As I stated in yesterday's post, I am no fan of Halloween. Besides the obvious links to the occult that anyone with an I.Q. greater than that of a common lap poodle should be able to see, along with the fascination with all things death, I heard an interesting point the other day. In ancient Ephesus, the Roman culture worshiped the Emperor as a god. Christianity was a young faith, and often persecuted. One test that the Romans did to find out who was a Christian was to randomly pick people in the streets and at the markets and require them to give an incense offering to the Emperor at the local idol erected to him. If you were a pagan, you did as you were told without thinking much of it, but if you were a Christian, you would refuse to do it because it violated your relationship to the Savior, and often you were killed as a result. Some Christians began giving the offering with their fingers crossed behind their backs so to speak, justifying their act by saying they would do more good as Christians alive than dead. These people were known as the Nicolaitans. If you've read Revelation, verse six in chapter two says “But this is to your credit: You hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.” (ISV)
The moral of the story is that justifying doing what the world does is something that our Lord says He hates. It doesn't matter what your justification is. Personally, I think ascribing innocence to the ways of the world is the worst excuse, and it also seems to be the most popular.
