This past weekend was Halloween weekend. This holiday has had an interesting history with the Christian Church. While the origins of the holiday seem to be mostly Christian in nature, there have been grace concerns over the celebrations in our history. Depending on who you listen to, traditions like dressing up in costumes or going door to door for treats may have been pious in their beginnings or pagan. It was hard not to think about that tension as I walked through my friend’s neighborhood with my children as they went door to door begging for a Reese’s cup that they would eventually end up sharing with their mother. As we went door to door, however, I sensed a different “spirit” – not one that pitted God against paganism or demons, but one that questioned the supernatural altogether.
In some ways, Halloween has always been a holiday aimed at taming the supernatural: Jack-o-laterns to scare away evil spirits, Christian “Harvest Festivals” purposely built to keep the Halloween creepies out, and dressing up as scary monsters in some attempt to show that the monstrous may just be a costume that we put on our more “real” fears of things like sex and decay. Since at least the early 1990’s, scholars like William Placher and Charles Taylor have been writing about how our contemporary age is trying to argue itself out of a need for the transcendent or enchanted “spookies” like the Holy Ghost or the Real Presence of Christ in Holy Communion or demonic possession. All of those things mess with the control we want to be able to have over the world – because they hint at a reality that we have no control over.
Our desire for control of our world, it goes as far back as the snake’s temptation. Eat the fruit. Know it all. Be like God. There is no need for the supernatural if we imagine ourselves to be the deities of our existence. If we are gods, then our experience and reason are sufficient for a comprehensive understanding of the world – no YHWH or Christ required unless we deem them practical.
So, in some ways, I’m happy that we have something like Halloween in our culture. I’m welcoming of a holiday that perhaps spooks us enough to question a world that we do not control. That’s the beauty of Halloween after all, is that it scares some sense into us. It causes us to cry out like Luther did in the midst of that thunderstorm that changed his life. And maybe we’ll just begin to believe that there is something to this “spooky” supernatural power that we call “God”.