two million dollars for these pregnancycenters across the country that has translated into saving thousands of little lives through free
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27:50Go to 7weeks Coffee.com.Save 15% on your first subscription.Use code Alley today for an extra 10% off your first order.That's 7week.7week coffee.com code Alley.Okay.Option number one for Christians.total abstinence. Maybe you are celebrating the Protestant Reformation or maybe you are a Catholicand you're not celebrating the Protestant Reformation, but you don't want to celebrate Halloween either.
28:22That would look like, again, not going trick-or-treating, just celebrating the harvest, fall,just living like it's any other day. I think, this is my opinion, I think that's a totallylegitimate Christian choice. I definitely know and respect a lot of people.who just think, you know what, I'm not even going to try to tow the line here.I don't want it to be confusing to my children.And I do believe that teaching children contacts of things can be really difficult whenthey're young.It's easier when they're older.
28:54It's hard when they're little because kids are very black and white.And so if you're like, you know what?Sure, I could dress them up as Paw Patrol or I could dress them up like an angel and thatmight be fine.But then when you're going to trick-or-treating and you're seeing the scary skeletons and all of thegore, you're trying to teach your kids, yeah, that's not okay. Then you walk to the next housewith pumpkins. This is okay. You're like, okay, you know what? I just don't even want to participatein that. Maybe you're concerned about just participating in darkness in general. That's not something
29:24that you think Christian should be a part of. I think that is totally, totally fine and understandable.Here's what I would caution those who are in this camp of saying, no, we absolutely cannot participatein darkness at all. It means.needs to come from a place of wisdom and trusting God, a place of peace and not a place of superstitionand paranoia and giving Satan too much credit. First, all of us need to appeal to James 1.5.If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach,and it will be given him. This is something that we can ask the Lord about, to ask the Lord fordiscernment. Remember, we've talked about a lot. The Desernment. The Desernation.
30:09decernary, which is the Latin word for discern, it literally means to sift. And so you are takingwhat you want and you are letting go of what you don't. Sifting through like a fine mesh sieve is muchmore particular than just deciding between good and bad, figuring out, okay, is this a diamond?Is this just a dirty rock? That's pretty easy. When it comes to deciding between what's good andbest, that takes a much stronger filter that I believe requires the Holy Spirit and the Wordof God to really help us work through that. But we need to remember that this day in itself is notinnately evil. It is not innately dark. We don't need to walk around worried about,oh my goodness, or the spirit's out to get me. No, no, no. If you are a Christian, he who is in you
31:05is greater than he who is in the world. And that is true every single day. Romans 8 is trueevery single day that you are more than a conquer through him who loves you. Psalm 118 24 reminds us thatthis is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. That is every day. Not every dayexcept for October 31st. That is every single day that we can rejoice, that we bring our joy,our light, our evangelism, our generosity, our charity into October 31st. That is every single day that we can rejoice. That is every single day that we bring our joy, ourto October 31st, just as we do every other day.I don't think that you need to hide out on this day.I don't think that you need to do any extra Hail Mary's if you're a Catholic on this day.
31:44I don't think if you're a Protestant on this day that you need to be extra fearful andfeel the sense of darkness.Actually, you shouldn't because you are a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit.Paul also makes it clear in Romans 14 that in regard to days and festivals, there is room forChristians to celebrate differently.Now, I understand some of you might say, no, no, no, no, that's not what he's talking about.It's a mixture of light and darkness that we should not be a part of.But I think that there's a principle here that we can look to and possibly apply.
32:16One person, he says esteems one day is better than another, while another esteems all days alike.Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord.The one who eats eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God,while the one who abstains abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.Now, what I want to say, regardless of even the Halloween conversation here,the principle that I think that we can apply is that whatever we do,whether you are eating candy or not, whether you are dressing up as an angel or not,
32:49any day of the week, we do it for the glory of God.We do it in honor of the Lord.So I believe that abstaining from Halloween in all of its traditional celebration,is a totally valid option, but you do it not from a place of conspiracy, not from a place of paranoia,not from a place as like the devil is out to get me and my children today, but from a place of faith,from a place of wanting to desire to glorify God as much as you possibly can, from a place ofconfidence in your place in God's kingdom and the Holy Spirit, which works as the deposit for youand your salvation and your faith and your confidence in him and the hope that we have in glory,
33:35like you should walk through this day totally joyful and fearless.Okay, so option two, full participation, full participation.There are things, this is the other side of the spectrum, obviously.It's no big deal.People are making a big deal of it, you know, real death and real decay, real demonicactivity doesn't look like silly, googly eyes and people dressing up like mummy.and things like that.And so it doesn't even have any correlation with the satanic.
34:06I would push back against that position because it is a representation of darkness.And even if it's a cartoonish representation of darkness, it doesn't mean that it's somethingto be celebrated.If we know that even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light, we could also say thathis minions and his work can disguise themselves as a, um,not so scary characters or cartoonish representations of darkness.In Ephesians, Paul makes it clear that Christians don't partake in darkness.Ephesians 5, 8 through 11.
34:40Therefore do not become partners with them for at one time you are darkness,but now you are light in the Lord.Walk as children of light, for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true,and try to discern, there's that word again, what is pleasing to the Lord.Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead,said, expose them.Philippians 4 8 through 9 also speaks to this.Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure,
35:08whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable.If there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things,what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things,and the God of peace will be with you.God is saying, look, all of these things, purity, loveliness, excellence, thingsthat are praiseworthy, all of these things will facilitate.and cultivate peace in you that comes from God.So when your children see Halloween decorations that celebrate things like death and darkness
35:37and decay, we should actually make clear that we don't participate in those things,that you really shouldn't blur the lines there.Whether you participate or not, and we'll get into the partial participation in a minute,I really don't think that there should be a question of this.It's also just not loving to your children.it's not loving to your neighbors to try to frighten them in this way and even give them a morbidcuriosity or interest in the things of darkness because they might seem innocent or silly orcartoonish now, but they actually have a representation like in the underworld.
36:15They have a representation or a parallel in Satan's domain of darkness.And Satan loves death.He loves decay and he loves scary.he loves cultivating fear and anxiety, and we should participate in nothing that purposelycultivates fear and anxiety and glorifies death and decay. Spiritual warfare is very real.In Ephesians, Paul writes about this in Ephesians 6 that we don't wrestle againstLush and blood, but against rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over thispresent darkness. So it's not just the one costume. It's not just the one skeleton in your yard.
36:56it's about what it really represents.The demonic is real.And to dismiss that or minimize that is actually exactly what Satan wants.If you read screw tape letters, if you want a spooky but edifying thing to read this October,you should read screw tape letters by C.S. Lewis because you will see in this fictionalizedrepresentation of the demonic what it can actually look like, Satan does not care whetheryou blatantly worship him or not.Actually, I think he believes that it's better for you to think.
37:26that you're worshipping something that's, or doing something that's innocent or innocuous,not that big of a deal when really you are doing something that he enjoys. Again, he disguiseshimself as an angel of light. Ephesians 2, 1 through 3, and you were dead in the trespassesand sins in which he once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince ofthe power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whomwe all once walked in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and themind and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. The next sentence is like themost glorious sentence in scripture, I think, but God being rich in mercy because of the love with
38:04which he loved us, made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved throughfaith. That's that Reformation gospel truth. Again, by grace you have been saved through faith.So right there, we see the juxtaposition between the darkness, the domain of darkness,that is death and then the kingdom of light, which is life in Christ.Life and light should be celebrated, not darkness and death.Also, the third thing here that I would warn people against,if they are for this like full participation thing, is that witchcraft is real,the occult is real because the demonic is real and because demonic influence and
38:43spiritual warfare is we are real.Witchcraft and the occult are real and they are not harmless.In fact, they are so harmful and they are so.so wrong that they carried the weight of the death penalty with them if God's people practicedthese things in the Old Testament. We see that in Deuteronomy 1810 through 12. There shall not be foundamong you anyone who burns his son or daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divinationor tells fortunes or interprets omens. So like your Ouija born, he is putting on par with childsacrifice. Going to a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer, that is one who speaks to
39:18the dead, by the way. He's saying that is in the same category as offering your baby up to be sacrificed.That's how bad it is. Like, it is so bad to try to channel other powers other than God himself that hebelieved in the Old Testament, or of course, God never changes, but he ordered in the Old Testamentthat you had to die because of that. That was so infecting to a society, so damaging to a people,that you had to purge that. You had to purge that completely by executing the person.Of course, because God never changes, his truths never change, his principles never change,we don't live under the same Old Testament law that ancient Israel did, but we can look at his lawsand say, okay, what is God communicating here? And of course, we see the prohibition against
40:06witchcraft in all works of darkness echoed in the New Testament as well. I just don't think it isat all an option for Christians to not only fully participate inHalloween and all of its darkness and scariness. But I also just don't think that Christians shouldbe a fan of horror in general. Like, I don't think you should be reading books that make youscared. I don't think that you should be listening to true crime podcasts that make you scared.I don't think you should be watching movies that make you scared. And I have. Like, I'm to, I've seenRosemary's baby. Like, I've seen the really scary movies out there. And now I'm like, oh, I knowwhy my mom didn't want me to watch signs when I was like in sixth grade. It scared me.
40:47Like being scared is not like how many times?How many times do we read throughout scripture from Jesus and in the Old Testament.Do not fear.Do not fear.And yet we purposely consume content that is meant to make us scared.I don't think we often think about like the horror content,the scary content, law and order SVU, that you are imbibing that is actually a directcontradiction of Jesus's command to not fear or be anxious about anything.
41:23So we shouldn't be facilitating fear.And then you've got the other option, which is partial participation.We'll get into that in just a second.Let me tell you about good ranchers.Okay, we're talking about some bad things.Let me tell you about something good.That's good ranchers.The good ranchers that you are getting your meat from when you use good ranchers are
41:40all American.American farmers, American ranchers, the backbone of American industry that reallyhas been the backbone from the very beginning. These are, in many cases, these generationalfarms that are trying so hard to stay afloat, but they need our support. They treat their animalswell. They are sometimes like a bulwark against the technological industrialization that istaking over our farmland because a lot of these farmers and ranchers are saying, no, I don'tcare how much money you give me. Like, I'm going to continue to feed my community and feed mycountry, they need to be rewarded for that, not punished, uh, punished for that. So how we do that is
42:20we support them by buying meat from American farms and ranches. You do that with good ranchers.It's the easiest way to vote with your dollar. They send you all American beef, chicken,steak, seafood, whatever you want, whatever you want to order right to your front door on dryice. And then you're supporting American farms and you have really good meat on your kitchen tableevery night, just like we do. Good ranchers.com slash alley. You'll get $50 off anything on their site.good ranchers.com slash alley. Okay, third option, which I think probably describes a lot of people in thisaudience, and that is partial participation. So this particular position would say, okay, well, candy is it inherentlydemonic? Costumes don't have to celebrate any form of darkness at all. Like if you're dressing up
43:09like a school bus or like a pumpkin, there's nothing dark or evil about that. Carving pumpkinsdoes not have to glorify evil. If you do trunk or treat at your,a church, that can be very glorifying. And so this position would say, as long as you abstain frompartaking in or glorifying evil or death or the occult or participating in this at all,scaring yourself, scaring your children, then you can do these fun activities. My opinion,I think that this is a fine option. It's a fine option. I do not think that this is simple.I don't think that this is flirting with evil. I think it's a way to just have a funday with your kids. Like if you allow your kids to dress up for different kinds of days in the
43:55year, I think it's okay for you to call this Halloween, which comes from all Hallows Eve,and for you to eat some candy and for you to have fun with your family and for you to dress up.I would simply argue that for the Christian, there is an even better option than that.So I would say that's like a good slash neutral option, but I think the redemptive participationis what Christians can do.I'm not saying that you have to do it.I think number one, number three, and number four are all viable options.But if you are going to go with option number three, the partial participation,
44:33then I think you should switch on over to option number four,which is redemptive participation.And this is something that my mom has set an example on for me for many years.and that is using giving out candy, trick or treating as an evangelism opportunity.So with every bag of candy or every piece of candy that she hands out, she also hands out basicallya gospel tract.She has John 316 or whatever the Bible verse is printed on little pieces of paper.She'll put them, she'll attach them to the pieces of candy or put them in little plastic bags.
45:11She'll sit out front in her front lawn and she will talk to.the kids that come. She'll talk to the families that come. She'll share the gospel with them.She'll show kindness to them. She'll make sure that they have whatever materials she has createdthat day that tells them the truth of God's love for them. And the area where they live isheavily, I would say, or has a good percentage of people who are not Christian. They are ofother religions and might not know the gospel at all. And so she reallyhas had the opportunity to share the love of Jesus with him.What other time she would say,
45:51what other time of year do you have people coming to your home and asking you forsomething?This is like the easiest evangelism opportunity possible.To me, this is the best option.Number four, I think is the best option.The reason why I think it's the best option,even though I understand the benefits of the first option,just completely abstaining whatsoever,
46:14your children from any visualization or glorification of darkness at all.This is saying, look, again, he who is in me is greater than he who is in the world.The world is dark.There is demonic spiritual warfare going on.That's something that exists.But I'm going to redeem it.I'm going to infuse light into it.I'm going to overcome evil with good.
46:37And there is nothing too dark for me as a Christian who has the Holy Spirit inside meto enter and preach the gospel into.So that's what my mom has done for many years.And it's not only sharing the gospel as people come to her house for candy.She also makes these little signs and I'll put a picture up.She makes these little signs that are really cute and they're like a little Halloweensize.I don't know where she makes them.
47:06She creates them.She like creates them, I guess, on her computer and then she gets them printed out.but there are these little banners that she puts in her front lawn,and they're like, for example, one like has a little Halloween owl on there.And it was, and the verse is like,whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.Light and the darkness kind of verses, things like that.And so the Word of God doesn't return void.
47:32And she is using a day that most people celebrate,that most people participate in to catch people's attentionand to draw them toward the word of God.This could also be a way to teach your children not to fear Satan,but to see themselves as an agent of order and agent of light.Colossians 1.13 through 14,He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved sonin whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
48:01I think it's so important to emphasize that,that right now as a Christian, you don't live in the domain of darkness.It doesn't matter how many of your neighbors are celebrating Halloween.That neighborhood is not the domain of darkness.You live in the kingdom of his beloved son.You live in the kingdom of light.So where you are, you have the power of light and the power of Christ inside you.So wherever you go, you have the power to infuse that light and infuse that truth and goodness.
48:33Your neighbors might be living in the domain of darkness.all the more reason for you to reach out to them. Now, you might say you already share the gospelwith lots of people. You don't need to do that on Halloween because you think it offers too muchconfusion. I think that's fair. If you are someone who already is an active evangelist and you'reactively sharing the gospel with your neighbors and it's your conviction not to participate at all,I think that's fair. But if you're looking for an opportunity to talk to the people who live aroundyou about the gospel, I think that this is a really good one. First John four, four,little children, you are from God and have overcome them.
49:07For he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.As Christians, we are called to walk differently from the world, which is why I think thatsecond option of full participation just isn't it for us.1. John 1.7.But if we walk in light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and theblood of Jesus' system cleanses us from all sin.There's another part of this that I think is really important that we have to touch onwhen it comes to like what we are teaching our,
49:34what we are teaching our children on this particular subject.Let me go ahead and tell you about our next sponsor.And it is EveryLife.This is one of my favorite pro-life sponsors.We use their diapers and their wipes.We would not be using Every Life diapers and wipes if they didn't work well.Because no matter how much I might love a company's values,when it comes to diapers, like nobody has time for like blowouts and
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50:15So check, check, check with Every Life.We're about to be right in the diaper stage againbecause we are going to have a newbornand a newborn requires lots of diapersand we will be using EveryLife diapers.They've got a deal going on right now.If you go to Everylife.com,use code to Alley 10.
50:31you'll get 10% off your first order today.Everylife.com code alley 10.There's another point to this that I think is important to emphasize for our kidsthat everything belongs to God.The entire world belongs to God.Psalm 24 and 1 says the earth is the lords and the fullness thereof.The world and those who dwell their end.Genesis 1 reminds us that God made everything.
51:03We see that he made everything that swarms in the world.the waters, everything that flies in the air. Then in Genesis 1, 24, he says, let the earthbring forth living creatures according to their kinds, livestock and creeping things and beastsof the earth according to their kinds. So all of the creatures of the earth God created. He createdthem with purpose and intention and in order and for his glory. So black cats and spiders and batsand these kinds of things that are typically used as mascots for Halloween are not innatelyevil. Again, God created them. They are part of his creation, and we don't need to teach our childrento fear those things inherently. We can also teach them that death does not win. Secular culture
51:49typically tends to avoid the topic of death as taboo or by inappropriately celebrating death anddecay. We don't have to fall into either of those categories, either of those errors. We don't want toglorify death. We know that it's sad. We know that Jesus himself, the God of the universe,wept when Lazarus died, even knowing that he was going to raise him from the dead,just a few moments later, death is a result of the fall.The fall is tragic.It is responsible for so much for all of the sadness and oppression and injusticethat we have seen throughout human history.
52:24And so it's not something that we didn't want to celebrate, but it's also a fact of life.And even Paul says, to live as Christ and to die is gain.So we as Christians understand that for us, dying is to be.dying is to be in full fellowship with Christ. And there is going to be a resurrection of thebodies one day because of the bodily resurrection of Christ. And so that's why we say in 1stCorinthians 1555, oh, death where is your victory? Oh, death where is your sting? So Christiansdon't believe that death is something that we should avoid. It's not something to fear, but it's also,again, not something that we want to make light of because it does mark the beginning of our
53:04journey and every soul on earth will either end up in hell or heaven in perfectfellowship with his or her creator.So how we spend our life here and how we die and what we believe before we die reallymatters.It's not something that we should handle flippantly at all.So that's the category that I try to fall into, this fourth category of partial participationwith redemptive participation, that I'm not.going to glorify the things that God calls darkness. I'm not going to glorify anything that is
53:38truly demonic or satanic or fear-inducing. I'm not going to teach my kids that those things areokay, but I am also not going to be paranoid. I'm not going to live in fear. People have asked me,because my due date is November 1st, are you worried that your baby is going to come on Halloween?No, I'm not. On Reformation Day, maybe we'll name the child Martin Luther. If he's a boy, we don't know.I can't tell you.I know you don't know.I'm not revealing the gender quite yet.But maybe we will name our child five Sola's Stucky in celebration of Reformation Day.
54:16So no, I'm not worried about that because every day, every day is the Lord's.And I just don't want to give too much significance to just another day on the calendarjust because there are people who do like Satan and do like the things that he producesthat they might think that day is special.they just don't know that every day is a day for Christians to rejoice. Every day Jesus is the same. Every day thegospel is true. Every day we get closer to the fullness of the fruition of our hope that we have in Christcloser to the day where Jesus is coming back and he is going to make all things new. So I just don'tgive a lot of heftiness to that day and I just take it as another opportunity to try to share the gospel.
55:00Now here are some Bible verses that you could use to put in your lawn and try to make cute for Halloween.And you're more creative probably than I am.I'm creative.I'm not artistic.So I could never make something like this.But a lot of you are artistic out there.And you could make something like this.But I have one more sponsor.
55:20So let me read that one sponsor.And then I'll tell you these Bible verses that you could use.Preborn, this is really good news, has saved over 50,000 babies at theirclinics this year. Isn't that incredible? More than 5,100 commitments to Christ through the ministryof preborn this year alone. You can be a part of that. You can be a part of that first encounter bycovering the cost of a life-saving ultrasound for a woman who walks into a pre-born clinic. It's just $28.Can you donate $28 today? Can you put your money where your heart is and help save a lifeand give the opportunity for someone who works at pre-born to share the gospel with this scared
55:57mom and to hear that God loves her and is with her and loves her baby. Go to preborn.comslash Allie. Make your donation today. That's preborn.com slash alley. All right. Here are here are theverses that you could use in this redemptive way and this fun Halloween kind of way. Like my mom'sdone Matthew 516. Let your light shine. Romans 10.13. Everyone who calls who calls upon thename of the Lord will be saved.Ephesians 5, 8, walk as children of light.That's another one that she has.Psalm 139.14.
56:37I am fearfully and wonderfully made fearfully.1 Corinthians 15 55.Oh, death.Where is your sting?Again, the word of God doesn't return void.If you don't want to celebrate these or decorate these rather, like in aHalloweenish way, you could use them at a fall way.And you could have people drive by your house or walk by your house.
56:59see a Bible verse and you just never know how God is going to plant seeds.So that is my final pitch to you for the redemptive participation option.Again, I know that Christians have a variety of opinions on this, and I'm happy to hear youropinions in the comments.But I think this is a great opportunity for Christians to show our joy as a contrast tothe just heaviness of the world, especially on a day like Halloween.All right, can't wait to hear what you think.And your opinions in the comments and in my messages,
57:34I will talk to you guys soon and see you on Wednesday.
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