Halloween, the Celebration of Fear

This week, fear-inducing scenes surround us. Figures of demons, devils and ghosts startle us as we walk into the mall, ducking to avoid spider-filled cobwebs hanging in doorways. Theatres advertise horror films, and Halloween costume parties are replete with vampires, witches, and warlocks. Yes, this coming Monday is Halloween, the yearly celebration of things we fear.

We usually think of fear as a negative emotion. Jesus kept telling His followers, “Don’t be afraid.” But there is also a positive side to fear.

What We Fear Shows What We Value
I have lived for extended periods in nearly a dozen countries. People in every culture and society consider their bodies important. They all dread suffering a crippling accident or debilitating disease. They profoundly respect loaded firearms, powerful machinery, poisonous snakes, and disease-carrying insects. Fear is what drives us to doctors for medical advice, while others call on shamans or engage in other actions that they believe will keep them alive and well.

One of the most positive aspects of fear is that it helps us to understand ourselves better. What we dread shows us what we value. To determine what things I value the most, I recently listed six things that frighten me the most:

• I fear committing “moral lapse” sins. I read of fellow Christian leaders, speakers, and authors who, through pride, abuse their power as communicators. Others, through greed and envy, embezzle ministry funds. Others, through lust and gluttony, sin by inappropriate sexual conduct, overeating or drunkenness.
• I value my fellowship with God and my reputation with those who know me. I value the respect of my wife, my family, and my colleagues. I value my current public ministry as an author and my history as a leader, speaker, and pioneer Bible translator.

• I fear suffering a crippling physical or mental injury or disease.
• I value serving God with my mind and body. I value physical comfort and freedom from pain. I value exercising a wide range of life choices and options.

• I fear messed-up relationships with my family, friends, and colleagues.
• I value our interdependence, helping each other to succeed, and the resulting mutual respect and appreciation.

• I fear poverty.
• I value being treated by God as His money manager, to give to those in need, to meet my personal and family needs; and to finance the cost of publishing what I write.

• I fear losing all my computer data, my creative writing, personal history, my fifty-plus years of daily diaries, and a lifetime collection of photos, etc.
• I value the written record of what I have done and experienced in the past because I constantly learn how God has led me, and I tap into it for my writing ministry.

• I fear that our children, grandchildren, and their spouses may suffer the same sort of losses and troubles that I fear.
• I value that God listens to my wife and me as we pray by name for each member of our family. We are like the apostle John who wrote, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.” (3 JN 4)

So What?
During this Halloween week, let’s remember that even if some of our fears come true, our souls are safe. As children of God, we can sing, “Though trials should come . . . It is well with my soul.”

The Canela people, among whom Jo and I worked as Bible translators for twenty-three years, were terrified of evil spirits and the malevolent ghosts of their ancestors who were intent on sickening and killing the Canelas. When they received God’s Word in their language, huge changes came to believers who knew God’s powerful Holy Spirit now lived in their bodies, and they had nothing to fear from spirits and ghosts.

Hundreds of millions of people, however, continue to live in daily fear, beset by Satanic forces. They don’t know that Jesus, the Son of God, has overcome Satan. They, too, need to hear Jesus say, in their own language, “Trust in me, don’t be afraid.”