So, I have not done a good blog post in a while (and seen as I am going to see Thor 2 tonight I imagine I will post a few over the next few days) CW bla bla bla.

But seen as it's almost here, I decided that I would like to do a little piece on Halloween!

Introduction:

So, these are my views on Halloween (from a Christian perspective) and I know that these will differ from your many of the people who read this. Rather then dismissing it, I would love for you to read it and then write a reply as to your views or ask me a question and I will go deeper (I would love to write for hours but sadly I have work and can't cover everything in this blog post).

Over the last 10 years, Halloween has become the 3rd highest grossing celebration (after Christmas and Easter) each year. For many people, they have not even though about what they are doing/why or what Halloween even stands for. Is it really harmless? Just a bit of fun? Lets take a look:

1 Halloween Celebrates Evil

People celebrate Halloween in different ways, however at the core it is an event that celebrates the dark, creepy and scary. Each year children and adults dress up as "evil" witches, demons, ghosts and vampires. You can even get a costume as a psychopathic murderer, with a bloody chain saw and butchers knifes. This is hardly harmless! Whatever view we about life, we all take it for granted that our society should spend time and energy encouraging children to are for others and to know the difference between right and wrong. Yet on this one day, we throw all those values away and glorify everything that is evil and unpleasant. Talk about mixed messages!

2 Halloween Is Unhelpful

We live in a world where every parent and teacher takes care to warn children about strangers and that they can pose a threat and that you should take precautions. Yet at Halloween we disregard all of this and encourage children to knock on random doors and accept sweets from strangers, yet another mixed message!

3 Halloween Trivialises Bad Things

No one is in doubt that evil is serious and that muggings, stabbings and serious accidents are horrendous. Yet, again, Halloween breaks the rules! On this day we pretend death, deformity and injury are no more then kids play!

4 Halloween Is Offensive

You could simply say that scaring kids is unhelpful, but there is a more subtle and troubling issue. Halloween costumes are frequently centred on deformities, gory wounds and disfigurement. There are a number of websites and places that will even tell you how to make authentic looking burns and injuries and even how to make yourself hideously ugly. Consider how you would feel, if you where a burn victim or where severely disabled, or even had gone through a traumatic event such as a mugging, or a rape or a person close to you had been killed and you had suffered not just horrific physical but also emotional hurt.

Besides that, do you really want to spread the message, to children, that being ugly or a victim equates to evil?

5 Halloween Is Getting Worse

Concerns about Halloween do not just come from those of us with a "religious agenda". Increasingly other people are expressing their concern, particularly about the was that Halloween seems to be getting darker and nastier each year.

Carved pumpkins were, I suppose, pretty harmless; the new blood stained axe murders are not. If we don't like the direction it's going then maybe it's time to stop celebrating it.

6 Halloween Allows Evil A Victory

In some older Halloween traditions people dressed up in clothes that made them look evil and then burned their outfits at the end of the evening. The message was clear; in the end good triumphs over evil. Yet there is no hint of that in modern Halloween. Now, evil is unchallenged and just slips away into the darkness, to return at some other time. That's not the message that our world needs today.

So Is Halloween HARMLESS?

The evidence is suggesting that it isn't, it encourages a lot of bad things and offers nothing good in return. Halloween is harmful, there is no wise reason to keep it.

I want to suggest that far from being harmless nonsense, that in fact there are also spiritual risks associated with Halloween. Although Halloween is a complex mess of many things these days, at it's core remains one truth, a preoccupation with supernatural evil. The heart of Halloween is the occult: witches, ghosts and spirits.If you are inclined to dismiss this argument you might want to do some thinking first:

Perhaps you are someone who say that they do not really know if God exists. If this is you, why take the risk with Halloween? People talk about "precautionary principle", which basically means; "when in doubt don't do it". It's really not a bad rule to follow when it comes to Halloween.

However, even if you don't, most of the world recognises that there are good and bad spiritual powers. This is very popular in fiction, especially in films which are often refer to supernatural evil and uses them as protagonists in most spectacular forms: poltergeists, ghosts, demonic possession. That sort of thing does occur but evil is far more widespread and subtle, a corrupting force that can influence and effect us.

The bible warns us that the world is a battleground between good and evil. Within it, the apostle Paul summed up his attitude in one of his letters: "stay away from every kind of evil" (1 Thessalonians 5:22). The bibles warns of supernatural evil, but it also teachers us about the only power that can conquer evil - Jesus Christ.

The Christian faith affirms and history testifies to the fact that God sent his one and only son Jesus, who was God in human flesh, to conquer evil and death once and for all. Jesus went to the cross to defeat the power of evil and the grip of sin on the world. Proof of his victory was given in his resurrection from the grave on Easter Sunday.

For two thousand years Christians have known deliverance from evil through the name of Jesus Christ and the power of God's holy spirit.

If you have been involved in the occult, if things that have happened to you at Halloween or at other times heave left you with unease or bound by evil powers, then I urge you to turn to Jesus.

In the service of baptism in the church of England the following words are included, I encourage you to read them first and then pray them and being to experience the light and not the darkness!

Thanks for reading .

And as always, feel free to comment/inbox me any question.