Children going around with their friends and/or families to their neighbors homes all on the same night, laughing and having a good time while households share treats and goodies, smiles, and kind words with those that come to their doors? Shame on them.
How should the church respond to the one time of the year when nearly every neighbor family comes out of their homes to interact with their neighbors? Separate itself of course. Don’t interact with your neighbors and certainly don’t participate in the community activity. Turn off the lights, take your family to church, and be suspicious of any neighbors that enjoy decorating for and celebrating Halloween.
There was a period of my life when I responded to Halloween in similar ways. This is unhealthy behavior for Christians. We should be making the most of this opportunity to connect with our neighbors. This does not mean that we need to adopt the beliefs of our culture, or participate in satanic rituals. Frankly, I think one of the worst things that happens on Halloween is the acceptance and perpetration of consuming large amounts of sugar. But most Christians don’t care about that, and if they do, it too can be handled in an appropriate way to achieve moderation. Maybe we could display Christ-like character during this Halloween by being hospitable to our neighbors, not just handing out candy, but inviting our neighbors to join us for chili (or some other good Fall food) after they take their kids trick-or-treating.
What ideas can you come up with to display Christ to our neighbors?
![Image of The Prodigal God (An Unabridged Production)[2-CD Set]; Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31Jl6fhDLxL._SL75_.jpg "The Prodigal God (An Unabridged Production)[2-CD Set]; Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith")
36 Comments(+Add)
I always took my kids trick or treating. I never caught them worshiping the devil once, but we used the time for candy resupply. Halloween has long since lost its demonic ambiance, and even when I was a boy I never associated it with the devil. The devil is much more subtle than he wants us to think.
Divorce is worse than Halloween.
What I am doing is going from house to house giving the homeowners candy and a Gospel tract. We are also giving candy and gospel tracts to all the people who come to our door. I am dressing as Charles Spurgeon stogie and all and I may be caught doing slight of hand tricks for the youngsters on the street with a gospel message.
We hand out stuffed animals with a tract attached which shows Jesus holding a little child saying “Jesus Cares”. On the inside is John 3:16 with a lead in that says just as we care for the ones we love Jesus cares for us.
But Halloween is ontologically evil. No, really. (See last year’s discussion).
John, don’t you think you are a little too old to be going out yourself?
I sit up in a tree and shoot the little boogers, that my dogs doen’t scare off, with a paintball gun. If that doesn’t work, I make my wife discharge one of the shot guns and scream a blood curling scream. They want scared, I’ll give them scared…
John,
#4 We brought our 8 year old and our teenagers with us. People were a little creeped out by a 42 year old man in a green afro approaching them.
Pastorboy,
So you participated in the cultural traditions associated with Halloween… I’ll admit I am surprised and impressed. I hope that doesn’t sound condescending.
Neil
I participated in Halloween as a child and I grew up to be a preacher.
Weird.
same here, Jerry.
Last night my kids dressed up as a butterfly, a spider, a pirate and a train conductor. Evil, indeed.
Our church then held a party where we played games, had a cake walk and ate hot dogs. Very, very evil.
me three, Jerry…
My two girls dressed as:
1) Belle and the Beast (our little pug, reluctantly modeling a cape)
2) A female soldier (b/c our neighbors had some military surplus clothing)
My older son dressed up earlier in the week (for a Jazz Band concert/Halloween celebration at the local strip mall) as John Lennon (as he is now, not as he was 20 years ago… I rolled my eyes on the outside and laughed rather outrageously on the inside at his ingenuity…)
Surprisingly, Ingrid approves. Nuff’ said. Chris P. did you write her article for her?
No. That explains a lot actually.
Isn’t it interesting how all the parent who say they love their children and many who would say they would die to protect their children present their children with “treats” loaded with ingredients that cause disease and feed addictions – see Nancy Appleton’s 146 Reasons Sugar is Ruining Your Health http://www.nancyappleton.com/NA144reasons.html
I won’t even deal with the motives in this site because I know it would bring on more of an onslaught of hate mail than the above comment. But to close out the above issue consider this:
Sugar is a primary food that feeds cancer – FACT
Parents regularly bloat their children with copious amounts of sugar – pop, candy, cereals, donuts, etc… – FACT
Parents rarely hesitate in treating childhood diseases with pharmaceutical drugs which rarely are able to validate their claims – FACT (94% of claims made in pharmaceutical drug advertising material is not backed by scientific evidence – British Medical Journal, Feb. 28, 2004; 328:485)
Point: Parents need to wake up! In an age where a Google search can inform someone that their really are available cures for cancer, diabetes (Type II), AIDS, ADD/ADHD, Autism (Google: Jenny McCarthy Autism Cure), and many more I am amazed how many seemingly intelligent people do so little to protect their children despite their protests to the contrary. Again, and I am quite comfortable saying this in this forum, WAKE UP!
Wow, Bill
I almost missed your gem amidst the politics…
So sugar is going to kill us now? Let me add that to the list with pizza, popcorn, air, water and bread…
…I think the tinfoil hat is a little bit tight, though, so you might just want to loosen it a bit…
Chris spare me the “tin foil hat” nonsense man it is about as lame a response as one can come up with and in a day of access to volumes of information on the subject. To be honest with you it merely shows how utterly clueless and deviod of intelligence and motivation you really are. Were one to merely follow the link provided one would find supportive documentation/studies (at the bottom half of the page) to prove the statements, each and every one, made by Nancy Appleton, but then again that would require much more effort than it would to make a common and unthoughtful drive-by jab. Nice one….NOT!
One might also learn from the historical accuracy of the following quote: “Truth passes through three phases: First it is ridiculed. Second it is fiercely and violently opposed. Third, it becomes self-evident.” — Arthur Schopenhauer …
yes, but just because something gets ridiculed doesn’t mean that it is going to become self-evidently true…it just means that it’s ridiculous.
Sugar is also a primary food in allowing the body to function. When done in moderate amounts, but nonetheless…
Parent’s also don’t take their children out to do physical activities, schools don’t encourage physical education anymore, the job market heavily encourages non-physically stressing jobs, etc. Don’t blame obesity on sugar or make it sound like Parents are trying to kill their kids.
Can’t really come with a response to this other than “Oh, it was in a journal, it must be true.”
As the husband of a woman who has a PhD in Food Microbiology, I love, love, love hearing these types of rants.
The main problem with the food we eat isn’t primarily the sugar content, it’s the lack of nutrients. The amount of sugar people eat has certainly increased, but the big problem is that we have become more sedentary overall. So instead of working on farms or playing at playgrounds, children are planted in front of the TV.
So, yes, nutrition is one side of the equation, but physical activity is the other. Ironically, Trick or Treat is one activity that allows children to both collect sugar and get some physical exercise. We should celebrate it more often!
“As the husband of a woman who has a PhD in Food Microbiology, I love, love, love hearing these types of rants”.
Not so sure that makes “you” an expert on the matter Phil.
Nope, I never claimed it did. But I do sleep with an expert, so it doesn’t take much for me to ask. I certainly have a lot more primary data at my immediate disposal than most people.
Aaron common contention/belief/teaching has confused you my friend – as this following statement confirms:
”
The problem with the average diet isn’t that it’s too high in fat. The average diet contains excessive amounts of carbohydrate. Believe it or not, the body requires no carbohydrate – unlike “essential” fatty acids (from fats) and “essential” amino acids (from proteins), there are no known “essential” carbohydrates. ”
http://weightoftheevidence.blogspot.com/2005/12/whole-grain-hogwash.html
There exist entire populations of indigenous peoples who consume no measurable carbohydrate in their diet and have significantly fewer health problems than those of us in westernized/industrialized nations.
Carbohydrates = sugars = “primary source of energy” = propogated nonsense. http://www.mercola.com/article/carbohydrates/scientific_evidence_low_grains.htm
I learned this long ago in a reading of the works of Weston A. Price and his early 1900’s studies of primitive cultures who were not westernized and/or consuming mass quantities of carbs and processed foods. But again it goes to my point of in a day when information is readily available to educate an individual it is up to the individual to make the effort to learn the truth. If a diet paradigm of high carbs was readily and soundly ridiculed in the flipping of the Food Guide Pyramid a few years back, of course you had to be paying attention to what was going on to catch the reversal of philosophies and yet the info coming out about healthy dietary priniciples is still highly flawed when coming from the government or industry sources.
As for your comment Phil it is of little value in the greater discussion about health and healthy children. Sedentary lifestyles are a problem but do yourself a favor and find a chart chronicling the incidence of chronic disease in this country dating back to the early 1900’s and the consumption of sugar and their is a clear parallel in the increases of both. Compound that with the wide use of High Fructose Corn Syrup today and mass consumption of the same and it is no surprise that one of the leading growth industries in this country is “health care”.
For your consideration:
When a country spends more on “health care” than the entire rest of the world combined and it is one of the leading growth industries – it does not bode well for the longevity of the nation, be it physically, financially or fundamentally – all indications are the nation is in its demise unless radical revolutionary changes are made in this area which includes “health care”, food supply and nutritional intake.
Had either of you spent a fraction of the time I’ve spent studying the subject, going on 15 years of increasing and at times intense study, you might not be so quick to contend with my assessment. But then again you might just live for arguing out of ignorance.
Nice one….NOT!
Really and truly, did you just do the “NOT!”? What’s next? Speak to the hand cuz the face ain’t listening? Maybe we can all peg our pants next and sing “You can’t touch this..do da dant.”
Joe, I believe it’s actually “da da da dant”. I don’t know where you got “do” from. That’s just crazy…
Bill, it’s a shame you feel the need to pre-judge us and yell at us.
You won’t deal with the motives in this site? Really? So you just want to deal with symptoms then? What motives do you question? I’d like to know. Did you read my post? I believe I addressed sugar as an issue. Wait, let me make sure… yup, I did.
You lost a hearing for yourself and further damaged the ability for your message to be heard by your tactics.
For the record, my family has removed added sugar from our diet as a habit. I’ve even posted on how sugar affects kids on my food blog (which has not been kept up to date due to a family emergency.)
There are also Eastern populations where the diet consists of a lot more carbohydrates than ours on a percentage basis, and people are generally healthier and live longer. Last time I checked, rice was a carbohydrate.
Yes, of course anyone who disagrees with you is simply ignorant…
Christian,
Did I really address you in the post? No I’m sure I did not. In fact it is quite clear that it was others identified in the response to whom the majority of my comments were addressed. How about some proper perspective and a little less vanity?
And where was I yelling? It is a blog for crying out loud if I were yelling I would have capitalized my comment and emboldened it for added emphasis.
Kudos to you for your efforts in your family, but it is clear by Phil and Aarons comments that they likely do not share your view or are merely wanting to engage, some might say attack (tin foil hat comment) the stranger in the blog.
Bill, when you talk about the site, you talk about all the authors, that includes me. And no, I don’t think it’s vain to expect a person to not completely ignore the post in the comments section of a post.
As for yelling, you did capitalize parts of your initial comment (and used some exclamation points).
As for engaging, that is always a desire in our comments. Attack, no, but engage, yes. And your comments set out not to engage in conversation, but to accuse and belittle.
I was up early writing a paper and I knew there was something wrong when I was typing that.
Christian,
Sorry about that, I reviewed and noticed that you were right. Maybe it was a bit of a forceful entry into the discussion I stand corrected. (Actually I’m still sitting but I hope that isn’t a problem as it makes it easier to type this out.)
As for the exclamation points, when I used my voice to emphasize I think most would be reluctant to say I was yelling, but in the case of my “WAKE UP!” that clearly does constitute a yelling exclamation – but mostly for purpose of hopefully shocking a person into the understanding that you do have the ability to learn far more than you know and most people seem to put their brains in neutral once they exit school not knowing that life should be a never ending process of growing in wisdom and knowledge of the truth for God’s word, but also truth which will assist in keeping one able to strongly serve the Lord.
Should be “from God’s word” not “for” and wisdom that will help to make one a better more effective parent of healthy and well protected children.
Maybe you had too much sugar before you entered the discussion
.
Really I appreciate seeing a gracious apology.
As for sugar, there are way too many kids who are loaded up with it. It’s sad that kids and adults often have too much of something that their body can’t handle, but sadder still that the reason some kids are loaded up is because there parents DO see it as a problem but have relinquished their authority over what the child eats.
Please ignore the misspellings and incorrect grammar above – yikes.
Seriously… this is one subject that I NEVER would have guessed would have been bantered back and forth on this site. Not that I care… just making an observation.
Thanks for the kind response Amy. Could be a lack of sugar too, aka, hypoglycemia, which occasionally hits me (Type I Diabetic) and can cause irrational thought patterns. :-%
Bill,
Is this comment really nescessary? Just a thought.
Anyways, your additional information and expanded explanation of your thoughts and regarding the health of the nation over the century and corn syrup were quite helpful in showing me what you are trying to argue for, and I would quite agree with you…once you explained your intentions. Perhaps its just me, but when someone fires off several short scientific quotes and says “see! I’m right!”, I tend to be weary of them and completely turn off from them as they seem to have nothing more to say. I’m glad to see that you have additional stuff to say.
There is a problem in this nation regarding the quality of our food, but it’s not the only reason. I’m sure we can at least agree to that. However, I would not go as far as to say that “parents have no problem killing their children… (paraphrase)”, that seems and is a bit excessive.
Once more,
Is this really necessary? Does this comment add to your professional (it seems) approach to the arguement or does it take away from it?
I really don’t mean to target you in regardings to insulting comments in posts, EVERYONE does this and it bugs me. I’m positive I do it a lot, though I try to avoid doing so. I think we could all do a little better to pause a little longer and simply let that insult in our minds slip away from our minds. If I have insulted you, I apologize sincerely.
-Aaron
Aaron,
No worries on the response as I have reviewed my posts I can’t argue with your criticism of them as they were a bit hasteful (not hateful, but with haste and lack of thought posted). Apology accepted and returned to you as well.
As to the explanation of the “argue out of ignorance” it is not necessarily a slam to be called ignorant in that one might mean, and personally I mostly intend it in this way, simply that a person has not studied the issue or is unaware of the evidence upon which a position is based. And I have had many a discussion on a variety of topics where people will continue on in an uninformed position rather than humbly taking the time to consider the evidence that contradicts their current view. It happened to me last Wednesday at church and I’m working on being compassionate and more patient in giving others time to be enlightened by exposure to the truth. Unfortunately I didn’t display that here and for that I apologize.
Finally, I didn’t mean to say that parents knowingly and willingly “kill their children” but more out of ignorance and far too often unwillingness to learn more about what their children put into their bodies (see the Google era comment) bring about/allow/enable diseases and disorders that plague a childs health for much of their life.
Peace to you,
Bill