Monday, November 03, 2008
And they'll know we are Christians by our love?
Let me start out with this: over the years, we've been all over the map in our views on/participation in October 31. We've done trick or treat, we've stayed in with the lights off, we've gone to "alternative" festivals, we've celebrated Reformation Day (by far my personal favorite).
I think at some point I decided that attending an alternative was still celebrating/recognizing the day...and that getting out and having fun/interacting with my neighbors was a much more effective evangelization tool than sitting in the dark. So, we trick or treat at our house (although, if we had a Reformation Celebration to attend, we'd do that!). I also love the idea of "reverse trick or treat" that Susan's church participated in this year, and plan on making that part of our festivities next year.
This year, we had the preschool costume parade on Thursday. Friday, the elementary school had it's "Parade of Books".
Friday evening EJ headed out with his friend to set up for the local church's big "Trunk o' Treat" celebration, while the littles and I enjoyed a pizza from Aunt Sarah and costumed up. Daddy got home with the TQ just in time to grab a bite and head out to the festival with us. TQ stayed behind to clean up after soccer practice and hand out candy.
The festival part was loud, but fun. When the candy handout started, however, we stayed in line long enough to let EJ hand some out to his brother and sister, then headed home. The crush of people (over a thousand turned out!) proved to be just too much for our sensory-overloaded little guy. We headed back to our neighborhood.
Sadly, most of our neighborhood doesn't appear to have been educated in October 31 etiquette. We went to houses with porch lights on to find no one answering the door. We met up with friends who left a bowl of candy on their porch had returned from taking their own children out only to discover the entire bowl and it's contents had been stolen. We did encounter some lovely and pleasant people as well; but overall, we had fewer visitors, and the neighborhood was much quieter than last year.
We arrived home for the great candy sort. In addition to the goodies from the festival and their neighborhood rounds, they had a beautifully wrapped baggie of treats each. When this baggie was was opened, we discovered not only candy, but an article photocopied from a religious publication. It informed us that (I'm paraphrasing) good Christians didn't participate in "Satan's playground" nor did they expose their children to this type of thing. Oh, and that if we wanted more information on "good" Christian parenting, we could send money to a certain organization and receive a book.
I was gobsmacked. I respect these people's right to have an opinion about Halloween. As the body of Christ, we're not going to agree on everything...and I'm sure as they passed out their little bags of condemnation, their intentions were good. But the sugar that came with the message didn't make it any easier to swallow.
My thoughts:
--Aren't they participating in Satan's playground by handing these out to trick or treaters? Or is this kind of like witnessing in a nightclub? Hmmm...
--This would have been a great time to tuck in an invitation to a church, a tract that presents the gospel, or even a "This is who we are, neighbor, come and get to know us..." type message. I may have to do this next year, along with the reverse trick or treat.
--Not to be trite, but What would Jesus do in this situation?
What do YOU think?
Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters. One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him. Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand. --Romans 14:1-4
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4 Comments:
Yikes. We are kinda like you, having started out completely anti-Halloween, to handing out candy with tracts, to just handing out candy and being friendly to the neighbors, to (the last couple of years) letting N trick-or-treat. I even carved a pumpkin this year (with a character from our favorite web cartoon)! We've also gone to a couple of fall festivals, and also a Reformation festival at RTS.
Too bad your "neighbor" didn't include their name and address, so you could thank them for their helpful parenting advice!
Wendi
As I told you on the phone...appalling...totally appalling!
Ugh. Just ugh. Either do Halloween or don't - we've been all over the map on it, too. If I had my 'druthers' we'd just skip it altogether, but my kids usually trick-or-treat when we're home. This is one of those areas we need to respect that passage in Romans 14 you quoted. I'm learning....
O! Good Grief! The NERVE of soem people. I just realized I totally forgot to even blog about Halloweenie. lol
We've come to the same conclusion, that we'd rather be shiny & bright faces in our neighborhood then leave the porch light off.
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