Why I Don't Celebrate Halloween

Today is Halloween. All Hallows Eve. The day before All Saints’ Day. A lot of Christians get uptight this time of year. For them, the holiday has come to symbolize everything that is wrong with the culture they are in. It’s a day of a pagan ritual called Trick or Treat, where people pretend to be something they’re not and, knowingly or not, pretend to be druids collecting their seasonal sacrifice with the promise of a hex (the trick) if they’re not satisfied. It’s a day when fear and death are celebrated. Macabre and morbid are actively encouraged. If Jesus came for us to have life, and have it to the fullest, isn’t Halloween an anti-holy day?

I used to cringe as I passed stacked displays of trick-or-treat pumpkins with their fluorescent orange gap-toothed grins in the stores. I sidestepped the bats near the bananas and the spiders on the spaghetti aisle. I got irritated at orange lights strung up like Christmas displays. At times, I felt like belting out, "What’s wrong with you people?! Don’t you know you’re celebrating fear and death?"

I still feel irked sometimes, but I don’t get all stirred up about it anymore. I guess it’s because I feel like I understand why people celebrate it. Historically, people fear death. Death has always been something pagans fear and fail to understand. Culturally, Halloween provides a safe way of exploring those fears. Because I no longer fear death, I have no need for this holiday. I don’t feel like I’m superior to others who celebrate it. I just don’t need it, just like I don’t need yesterday’s garbage. People can celebrate whatever they want to, but I don’t feel the need to participate or to protest the holiday. It’s a big waste of time and money for me.

I still dislike goblins, vampires and witches, but only because they depict power without godly authority. They bring the same revulsion that a photograph of Stalin or Hitler would. I despise all power that isn’t under a godly authority. It is symbolic of the destruction that Satan desires for the whole human race. Why does he want it so badly? Because God loves us and lavishes us with it. He is consumed with destroying the object of God’s affection. The human being is made in God’s image, and Satan has six billion copies of his enemy walking around, so it’s no wonder he uses his ungodly power to destroy them all if he could. Short of killing them, twisting them morally, spiritually and physically seems just as well in his eyes. Getting them to believe in and use his power is just one way of doing that.

But just like the masks used on Halloween, Satan, the leader of the fallen angels, is a pretender. He does have power, but that power is temporary. On the real All Saints’ Day, he will be unmasked, stripped of his power and discarded into a lake of fire that burns him and his followers forever. He’s a fake, so why follow him? I follow the One Whose power infinitely exceeds this imposter. I know the Way, the Truth and the Life. His name is Jesus. By His power, I can face death without fear. My life is bought with Jesus’ blood. He died the most painful death a person could face. Three days later, He proved that His power could not be stopped even by death. If He raised Lazarus from the dead after 4 days, there’s nothing to keep us from believing He raised Himself after 3 days, or that he can resurrect us as well. When that resurrection day comes, it won’t be night of the living dead, it will be judgment day, a day when things are finally set right. I know I am truly at peace with my Creator. I have nothing to fear in death or the grave. The question is, do you?

By the way, I've written about Halloween before.

Second Chances

Like most everyone, I have only a few early childhood memories before age 5. One of these was a dream, actually a nightmare. I dreamed I was on a game show. I tried but never remembered what the show was called. Today, I remembered the dream and did a little research. I found it was called Second Chance. It ran for only one 19 week season in 1976, which was a good reason why I couldn't recall it. Here's a three minute clip from YouTube.



Isn't that weird? It was later revamped and retried as Press Your Luck with the Devil being replaced by a Whammy. Anyway, I was three years old at the time and in my dream, I was playing the game--oddly the set was blue/black, not yellow/ugly--and if I landed on the Devil, my parents would go to hell. That scared me good enough to sear it into my mind for 30+ years! And people wonder why kids wake up crying in the middle of the night.

I despaired, if that's possible for a 3 year-old, for weeks because I thought it was real and that one day I would be on that game show and have to play it for my own fate or my parents. You can imagine the stress it created.

The good news is that the next year I went to a Sunday School where a missionary named Pat explained that Jesus died to save us from hell and that if I wanted to go to heaven, I could ask Jesus into my heart. It wasn't a matter of luck or chance! I took her at her word and when I found my parent in the hallway that Sunday, I ran and told my dad what I had done. I think it's because I wanted to make sure he knew too so he could go to heaven. Anyway, my dad was thrilled and picked me up in his arms. That's all I remember.

When I had grown up, I later found out that God had been pressing my dad through the Holy Spirit to share the Gospel with me and the impression was that if he (my dad) wouldn't do it soon, that God would do it another way. I got my second chance, so to speak. But I also realized that God takes the early reservations for heaven just as seriously as he takes the last-minute bookings.

Loose Teeth and Parental Dentistry

My daughter lost her first tooth a few weeks ago. She lost her second tooth this week. She's only five and I'm wondering if this is too early, because I didn't start losing teeth until age 6 and change.

The second tooth had an air of deja vu, too. Like I did with my first lost tooth, my daughter came down to our living room after bedtime, worried that it would fall out. Just like my dad did nearly 30 years ago, I reached in and flipped the little tooth out with the same flick of the finger. It was almost an identical replay of what losing teeth was for me back then.

I guess we all become our parents to some extent, but to follow the footsteps so easily was uncanny!

I Cannot, Not Vote For McCain

All the way back in February, I pledged that I would not vote for McCain. I said this because I was angry my own candidate had fallen off in the nomination process. Words spoken in anger are seldom just or right. I learned long ago that the anger of man will not accomplish God's will. Yet I spoke those words and today I publicly retract them. [insert sheepish look here]

I cannot, not vote for McCain. Yes, that's a double-negative, but it's how I've come to my decision. I'm in a "battleground" state. I believe in a lot of what McCain believes. I certainly cannot support Obama. His statements about abortion, education, government, and the military lead me to believe he will weaken our nation and deepen the financial crisis, which seems to come every 20 years, regardless of which party is in office. Like Joe Biden, Obama's running mate, I believe that Obama and his inexperience and naivete will prompt America's enemies to generate a new crisis to test Obama.

I don't want to belabor this and I'm not a huge fan of partisan politics anyway. I will vote for McCain this election. He's a better choice, and that's really what it comes down to for me. Folks, please pray about this election!

Probable Cause

Yahoo's "Most Popular" headlines frequently show up in my G-mail account. This is one I couldn't ignore: Atheists plan ad campaign on side of London buses. One of the ads, according to the article, states, "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

Uh, "probably"? That sounds more like an agnostic and it hasn't made celebrity atheist Richard Dawkins too happy, apparently. The best part of the article was the end.

The religious think tank Theos said it had donated $82 to the campaign, on the grounds that the ads were so bad they would probably attract people to religion.

"It tells people to 'stop worrying,' which is hardly going to be a great comfort for those who are concerned about losing jobs or homes in the recession," said Theos director Paul Woolley.

"Stunts like this demonstrate how militant atheists are often great adverts for Christianity."

Isn't that a classic? It reminds me of the comedy routine by Darren Streblow that I saw on Bananas a while back. He got on the topic of atheists getting together to encourage each other, maybe sing a song like, "Who gives us reason to live? No one, no one." Folks need hope like they need air.

Whenever you draw your meaning and purpose from the negative, in this case being atheist and saying there's no God, you depend on the positive to be set so you can deny it. It's like someone cooks a dinner and you define yourself by fasting. They refuse to believe that the food is real or that it's for them. But they don't get any meaning out of fasting other than they're not like the ones eating. Like Streblow says, imitating an atheist preacher, "We believe ...that you can't believe. Here's what we know ...we don't know."

Like a reflection of sound or light, atheism can only react to what's positively articulated by the source, namely theism. But rather than exist in a duality, I believe atheists are just another variety of not-God worshippers. There's only one source of truth and life in this universe, and it's God. Everything else is not-God, just like there's light and "not-light" (darkness). Darkness doesn't really exist; it's just what we use to describe not-light. Atheists don't really have cause to celebrate anything, especially if it's all a meaningless, purposeless existence. What a non-meaning, non-substantial non-faith!

I know there are folks out there that might say that I'm over-simplifying it. I probably am. My point is that there is order, structure and substance to this existence. A candle burns in a predictable chemical reaction everytime. That's structure and order, a law that exists. It says, combine oxygen and carbon at a specific temperature and you get light in a sustainable chain reaction. To have any law without the originator of that law in this existence is logically impossible.

To the First Cause, thank you for all of this. It wouldn't be the same without You.

Lord Of the Seasons

You gotta love a God who puts on a yearly color display just for our enjoyment. I don't know if the fox or the squirrel or the bluejay really appreciates it quite like we do. I see the royal reds, yellows mixing with greens, Rocky Mountain gold clinging to the aspens for a few last days, and I wonder, "And this is just what we can see!" I imagine it gets even better when we see with not just our eyes but our new glorified bodies.

As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease. Genesis 8

The cold and the heat both come in their times. Summer and winter come and make us forget the other's warmth and chill. We sit in the summer and can't imagine shutting the windows to hold in the heat. Neither can we consider opening the windows to let in the winter's chill. We live between the extremes,

The Lord is the one who designed the seasons. He knows each leaf, each tree. He knows what color they will be tomorrow and when the tree will die. He is a master at His artwork, and His artwork happens to be everything, including you and me. He knows our seasons too, when we will grow in the warmth of our summers and when we will slow in a winter sleep. He knows what color our actions will be tomorrow and when we will die. He can't be disappointed in what we become because he knows what we will be one day. He called Daniel, Moses, Paul and Timothy. He called Deborah, Rahab, Mary and Martha. He knew their first stirrings as a seed inside their mothers and their dying breath and every day in between. He knows the seasons. He called them, and they answered. Their seasons are His. He is the Lord of the seasons.

Our first snowfall came yesterday. The kids held us to the promise that we would have a snow day on the first day it snowed. They've really enjoyed themselves today. Me, I'm having a cut apple and peanut butter, enjoying the season I'm in.

Oh, the Humanity

Here are some things about me you may not know, but might actually be interested to find out. There is a small explanation behind this post below the list. If personal details thrill you, this list is for you. If not, hang in there, a better post is coming. I hope it is, anyway.

• My favorite season - the first half of each. I really do love all four, but I get tired of them after six weeks or so
• My dream vacation - a couple of weeks in Disneyworld with my kids, my wife. An accessible suite that sleeps all five of us, a powerchair and access to an ice machine would be really nice too, because of my disabilities
• My most fervent prayer - that God would use me where I am with what He gives me
• My 2nd most fervent prayer - that God would heal me and let me move forward
• My least favorite aspect of my disability - the unpredictability of my Fibromyalgia. Being unable to plan anything with certainty takes me out of the driver's seat for my life, for good or ill.
• My Brother's favorite NFL team - The Denver Broncos
• My Father's favorite NFL team - The Denver Broncos
• My Son's favorite NFL team - The Denver Broncos
• My own favorite NFL team - uh, do we have to guess?
• Cats or dogs - Cats, because nothing can replace my boyhood dog. Weird, huh?
• Allergies - Yes, cats, dogs, and pollen (even in raw honey, which I love but can't have)
• Speaking of sweet stuff, I have a sweet tooth that loves strawberry Twizzlers, Haribo gummy candy, and Coca-Cola in the glass bottles. Yes, I can't have any of those without a risk of setting back weight loss. Still, when I'm in a lot of pain, I crave these "comfort foods."
• Favorite Fiction Series - Clancy's Jack Ryan series, Tolkien's Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia
• Currently Reading - The Cardinal of the Kremlin by Tom Clancy -- the only classic Clancy that I haven't read yet, The Shack by Wm P. Young (with my daughter)
• Early on in life, I had a couple of disabilities, ADHD and a visual disorder, that had once convinced me I would never love to read
• Things I miss most from my "able-bodied" days
• Camping, snow or car camping included but primative was the most fun...and a lot of work!
• Hiking - I used to climb 14ers and I miss rising to the challenge of making it to the top, the wildflowers, the pristine alpine and tundra slopes and the peace of continually moving. I don't miss sunburn, dehydration headaches, nausea, encountering all four seasons in an hour, and the lightning storms
• Walking anywhere for 20 minutes without pain
• Hoisting my child up in the air and getting a big squeal of joy for my trouble
• Fixing things without having to rely on anyone else to do my work
• Playing sports badly, like soccer, football, and raquetball (they all involve violent collisions)
• Fishing brooks and streams for trout and being able to move from hole to hole
• Biking anywhere
• Flying down a mountain on skis or an alpine slide
• Favorite places to eat - Outback Steakhouse, Chili's, Panda Express
• Favorite date - Dinner with my wife at the above followed by a quiet, secluded walk under the stars--if I can find a powerchair...sigh--and then a shared dessert
• Favorite weekend trip - Soaking in Glenwood Springs
• Favorite home cooked meal - Roast beef or roast leg of lamb, and mashed potatos, spinach salad and cheesecake for dessert
• Best meal I ever had: a tie between a breakfast of smoked trout off the bone overlooking a mountain meadow and a dinner by the campfire of baked trout (freshly caught hours before) followed by a large steak cooked over a pine wood fire. Gotta love campfire cooking!
• PC or Mac - PC, home-assembled with help from a good tech (I'm brave, but not foolish)
• Favorite movies (the short list) - Braveheart, The Princess Bride, Remember the Titans, Facing the Giants, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, National Treasure, good ones I can see with my kids like The Sound of Music, The Wizard of Oz, etc.
• Favorite Musicians - Very eclectic... U2, Rich Mullins, David (you know, the Psalms?), Mozart, Strauss, Margaret Becker, Keith Thomas (Thank you, D!), Charlie Peacock, Celtic Praise, 80s anything, really anything but screaming in a mic. If you have that much anger, you don't need my money unless you're willing to get counseling
• I collect train DVDs, specifically DVDs about Colorado Railroads, past and present. I enjoy them enough to sometimes write about them and review them here.
• Due to my weather sensitivity, I watch the weather closely and know all about dewpoints, millibars and meteorology
• These days, I drive less than I did when I was 15 years old because a lot of my medications say "Use care when operating heavy machinery..."
• As a teen, I knew every line to Top Gun, but didn't own the movie until a few years ago. I was a huge fan of trains, then planes, and now trains again. I guess I like big noisy things that go fast

I wrote this post to give you a sense of who writes "Waldens Wits," and that this is only one side of my life. I love writing and it is something God put in me as a "gotta do this or I'll explode" kind of thing. I don't like writing self-centered posts like this too often. On the other hand, this is a small part of me "knowing myself" and understanding what I enjoy. If we don't find healthy expressions of our need to love and enjoy things, they may surface in other, less-healthy ways. Most importantly, I deeply appreciate my wife who has walked beside me, knowing all this stuff and loving me regardless.

Facing the Truth Of A Disability

One of the first times I might have realized that I was less than able-bodied was when I was washing my car. Long ago, I ditched the mop bucket and suds as just too darned inefficient and not having a driveway tended to limit my do-it-yourself tendencies. In fact, I was in an on-again, off-again relationship with the $7, automatic car washes. That particular day, it was off again. Instead, I was at the we-say-its-50-cents-but-really-its-5-dollars places where, joy of joys, you do it yourself. Did I mention you pay them for you to wash your own car?

Anyway, this sort of place appealed to me. It was spartan, straight forward and if you did it right, you could save money. That really appealed to me. It was "Beat the Clock," but you're playing for your own money. So, I was on the third trip with the foaming wand--what?--and I was huffing and limping. I was on the power rinse, and I was puffing and gimping. By the second coat of wax--enough already!—I was beet red, my heart was in my ears, and I couldn't stand up because my back was not just on fire with pain, it wouldn't respond to my commands to straighten. My wife had this look on her face that said "Do I call 911 or just scream for help?" I almost told her that screaming for help is cheaper.

I was just on the edge of consciousness when I saw the light. No, not that light. I understood the painful truth that it was, in fact, cheaper to go to those $7 car washes when you figured in the hospital co-pays.

Sometimes the last one to admit a person has a disability isn’t a doctor. It isn’t the judge. Sometimes, it’s the person with the disability who refuses to acknowledge it. That day, I wasn’t ready to admit I had a disability. I was just ready to shift my car washing habits. Quite honestly, the notion of admitting I was less than able-bodied or disabled was terrifying to me. There was a long, dark corridor down that line of thought that I didn’t want to consider.

Eventually, however, the facts catch up with you as they did with me. I couldn’t deny that the accommodations I was making in my lifestyle were to compensate for my inability to do anything else. My changing of careers was as much to stop traveling as it was to earn more, even though I loved traveling on business. My sedentary job itself was because I couldn’t handle more physical ones. Was I proud of it? Nuh-uh, but you couldn’t get me to confess that I couldn’t. I wanted to work indoors. Really I did.

Owning up and facing the bitter truth that you have lost an ability, perhaps for the rest of your life, is something that takes time. We're not meant to lose these abilities, and accepting that we have is a bruise on our egos. Once we do, we can pick up and go forward with life. How soon we move on is just as individual as the person and the disability they suffer, but the point is to move on, to not get stuck on the loss. The pain is real, the loss is real, but letting it become what you orbit, what your life centers on, breaks your momentum and you head in a different direction than where you wanted to go. It takes effort to get back on track, but unless you want to be a passenger and not a driver of your life, that's the effort everyone facing a disability must make.

CBS and Fox Ruining My NFL Sundays

My son is football these days. He eats and sleeps and breathes football. He loves Sunday. The only problem he has with watching football remains what I have always hated about watching football: the junk the networks decide to advertise during the breaks.

Do I really want to see a man lying in a pool of his own blood, CBS? Hey Fox, is Stewie's obsession with Bryan's saliva really worth showing to millions of young football fans? It's disgusting, you network half-wits! The NFL has Play 60 ads airing right next to this stuff because they know the kids are watching. I have a hard time believing that the networks don't know their own demographics.

I've harped on this issue before--and I don't want to turn this into a gripe blog, but these ads are killing my love for the NFL. Taste and restraint in selecting the ads needs to return not soon, but now.