Comments on: Halloween–Clarifying Yesterday’s Post

By: Buhunumndox

Buhunumndox — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 02:17:23 +0000

I really enjoyed reading your article, keep on writing such exciting stuff!

By: Kelly L

Kelly L — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:50:04 +0000

Corrie,
I would submit that the number of different religions may or may not be linked to Luther’s objections. And, being only a Christ and Bible follower (not man made religion), I would agree with many of his objections. In the times of Luther, dissenters were faced with persecution and loss of lively hood/home at the least, and, at the most, torture and death.
The source of all the different religions is, at its base, Satan. However, the self exalting mind of humanity caused murderous division whose sin root is still evident in present day. This division and false doctrine did not originate with Luther, Paul warned of it in the Bible. To lay the blame at one man’s feet is far stretching to say the least. The blame lies within all of us who turn our nose at other doctrine and elevate what man has taught above what the Bible has taught with Holy Spirit. We have not, in past generations, nor sadly now, recognized that the world will not recognize Christ as the Son of God until the body is one. (See Jesus’ prayer for His followers) Until the body gets past the meaningless divisions in doctrine which do not interfere with salvation, and turns towards our similarities and love of God/Christ/Holy Spirit, we cannot be one. And WE are preventing the world from knowing the One True God.

By: Corrie

Corrie — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:20:10 +0000

We don’t participate in Halloween either. It doesn’t really matter to me where the celebration came from or what different symbols mean. Modern day Halloween is full of darkness and fear and evil, and that is enough to want to keep my children from having anything to do with the typical celebration. We do celebrate All Saints though (we are Catholic). Basically, we just get together with friends and learn about the lives of the saints and eat food

I have never heard about “Reformation Day” celebrations. That’s a new one to me. So few protesants agree with Luther’s beliefs on many issues (Marian doctrine, for one), it would surprise me to see them celebrate his life. As for celebrating the action of breaking from the Catholic Church, I am not sure what victory is being celebrating. As a result of Luther’s break, thousands of new religions have been formed, resulting in a very broken body. Some of Luther’s objections were probably vaild, but the way he went about things was wrong. Scraping 1500 years of teaching and venturing off to start your own thing is not exactly commendable. I would argue that the resulting brokeness of the body, evident in the thousands of different sects, was perhaps a victory for Satan. United we stand, divided we fall. Because of Luther’s revolt, christians are divided, and that dividedness has led to a failure to brings souls to Christ in the way only a united church could do.

These are just some thoughts I have had after reading this blog entry.

By: Word Warrior

Word Warrior — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:15:19 +0000

Thank you, Andrea. Yes, I knew what you were bringing up, I just wanted to make it clear if anyone was misunderstanding me!

By: Andrea

Andrea — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:43:25 +0000

I don’t know if this will even get read as you have gone on to another post, but…
I was one of the ones who took issue with your post. I had suggested watching the documentary about halloween.
I wasn’t trying to suggest that you are celebrating or embracing halloween. My suggestion of the movie was to dispute the “myth” idea of origin and to ask the other commenters who do embrace halloween specific practices to think twice about what they are doing. I was truly trying to generate genuine discussion.

We do not “hide” at halloween. Our neighbors, Christian and non, know that we don’t celebrate halloween and still love us We have still been able to have quite a bit of impact in our neighborhood for Christ.
We also didn’t celebrate Christmas (although we did many service projects around that time of year)for about 13 years, so we are not ones of “silly inconsistencies”. We started celebrating Christmas about six years ago because “currently” it is a Christian holiday. We keep it pretty simple. I could write a much longer paper on all our Christmas journey and other things that have pagan origins.
The point is that there are unspeakable things that “currently” go on during halloween and that we should be sure to avoid things that are decidedly halloween practices.

Not sure where your author came up with his facts in the article. There are clear sources and origins for most of the practices of halloween. For instance, the jack o lantern wasn’t a “mockery” of anything. When the pagans put the jack o lantern on their front threshhold, they were in essence saying “We sympathize with your cause, Satan so don’t bother us”. This was from another documentary that of course I can’t remember the name. John Piper, Chuck Colson and others have written articles about the origins of halloween as well.

Also not sure how Romans 14 comes in since it is talking about choosing whether to venerate a day to the Lord or not…seems to me that most of the people who were taking issue were just taking issue with participating in activities that actually represent something evil.

Again as I said in my original post, I don’t have any problem with people celebrating Reformation Day or something at Halloween! What a great idea!

By: Jen in al

Jen in al — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:44:14 +0000

Kelly, you are so great! in my mind, i didn’t think you were actually condoning or encouraging everyone to follow the author of the article’s advice necessarily just bringing up some food for thought. JFTR my comments were more responses to particular comments made and what i got from the article. I so appreciate your heart to encourage us to think about what we as Christians do and why we do it! Solo deo gloria! Blessings, jen in al

By: Diane

Diane — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:17:21 +0000

I’m glad you clarified your thoughts/feelings/opinions/whatevah;)

And I loved what Margaret said so much, I think I’ll let it be said again: “Let us read Romans 14 again, be convinced in our own minds, and do what we do with the purpose of honoring the Lord, without spending time fussing over whether or not our neighbor is doing things our way. ”

By: Margaret

Margaret — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 02:59:23 +0000

I’m glad you clarified.

On a tangent…
I must say, I’ve been a little surprised and saddened to see some very haughty attitudes going around about any sort of celebration at all. It reminds me of the holier-than-thou attitudes of Jehovah’s Witnesses I ran into as a child. “We’re the *real* Christians. We don’t *need* birthdays or Christmas. We’re doing things God’s way, and you’re not!”

Let us read Romans 14 again, be convinced in our own minds, and do what we do with the purpose of honoring the Lord, without spending time fussing over whether or not our neighbor is doing things our way.

By: Word Warrior

Word Warrior — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 23:52:08 +0000

Dee,

In defense of celebration, it is not “following” to celebrate or remember, etc. We have an unspoken mantra at our church: “God’s people should be the most celebratory of all.”

If you’ll look back at Scripture, God established all sorts of points of remembrance and celebrations to help remind His people of certain historical things. I think it should be no different now. How easily we forget our spiritual heritage if we don’t establish “Ebenezers” to do so.

By: Luci

Luci — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 23:10:15 +0000

I also was pretty shocked by the comments! You were quite clear that, in your opinion (which I share), we should celebrate “Halloween” in a totally different way than the way in which the world celebrates it. I really enjoyed your post and found myself agreeing with so much of it that I forwarded it on to a bunch of friends My fiance also really appreciated it!