Jeremy L. Berg

It’s that diabolical week again. On October 31st, many paranoid Christians will once again be hunkered down in their basements (if not at a “Harvest Party” at church) with their front porch lights turned off holding prayer vigils to ward off those sinners who participate in this evil holiday.

Let’s be honest: the cute little ghosts and goblins, witches and vampires knocking on your darkened door with disappointment that you’re not home are not the evil we should be placing in the crosshairs of our spiritual warfare offensives.

Doesn’t the Bible itself warn us that “Satan disguises himself as an angel of light”? So, why then do many well-meaning Christians get so bent out of shape about all these innocent children disguised as angels of darkness?

Might I suggest that the Evil One is much more powerfully at work in the ordinary business of our lives: the 10-year grudge we’ve been holding with a family member, our enormous financial debt weighing us down, the new luxury car we just bought to prop up our status, the job that gets more of our time than our spouse and kids, the secret sin we’re afraid to bring out into the light because it would shatter our shiny Christian veneer of self-righteousness, and so on.

Yes, I know all about the pagan origins and godless rituals practiced by druid priests hundreds of years ago on “All Hallow’s Eve.” Let’s steer clear of that stuff, and not glorify evil.  But I think the holiday as it is celebrated today is something altogether different.

Honestly, the scariest thing I’ve seen this Halloween is the fact that the 171 million Americans participating in Halloween in 2016 spent over 8.3 billion dollars in candy, costumes, and party attire!  Halloween spending continues to be in second place only to Christmas. Satan must giggle when he does the math and realizes that 6 billion dollars could bring clean water and sewers to the entire Third World, and we just wasted it on plastic spiders and costumes we’ll wear only once. That scary hayride and haunted house down the street we’re wagging our finger at and avoiding might actually be raising money for orphans!

If you want to release some steam and wag your finger this Halloween, let’s have some fun at the Devil’s expense. Luther says, “The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn.” Or, St. Thomas More similarly writes, “The devil…that proud spirit…cannot endure to be mocked.” C. S. Lewis would urge us to avoid two extremes as we do so:

“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.”

Yes, the Evil One is real but “we are not unaware of his schemes” (2 Cor. 2:11). The cross has disarmed his power, and “greater is He who is in us, than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).

So, here’s my challenge this year: Let’s all just lighten up a bit, turn on the outside lights and brighten some kids’ night with a piece of candy and a Christian smile!  This isn’t “the Devil’s Night” as they say.  That was probably last night or the night before.

“Do everything [this Halloween] readily and cheerfully – no bickering, no second-guessing allowed! Go out into the world uncorrupted, a breath of fresh air in this squalid and polluted society. Provide people with a glimpse of good living and of the living God. Carry the light-giving Message into the night”  (Phil 2:14-15  Message).