Can Christians and haunted houses coexist? Are our souls at risk by willingly facing macabre and perhaps evil entertainment? As someone who fights legalism with all my might, I sit somewhere in the middle, seeing both sides of the argument. But as someone who judges everything in black and white, I can’t believe you can sit in the middle. (Hey everyone, welcome to my super active brain!)
For a difficult essay assignment in college, I wanted to test whether humans can control the adrenaline response and the brain’s fight-or-flight instinct. My subjects are haunted houses, haunted farms, and me participating in haunted hayrides.
I don’t like ghostly things. Spiritual Thoughts and Taboo Rituals Having been diagnosed with OCD (better known as religious OCD), these spooky thrills provide some triggering thoughts that my brain can’t ignore. Sure, I’d overcome ghostly feats, found myself with a pretty good grip on controlling my adrenaline responses, and gotten an A on the paper, but a quiet but compelling thought still lingered. How should Christians relate to haunted entertainment?
Rather than forcing you to decide how to spend October 31st, I simply offer my experiences, perceptions, and struggles in hopes that you and God will figure out the best way to make the most of this day. Check out my three big thoughts about these contradictory holidays in church communities.
1. Content matters.
My father always loved Halloween. As kids, our front yard was covered in cheap inflatables: Pooh and Tigger dressed as vampires, giant spiders with moving necks, and ghouls hanging from pumpkins. For me, even though the room had some creepy decorations, the concept of “evil” never crossed my mind. My parents never took me near anyone who practiced reading palms, reading cards, or covering the lawn in a 6-6-6 display.
I could dress up as a “skeleton bride” (my favorite costume of all time), but there was always a line between fun and false worship. In fact, because I was raised by religious parents, I never questioned the clear lines in the sand. I understood and respected the fun side of us that never negates goodness.
Content matters. Ghosts and goblins provide spooky fun, but being aware that others are meddling in the dark gives you the discernment to easily recognize which activities are right and which are wrong. I hate to say it, but 75% of the haunted houses I’ve been to have involved something creepy and twisted.
Photo credit: © Ehud Neuhaus
2. Redemption exists.
As a Christian student, Halloween discussions were a typical part of my theology classes. When I was a senior in high school, our class asked the following question: “What do you do for Halloween?”
1. Let’s celebrate.
2. Don’t celebrate it.
3. Redeem.
I had never thought of the concept of redeeming Halloween, but it turned out to be the winning ticket. If you study the Middle Ages, you’ll discover the heart-breaking traditions of Halloween. The mass murders and mass rapes were carried out by a group of evil men (wearing robes that helped create the Scream costumes), who left jack-o-lanterns on the victims’ doorsteps.
something disgusting and evil. But what do today’s jack-o-lanterns represent? Often visiting a pumpkin patch and carving pumpkins while drinking cider and eating candy corn is a great way for families to spend the day together.
My soul will never shake the reality on which Halloween is based, but I believe that salvation exists. I believe families can find purity by carving cats and spiders on pumpkins. All in the name of getting closer to each other and creating healthy and honorable memories.
3. We need prayer.
To be honest, I sometimes worry that I am obscuring God’s assurances with my own preferences, and that I am using God’s love and grace as a fallback after participating in activities that walk the fine line between good and evil. So, to tell you the truth, haunted houses make me wary. When I feel scared, I feel a strange excitement when I survive such an event, but there’s always a tingling feeling inside me that thinks, “There’s something wrong with this. Deep down I’m anxious.”
As I said earlier, I fight against legalism. I fight against rules that are made for rules’ sake. So while I want to fight the rules and give haunted houses automatic high marks, I cannot affirm the content or purpose behind the people who create and present haunted houses. And you won’t know those facts until you interact with the content.
Now, do you think walking through a haunted house will send you to hell? Of course not! I have experienced four of them myself. If you watch scary movies and always look forward to surviving the screams and thrills of a haunted house, do you think you’re an evil person?No. Not surprisingly, some of the most religious people I know watch Saw movies as a hobby…
This holiday is a sensitive one, so we encourage you to pray throughout this season. Different believers have different beliefs, but I think they come from our experiences. We all have different sins and different traumas to overcome. Having been diagnosed with religious obsessive-compulsive disorder, haunted houses were an unhealthy trigger for me and I decided to stay away from them. A haunted house is not the right thing for me because it does not serve my soul, my God.
On the other hand, these differences form opposing perspectives for creating open, honest, Spirit-filled conversations within the church community.
As a girl who was always told not to wear pants to church, not to touch translations of the Bible other than the colloquial version, and not allowed to ask questions about church finances because I was a woman, I found myself rebelling against the church system to rebel against past experiences in unhealthy churches.
But that’s selfish. Conviction still exists. Good and evil still demand answers. So while I have grace and don’t believe that God’s damnation is centered around something as trivial as a kid in a sparkly purple witch costume, I encourage you to protect your soul and talk to God about all that is pure and true as you celebrate the cooler weather and nostalgia that this season brings.
Related Resources: Halloween Candy, Stolen Sleep, and Overediting
Want a good laugh? Check out one of our favorite episodes of Talk About That. Johnny W. and John Driver discuss Halloween candy bowl etiquette. Plus, a conversation about creativity and how to know when to stop editing your work. If you laughed out loud, be sure to subscribe to Talk About That on Apple or Spotify so you never miss an episode.
Photo credit: © Getty Images/jakkapan21
Peyton Garland is a writer, editor, and mom of a boy who lives in the beautiful foothills of East Tennessee. For more encouragement, subscribe to her blog Uncured+OK.
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