Aside from the fact that it’s a commercially driven enterprise earning millions of pounds for big business, it strikes me that there’s something deeper going on in our culture’s ever-expanding celebration of Hallowe’en.
The Bible nails it with this verse from John’s Gospel, ‘Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.’ Most of us will of course immediately react to the idea that we are evil, but the reality is that every one of us carries shame for things that we have done that we deeply regret – the outworking of our selfish hearts.
The problem is what to do with the shame that we carry – we fear our deeds being exposed. We have no answer and so the easiest thing is to hide it from view, to carry our shame in the shadows and pretend all is well. No wonder we love a festival that echoes the darkness of our own hearts.
The good news of course is that Jesus the Light of the World shines His presence into this dark world not in order to humiliate us but in order to redeem us and set us free.
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