IrContent

This is a question that I have not wrestled with completely as I do not have Halloween-aged kids at this time - but one I have given thought to over the years. I have to say that growing up, Halloween was one of my favorite holidays. I was not raised as a Christian and was somewhat surprised when I got saved to find that many Christians did not like Halloween. Trick-or-treating never influenced me toward evil - it was just fun! Anyway, since most Christians begin their answer with a (sometimes dubious) history lesson I will include one here as well . . .In the ancient Celtic belief system, borders such as evening or morning, the seashore, the forest’s edge, or the turning of one year into the next were seen as the times or places where the veil between the physical and spiritual world was thin. At these times / places the living might communicate with dead ancestors or spirits. Halloween’s origins go back to the Celtic festival of Samhain, one of two main feasts including Beltane at the beginning of summer (May 1st), with Samhain at the end of summer (November 1st). Celtic druids built sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals (and, some believe, people) as sacrifices to the spirits and deities.During the celebration, they wore costumes to hide from, or blend in with, the spirits. In order to please the spirits, they would leave choice food outside their houses so that if any hungry spirits came by, they could take the food and leave in peace. Many of the people would imitate the spirits and go from house to house begging for treats. Failure to supply the treats would usually result in practical jokes being visited on the owner of the house (i.e. Trick-Or-Treat). The Jack-o-Lantern was a means of scaring off evil spirits and they were originally made from turnips or beets.

Christianity later spread into Irish lands. Pope Boniface IV introduced All Saints’ Day to replace the pagan festival of the dead. It was observed on May 13. In 834, Gregory III moved All Saint’s Day from May 13th to November 1st and for Christians, this became an opportunity for remembering the saints who had died. In 1517 Martin Luther chose All Saints Day to issue his challenge to the Roman Catholic church. The night before All Saints Day, the night of Samhain - October 31st, thus became “All Hallows’” Eve and, eventually, “Halloween.” (When the Irish emigrated to America they could not find many turnips to carve into Jack O’Lanterns but they did find an abundance of pumpkins.)As you can see, Halloween as we practice it today has pretty sketchy origins. However, my thoughts are that we should not allow evil use of a good thing to bar its good use. For example, some argue that Christmas trees are evil because they have a pagan origin. Well, the fact is that almost no one today is even aware of this fact, and I doubt that anyone puts up a Christmas tree with any pagan significance in mind. That meaning has been lost.If we allowed evil usage to forever taint certain actions then we would quickly run out of things we are allowed to do! For some reason, people who think this way will grant evil the power to forever stain certain actions - but not good. I wonder why? Shouldn’t good have the power to overcome evil? The early church thought so, and that is why it took over the pagan holidays and transformed them. The celebration of the pagan god Ishtar turned into our celebration of Christ’s resurrection (Easter), and winter pagan practices were taken by the church and used to celebrate Christ’s birth. So unless a given practice is evil per se, then I do not see why Christians cannot participate provided the meaning they give to that practice is good.OK, so the question is - what does Halloween mean today? Well, if it is truly a celebration of darkness and evil then no, we should not celebrate it. However, there is a distinction between “celebration” and “participation.” For example, most Americans participate in Christmas but many of them do not celebrate Christ’s birth. I think that just as Christmas means nothing more to many people than exchanging gifts, Halloween need mean nothing more than getting to wear a costume and getting free candy (that’s all it meant to me!). Participating in Halloween does not make one a pagan any more than participating in Christmas makes one a Christian.So I think that as parents we should not be overly concerned over practices that are not bad in and of themselves, but rather we should make our decisions based on the meaning we place behind them. I would guess that most Christian parents allow their kids to go to costume parties, eat candy, play games, make things out of food, etc. So why not on October 31st as well? For example, churches often offer “harvest day” celebrations as an alternative to Halloween with many of the same practices. So they seem to recognize that simply dressing up and getting candy is not evil per se.

Unless we ascribe occultic power to the holiday (which is exactly what real witches and other occultists would like us to do!) then I can’t see much reason not to let my kids participate in an activity on Halloween that I would allow them any other time of the year (one exception would be my witness to others and if I thought that were somehow in jeopardy I would not do it - but the world does not seem to think Christians are better for not going out on Halloween - in fact, it’s more like the opposite). Of course this would not include dressing as witches, vampires, or other evil things. But I don’t have a problem with them having fun getting spooked.

A. W. Tozer has a famous quote that says something like, “What you think of when you think of God is the most important thing about you.” The thing I think a lot of Christians forget is that Jesus is God. Oh sure, Jesus is God, but is He really GOD???I think that the focus of popular versions of Evangelical Christianity on the relational aspect of the faith has caused some misunderstandings of the nature of that relation. Yes, as believers God is now our Father (Jn. 1) – even our ‘abba father’ (Rom. 8:14-19; Gal. 4:1-7) the significance of which some have made much. But the verses addressing this seem to link us to the inheritance we will receive through our relation to Jesus. In other words, God is no longer simply our creator but He is also, positionally, our adopted father - and as such will bestow upon us the riches of His true Son, Jesus Christ.Further difficulty arises when we start to speak of conversion to the Christian faith as “becoming friends with Jesus.” This is allegedly the distinctively Christian relation that replaces all other religions. But what does it mean to be Jesus’ friend? Does it mean He is our buddy now? Does it mean He thinks of us as bro’s? Does it mean He winks at our sin and chalks it up to being friends with sinners?Scripture does not indicate that this is the case. In Scripture the friendship that belivers have with Christ is clearly defined. John 15:14-15 says, “You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because the slave does not understand what his master is doing. But I have called you friends, because I have revealed to you everything I heard from my Father.” It is important to note that these words were spoken by Jesus to the apostles the night of His arrest. In other words, these were the closest friends He had at the height of their friendship and yet that friendship appears to be “merely” an elevation from ‘ignorant obedient slavery’ to ‘knowledgeable obedient slavery’ (cf. Rom. 6). This is hardly the “buddy Christ” as pictured above.

Romans 5:6-11 and John 3:16 show what kind of love God has for us – it is the kind of love that a justly wrathful God has for His enemies. Laying down our arms and surrendering to this love is hardly an act of friendship in the popular sense. The same Jesus that came and died for the enemies of God (Rom. 5:10) will slaughter unrepentant enemies upon His return. In Revelation 19 we see both the marriage supper of the Lamb as well as His bloody judgment of those who refuse to bend the knee. Quite a honeymoon!

If what we think about God is the most important thing about us then that applies equally to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. If we are to think accurately in terms of a relationship and friendship with our Lord Jesus Christ then we must do so on biblical terms. Jesus Christ is the King and Creator of the Universe (Col. 1:15-20). We are His undeserving subjects, saved by His death – not His “buddies” in the popular sense.

In honor of Weird Al’s new release “White and Nerdy” (see my MySpace videos!) I have taken and posted this nerd test.

So I got this e-mail a while back from Loyola Press asking if they could use a BLOG article I wrote in an upcoming book . . . It turned out to be The Best of Catholic Writing - 2006. I found it rather ironic that a Protestant (“and fiercely proud of it!”) author should be included in a Roman Catholic “best of” book but that was not my only ironic writing-related experience of this year.For example, in the last few months I have had a Satanist requesting information on a few different cults they were trying to choose between, and a Roman Catholic catechesis student asking my thoughts on some finer points of the Eucharist ceremony. Then there was the atheist consortium that wanted an article I wrote to be included in their sequel to a really crappy anti-religion book published some years ago. I told them they would have to do without me (hey, I may be willing to sell out but I have to draw the line somewhere!). Funny, I never heard back.Amidst all this I have been trying to shop a serious book idea that I actually believe in to Christian publishers. I have not had much luck. This is not a surprise as only about 1% of new authors get published in a given year and most publishers simply throw out any proposals that don’t come from an agent.

I am not encouraged by the success of my profs either. For example, my hermeneutics professor has an absolutely brilliant solution to most of the modern controversy surrounding objectivity in interpretation. But he ended up resorting to a publish-on-demand service when no one was interested. Even Norman Geisler gets numerous no-thank-you’s from publishers after 60+ successful books!

The situation is just as bizarre in the fiction market. In the 90’s an author by the name of James BeauSeigneur wrote a brilliant end times trilogy but could not get it published because it was too violent. (Read that last sentence again if you missed the irony). But guess what? A few years later it got picked up by Warner books and published in hardcover! So now we have a secular publisher making money off a great Christian series while hacks like LaHaye and Jenkins continue to churn out their Left Behind tripe to legions of adoring fans who don’t read beyond the 6th grade level.

I don’t get it. Maybe I should just stick to humor and thinly veiled criticism.

I received an e-mail recently regarding a mock conversation I wrote on SoulDevice to try to show how one of Aquinas’ philosophical arguments might be related to “the man on the street.” This e-mail was supposed to be a detailed refutation, but was mostly just his confused ranting about how this point or that had not been proven because it was only opinion and not fact. As I read through the e-mail it became apparent to me that not only was this person completely ignorant of Aristotelian metaphysics (and, really, who can blame him?), he was also suffering from an acute case of Scientism. Scientism is the view that science alone provides facts about the world and conclusions from any other discipline are just opinions (”Science” is being used here in the popular sense of it being an empirical discipline that excludes the more speculative disciplines of history, philosophy, theology, etc.). Scientism is a real danger to the health of people’s minds, so I’d like to provide a bit of an antidote here. The first thing to note about Scientism is that it is self defeating. Scientism is neither a science nor is it a conclusion from science. Scientism is a philosophical position about the nature of truth and knowledge - a theory of how reality works. It is not an empirical theory. That is, there is no experiment that can be performed to prove Scientism. You cannot get a jar of Scientism and test for its truth value in a lab. So, to say that science alone provides truth is to remove “the position that science alone provides truth” from the category of true things. Scientism is therefore necessarily false.Suppose, though, that someone were to admit to truth in other disciplines but just not very important or trustworthy ones. This does not help, because a conclusion cannot be stronger than its support. Another way to say this is that a theory cannot be more sure than the evidence or argument that supports it. Since Scientism is a philosophical position it must be supported philosophically. But if philosophy is not as trustworthy as science then the philosophical position that science gives the most trustworthy beliefs is not very trustworthy.

And it only gets worse for Scientism when we start to really look at what truths are the most trustworthy. Philosophy tells us that a statement cannot be both true and false in the same sense. [Some] science [currently] tells us that both humans and birds evolved from a common ancestor. The former is absolutely true and cannot be rationally denied, the latter is extremely questionable and may never be able to be proven true in this life. So now we not only have a devastating theoretical problem with Scientism, we have demonstrated counter-examples that also prove it false.

What many science worshipers seem to miss is that science could not even get started without philosophy. Consider the following necessary requirements for doing science that cannot be provided by science itself:

1. A world outside our minds must exist.
2. We must be able to attain true knowledge of this world.
3. Logic must be operable.
4. Our sense must give us trustworthy data.
5. Nature must be orderly and constant.

Now, all of these might sound “scientific” but they are really philosophical. Science cannot prove any of these things to be the case - it merely assumes them and goes on with its projects. This is not to say that scientists cannot speak to these subjects, they just can’t do it as scientists. When a person who is a scientist by trade begins to speak about philosophy he is speaking as a philosopher. Whether or not he should try to do so is another question (that should often be answered “No!”). Most scientists lack the philosophical acumen that is required for them to make legitimate claims about the underlying assumptions of their discipline. So it is not that they lack the tools of their trade, it is that they don’t always recognize where those tools come from or how to use them properly.

Scientists hate it when philosophers or theologians venture into “their domain”, but they trespass in other disciplines’ territory all the time - especially philosophy and theology. Scientists are generally very smart people - but their knowledge, just like everyone else’s, is limited to the areas where they have been trained. Science has nothing, and never will have anything, useful to say about the nature of the soul, the relation of the mind to the brain, the existence of God, or a host of other philosophical and theological issues.

Thus, it is not that philosophy gave science its foundation and science proceeded to surpass philosophy as a useful pursuit. Rather, it is that science is dependant on philosophy and actually is much more limited in its ability to investigate reality. This does not make science unimportant - it simply makes science limited in its importance (just like any other discipline). Scientism is the denial of this obvious fact and it should be fought wherever it rears its befuddled head.