Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters, where we are diving into the ocean of truth! Last night as I was checking up on some things online for the last time, I saw a comment on TheologyWeb where I debate that burned me in a thread on Halloween telling someone to go ahead and celebrate the night of Samhain. God had made his opinion clear on the matter however.
Now to me, Halloween is nothing wicked to celebrate, though some people can celebrate it in wicked means. This is the case for any holiday. On Thanksgiving, we can be tempted to gluttony. On Christmas, we can be tempted with materialism. On New Year’s Day, we can be tempted to get drunk. In any holiday, we need to watch why we are observing it.
That’s not what got me on this here however. To me, Halloween is a secondary matter. There’s nothing in Scripture that’s yea or nay, particularly since Halloween hadn’t been invented yet, but I believe we have some guidelines in 1 Cor. 8-10 and Romans 14 indicating that this is a secondary matter.
However, it is easy to say that God has spoken on something and leave it at that and then think the rest of us are living in sin if we acknowledge the day. This gives us a chance to look at ourselves with pride and look down on our neighbor and think that we are doing better than they are or are more holy than they are. Now it could be we’re leading a better Christian life, but it is not our place to say that.
If we want to go with matters that the Lord has clearly stated his view on, let’s go with those.
We are commanded to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our strength. How are we doing?
In Romans 12, Paul tells us to be devoted to prayer. I know this is something that I wrestle with. How about the rest of you? Are you doing much better?
We are told to love our neighbor as ourselves. Are we doing that, or are we treating our neighbor totally different from ourselves and looking for any excuse to not love him?
We are commanded if we are married men to love our wives as Christ loved the church and women are called to submit to their husbands as the church to Christ. Fellow marrieds? How are you doing? Husbands? Do you love your wives that way? Wives? Are you respecting your husbands?
Jesus told us to not worry about tomorrow for today has enough difficulties of its own. How’s that going? Are you getting good at not staying up at night and wondering about the future?
We are told to not look at women with lust and not hate our brother in our hearts. How’s that going?
Forgive one another as I have forgiven you. That’s an easy one surely isn’t it? Are you doing the work that needs to be done in forgiving your neighbor and actually letting it go? Surely no one ever carries around a grudge.
How about money? How are we doing? Are we giving to the poor and helping them or are we more greedy?
But in each of these, God has made his view clear.
We can argue about secondary issues and we should respect one another’s opinions on secondary issues even when we disagree, but before we start playing the pride card, let’s look and see how we’re doing on these other issues.
Support Deeper Waters on Patreon!
