9: How Should Christians Engage with Halloween?

(00:02) Stephanie: Season 4, Episode 9. Hello, Father.

(00:05) Marcus: Hello, Daughter. This is an interesting week we’ve got here, right? We’re going to preach.

(00:11) Stephanie: Yes, I mean firstly, this is the week of our Chicago Deeper Walk Experience. I’m very excited to go see all the people in person and go deeper on our walks with God together. That’s exciting. I’ll also just say, if you happen to be listening this week and you’re like, “Shoot, I wanted to go,” you can walk in, you might have to bring your own lunch, but walk-in registrations will be available. So yes, we’re excited for that.

Also this week, we are starting a new topic. This week we are going to be talking about spiritual warfare. And today, specifically, is our Halloween feature because in October it’s kind of the elephant in the room. A lot of people are thinking, “How should I engage with this holiday?” And there are people across the spectrum here of never, it’s totally bad, and always it’s bad. Other people are like, “It’s fun and we love it and you guys are thinking about it too much.” So we want to address some of those things in this episode and then we’ll continue on with the Biblical Foundations of Spiritual Warfare series that I’m very excited about.

So, Father, actually, I wanted to also alert you as part of this, we’ve started doing stuff on Deeper Walk social media that we like to call Warfare Week at the end of the month in October, where we just put an emphasis for people who are wanting to have more information about spiritual warfare, or who are wanting to pray together, or do things like that. We have some fun Warfare Week activities, so if you are not already engaged with us on social media, go find us, the link’s in the description.

And yes, on that note, Father, how should Christians engage with Halloween? Just throwing that right at you.

(02:08) Marcus: Yes, well, it’s pretty straightforward. I think that for me, the closest biblical parallel has been the idea of eating food offered to idols. There are passages that are like, “This is forbidden. Do not do this.” And then there are passages where Paul makes it sound like it’s a debatable thing, and that he personally has no problem with it, and everybody needs to be fully convinced in their own mind.

And so, what’s going on here? You’ve got to look at each one in context of what it means in those different passages. But I look at this as there are just some things people need to know about Halloween. There are some things that you need to take into consideration and you need to prayerfully consider how you’re going to approach it. What we don’t want to see is people taking it flippantly and saying it’s not a big deal. It kind of is a big deal in that Halloween is, in a sense, like the high unholy day for witches, pagans, and satanists and such. There are a lot of very evil things that are associated with Halloween. There are a lot of very evil activities that take place in conjunction with Halloween.

Part of my introduction to spiritual warfare ministry back in the day was working with people who had been tortured as children on Halloween night in rituals and things . There’s some bad, bad, stuff that is connected. We often had prayer vigils into the night. And talking to Fred Dickason, who used to teach theology at Moody Bible Institute and has decades of experience with this, he said that the night from October 30th into October 31st, so starting at midnight on the 31st into about three in the morning is the key time for ritual activity for a lot of these groups. It’s not uncommon to find them out in nature somewhere or down in basements doing things. And so because this is a real thing and this is happening, there’s a reason why people react to Halloween and say Christians really shouldn’t have anything to do with this and it’s because of that.

Now, that having been said, one of the things that happened as Christianity spread across the world was they would often intentionally take pagan things and things that were dedicated to the devil, and try to reclaim them. For example in Germany, there would be trees dedicated to Thor, or something like that, and missionaries often would cut them down as part of the power encounter to say, “Let’s see how powerful Thor is. In the name of Jesus, I’m cutting his tree down.” And then later after there were conversions in the area, they would build a church on the site of that tree and try to reclaim that territory for Christ.

So the very word Halloween comes from the idea of All Saints Day on November 1st and this being the Holy evening before All Saints Day. That was an attempt by the Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox and others to try to reclaim this from the pagans. And so that in itself is up to debate, and that is, how much can you reclaim things like this? But that having been said, there’s a reason why there’s so much debate around Halloween. There’s a reason why people take this so seriously.

And so back in the day when I was heavily involved in working with folks who had this kind of a background, we just wouldn’t celebrate it at all. It was a time for fasting and prayer. It was not a time for happy things because it would have been highly offensive to the people we were working with. It would have been very detrimental.

On the other hand, there have been seasons in life where we’ve treated it differently. I think it was a youth pastor at the church where I pastored who for the first time said, “Halloween has amazing evangelistic potential because it’s the one night of the week where everybody’s out and you get to meet your neighbors and we’re not all just sitting in front of our TVs, and you’ve got all these things.” And I see that. There’s a point to participating there and being a part of things in your neighborhood. I can see both sides of that. So that’s probably a long monologue to begin with.

(06:55) Stephanie: People thought you were gonna jump into “Should I or should I not trunk or treat?” And you were like, “Let me tell you about some rituals.” I mean, to be fair, I don’t know how you were engaged with it as a child, but I mean, speaking as your daughter, I definitely grew through that phase of turning the lights off. We’re just not engaging, we’re praying and all of that, all the way to…

(06:59) Marcus: Yeah, Satanic ritual abuse is where I jumped in. You’ve experienced this very differently with our own life.

(07:23) Stephanie: Right, all the way through going out with that youth pastor’s family and doing trick or treat and whatever. I’ve kind of experienced all of that, and I think that there honestly is merit to all of that. So this is also why we want to be Spirit-led and not legalistic about it.

(07:43) Marcus: Yeah, that’s the bottom line, isn’t it? Because it’s sort of like Paul says, “Be fully convinced in your own mind about what you’re doing and don’t judge other people because of what their conviction is.” Now that having been said, there are some wisdom things involved here that people need to be aware of and we’ll talk about those, I’m sure.

(08:06) Stephanie: Yes, when you’re talking about rituals, and obviously you go around and you see an explosion of occult activity, or people being like, “Look, I’m a witch.” Can you talk a little bit more about how to recognize occult? Because sometimes people are a little overzealous about it and sometimes people are a little ignorant about it.

(08:30) Marcus: To me there are two main dangers that we’re going to talk about here when it comes to Halloween. One has to do with the occult and the other has to do with fear. So with occult, what happens is there are a lot of party games.  Kids will get invited to Halloween parties, and generally speaking, two things happen at Halloween parties: they do something scary and they do things that are occult that Christians should not be participating in and so I have tended to avoid even sending you. You and Ben did not go to Halloween parties, right? Because there’s no way to control what’s gonna go on in those settings. Too often, kids are playing (occult) games.

Back in my day, it was like Bloody Mary or Light as a Feather or Ouija boards or tarot cards or whatever. So what happens is, sometimes people are like, “It’s all superstition,” or, “I’m a Christian, I don’t have to worry about it.” But the Bible never says that. It never says, “You’re a Christian, don’t worry about it. You can do all the occult stuff you want, won’t have any consequences.” That’s not in the Bible anywhere.

So I think it’s important for people to understand that to recognize the occult there are two main things that it’s doing: Seeking to connect with the spirit realm is the main thing, that is, how it’s trying to connect to the spirit realm. And it is either doing it for one of two main purposes: one is to get knowledge and the other is to get power.

And so if you’re playing a game, like Ouija board is a game sold by Parker Brothers, that is supposedly connecting to the spirit realm to get knowledge, and that’s how you know this is occult, whether you believe it’s actually connecting to the spirit realm or not, that is what it is attempting to do. And same thing with Bloody Mary. You’re inviting something from the spirit realm to manifest. What we need to be on our guard against is participation in things like that..

(10:48) Stephanie: So you mentioned in addition to being on guard for occult, one of the things that happens around Halloween is scary things or fear and we could come at that from so many different levels, but would you talk about how to engage with fear, I guess?

(11:19) Marcus: There are a few things that need to be taken into consideration here. One is age appropriateness. I think that sometimes in the name of Halloween, we bend the line a little bit on what we’re willing to expose our children to. There are things that are not age appropriate for children at all and parents need to understand that Halloween isn’t just an excuse to do that. Sometimes we tell ourselves things like, “Well, they’ve got to learn how to handle scary things in life. If I’m always sheltering them from everything scary…”

That’s true to a level, but you’ve got to be age appropriate with it and how much you’re exposing people to. And different people handle it differently. And so you can have a very sensitive child, and it just doesn’t take much . For example, in my life, something as simple as watching The Wizard of Oz when I was really little gave me three straight nights of nightmares because that witch just kept popping up in my dreams all over the place. Most people will laugh at that, like, “That’s so innocent and that’s so cute. And of course I’m gonna have my kids watch The Wizard of Oz.”

Part of it is you gotta know your children well enough to know, are they too sensitive for something like this? Is this age appropriate for where they’re at? And then beyond that is, I don’t want to be the source of fear for my kids. I want to make sure that I am somebody who they can come to with their fears. And so we just need to be careful what we do in terms of what we permit, what we encourage, just because it’s sort of the season of fear. And yeah, that’s probably enough on that.

(13:16) Stephanie: So, for parents and grandparents and people who are shepherding their families, do you have any advice for how to engage as a family with the season?

(13:31) Marcus: Well, we’ve done a variety of different things. One we did do, there’s nothing wrong with dressing up and asking for candy. There’s nothing unbiblical about, “Hey, I’m going to dress up like a princess and ask people for candy.” There’s nothing wrong with that that I can see there. So trunk or treating was something we were okay with. It was very controlled. And then doing things in the neighborhood where you know people and finding ways to connect over that.

Try to avoid dressing up like occult things, right? So I would try to avoid dressing up like witches and vampires and ghosts, and find a little bit more innocent things to dress up as. Although honestly, when I was a kid, my parents let me throw on a sheet and go be a ghost and all those things at Halloween, and I don’t think I got demonized because of it. I’m not saying be afraid if you do this, bad things are gonna happen. I’m just talking about wisdom here. So that’s just advice. It’s not saying thus saith the Lord.

(14:45) Stephanie: Good note, good note. So, I don’t know how, can you give any rubric for, “I don’t know if there’s demonic activity happening here or if I’ve just opened a door. How do I draw the hard lines?”

(15:04) Marcus: Yes, you’re looking at, when you engage with the occult, one of the things that you will probably notice happening is either paranormal things in the sense of there’s activity going on. I’m hearing sounds I didn’t used to hear. I’m seeing things happen that shouldn’t be happening. And you’re like, “Well, when did that start?”

So you’re looking to put two things together and that is, what is the storyline of how this thing got started and when it began, and what actually are the symptoms that began to occur. And so when symptoms and story come together, then I’m saying, “Okay, there’s probably something that got a door opened here.” What I want to do is pray an “if “ prayer: “God, if I open the door by something that I did here,” then I go through the three “C’s” at that point: “I confess that I did it, I cancel the permission that I gave as a result, and I command whatever came to leave now,” and then the fourth “C”, “I commit this back to the Lordship of Christ.”

And so that’s how we resolve those things. But how we recognize it, you’re gonna find your thought life being affected, or you’re going to find things happening in the environment that didn’t used to happen in the environment that need to stop. I look for things like, are my kids starting to have nightmares? Are they starting to see things in their room? Am I noticing things I didn’t notice before? Those are signs I might have opened the door to something.

(16:46) Stephanie: How do you keep dealing with that child appropriately?

(16:50) Marcus: With children, a couple of guidelines I try to use are, one is I’ll call the thing whatever they call it. So if there’s like, “Oh, I saw a scary thing in my room.” I’m not gonna say, “Oh, that was a demon,” because that could escalate the problem for the child. And I don’t want to make the problem bigger. I want to make it smaller. So I’ll say, “Tell me about the scary thing,” and then I’ll walk them through it. It’s like, “Why don’t we ask Jesus what he wants you to know about that scary thing, and why don’t we take it away.”

So I’ll use both spiritual warfare with the child, but in the sense of, “Jesus, I just ask that you will get rid of the scary thing from my room and that you will restore our peace.” And then maybe, “Is there anything you want me to know, Jesus, about this right now?” and give the child a chance to tell you what comes to their mind when they ask Jesus about it. I’ve seen quite young children get these very peace provoking thoughts as a result of just asking Jesus about it. So that’s partly what we do. To keep it age appropriate is, use the language the same, emphasize, “Let’s talk to Jesus about that,” and we’re also letting him know, “Things like this happen. You don’t have to put up with it. You’re not a victim.”

(18:07) Stephanie: Mm-hmm. Man, okay, pulling on a couple different threads here, I want to talk about demonization in Christians and grace as not a license, kind of bringing all these things together. There are some people who are like, “I’m totally covered. It doesn’t matter, I’m a Christian and it’s not gonna touch me anyway.” I guess I’ll just go from there. Could you address that mindset?

(18:38) Marcus: Yeah, I think that… First of all, the Christians and demons thing, right? We deal with this all the time. And I generally tell people, I’m not as concerned about whether demons are inside a person or outside a person, whether you want to call it possession or whether you want to call it oppression. I don’t care so much. I tend to think in terms of, am I free or am I not? And that is, have I let something in my life that is keeping me in bondage? And if so, let’s deal with that, let’s get rid of that so that I’m not dealing with this anymore. So I prefer to just sidestep the conversation because I don’t see it as being profitable. Now, if you want to dive into the theology…

(19:22) Stephanie: Well, that’s, can a Christian be possessed, but there’s also the form of some people are like, “I can’t be possessed.” And so you’re saying, “Okay, regardless, let’s put the word possession aside because that’s not even the biblical word. It’s demonitamai. But what if you’re using your Christianity as a shield, but inappropriately. Does that make sense?

(19:53) Marcus: No, I understand. It’s a little bit like saying, “I know God will forgive me, so I’m going to go ahead and commit this sin.” And like, yeah, he’ll forgive you, but that’s not really what should be our motivation. And Paul says very clearly, “Won’t the person say that I’m under grace, let us sin so that grace may abound all the more.” And he’s like, “May it never be!” Me genoito! It’s like, no, no, no.

So I think that what we’re talking about here is the grace of God is never a license to do things that are questionable. Paul says whatever is not of faith is sin, that we need to look into these things and be convinced about what we’re doing. It took me a while, honestly, to see that there are two sides to some of this, but we don’t want to use grace as an excuse.

(20:56) Stephanie: Maybe kind of as a close out question here, can you talk about walking in the spirit versus walking in the flesh? And I know that’s like a whole course, but just in the Halloween season, walking in the spirit, not by the flesh, and whatever is being brought to mind for that.

(21:22) Marcus: Sure. Partly what you’re doing is you’re just asking God. It starts with, ask God, “God, would you show me what you want me to do about this? Would you bring thoughts into my mind? Maybe even surprising thoughts that I wouldn’t have expected about this.” And then in the end, if you don’t get anything super clear where you say, “God clearly told me this or that, and I know what God wants me to do,” then you follow your conscience, and that’s okay. You follow your conscience after that, but you’re giving God an opportunity to speak into the situation. You’re at least tuning in to give him a chance to give you leading.

To do it in the flesh is basically like, “This is all on me to figure out. God is out there and he’s gonna judge me based on whether I get this right.” That would be doing it in the flesh. Or, “God doesn’t care what I do.” That would be in the flesh also. So just including God relationally is what we mean by doing this in the Spirit.

(22:30) Stephanie: Yeah, and I think we, again, we don’t want to do it by fear. We don’t want to do it by, “Oh, no! He’s going to be so mad at me,” or, “I’m afraid of the demons.” That’s part of what comes to mind for me.

Well, thank you everybody, for being on the trail with us. I invite you to come join us over on social media as we’re doing some of our Warfare Week activities. And hopefully I’ll see some of you in person here at the end of the week. But bless you,

Father. Any final thoughts?

(23:08) Marcus: Yeah, I just want to pray a prayer:

God, you know all the things that are connected to Halloween. Nothing is a mystery to you. And I want to pray, first of all, for people who may be listening to this, who maybe were negatively affected on Halloween, and it’s not a happy thing. They don’t even like to hear the word. God, would you just bring them all of the comfort and all of the healing and all of the good things that you want for them to experience? Lord, I pray that you will make yourself known and bring yourself glory because every day belongs to you, and Halloween is yours. That day is yours. October 31st belongs to you. And God, I just pray that you will use it for your glory and you will protect us, and speak to our hearts, and that this will end up being something in the lives of our listeners especially, that becomes educational and faith building, in Christ’s name.

(24:17) Stephanie: Amen.