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Fear, Boredom, and Entertainment

Reflection On How To Celebrate Halloween

Halloween is not what it used to be. Even in my generation we have seen the face of Halloween change from a child centered holiday that was characterized by candy and silly costumes to an event that is now centered on fear and gore. The focus has even reached the level of theme park events being centered on horror. Busch Gardens in Tampa will host their Howl-O-Scream event again this year. Curious as to what was involved (after seeing a disturbing television commercial) I looked on their website and to my surprise I found that you had to be 13 years old to log in due to violent content. The question that must be asked by Christians is this – Is it good to willingly subject ourselves to fear?

Fear is a very present reality in everyone’s life. Right or wrong we have enough real fear in our lives without subjecting ourselves to greater and false fears. As Christians we are commanded to fear God and God only (Proverbs 1:7. Matthew 10:26-28). As Jesus puts it in Matthew 10, the worst that man can do is to kill your body. Even though that may sound as bad as it gets, it is not. God has the power to destroy both body and soul. Therefore, we are not to be in fear of man, because in fearing man we fear death and if we fear death then we are enslaved to that fear. Jesus has defeated death and taken it’s power away (Hebrews 2:14). We need only fear God.

Since then we are in an effort to remove the fear from our lives and concentrate on the things of God, we need to pay close attention to what we allow in our lives and how we celebrate Halloween. As Christians we should not subject ourselves to things such as horror movies, haunted houses, and theme park events that promote false fears. Television also promotes these same feelings with evening dramas that depict the worst exploits of the criminal society. Every form of indecent act and immorality is before our eyes each evening. All of this comes to us the way of entertainment.

Christians are not called to a life of seclusion and boredom - not by any stretch of the imagination. I think the reason that we find excitement in these things (and I am guilty of this) is because we have neglected the more meaningful thing. If we were to live in our society with a reckless passion for the cross of Jesus Christ – then we would have all of the fear (real fear) and excitement (not to mention drama) that we could ever stand. And all of this to the glory of God.

Comments

Anonymous said…
H.P.! you're the greatest! i'm so proud of you!
12:22 PM
Paul said…
Where's the next post about the theological benefits of Texas bar-b-que, feeding giraffs, and moving someone else's grandmother's TV?
10:16 PM
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