The Devil Walks the Streets

It’s Halloween and the Devil walks the streets.  

A preacher tells her flock that Halloween is a pagan festival.  

A priest tells his flock that Halloween, the eve of All Saints Day, is connected to a celebration of people who have built up and influenced the Christian faith, and who have died in God’s grace.  

In my opinion both of them are right.  

Some of our Halloween customs are connected with the pagan celebration of Samhain at this time of year, when it is believed that “the veil separating life and death becomes thinner.”  And it has been the practice of the Christian church in new venues to appropriate locally held customs and beliefs and apply those very pagan elements of a culture to Christian teachings and customs – hence Halloween as it is now.  

Taking a people’s previous religious customs and adapting them to Christianity is a gentle way to bring people to an understanding of the Gospel, and yet some people vehemently oppose this practice, calling it “syncretism.” 

So the devil walks the Halloween streets and the devil is not a ghost or a corpse; the devil is a bigot.  If I want to feel superior, I need to separate myself or my belief system, from others and then declare my beliefs superior.  I don’t think Jesus’ intent was ever to instill a sense of superiority in his followers so when I hear Christians railing against someone else’s beliefs I immediately doubt the hearts of the accusers.  

When we, with prejudice, make a blanket condemnation of other religions and try to exercise control in our own favor we are only exposing the frailty of our own faith in the presence of another, when in fact that other faith can inform us about our own.

~Neal