Raising the Dead for Halloween

Gary: Now, Religion in the News…. This week’s item is from The Bolivian Times, November 1999, with the headline, Day of the Dead Comes to Life. “In many areas of South America there are different ways of expressing the significance of the dead. In the city of La Paz, Bolivia, the organization of the Day of the Dead celebration begins a week before the first of November. Different types of bread and biscuits are prepared; friends and family also create painted masks to represent the dead, which are then put on top of a human form made out of bread. Then begins the work of paying homage to deceased loved ones by the addition of various plates of food, drinks, books, photos, and so on, which were the favorite of the deceased during their lifetime.

“These are all placed upon an altar or tomb. Everyone offers prayers, songs, and supplications to request peace and rest for the dead. Then the families of the deceased are given bread, fruit, cookies, and bags to transport all their goodies. Wealthy people are less likely to participate in Day of the Dead festivities and more likely to celebrate Halloween, similar to their counterparts in the United States. Whereas Protestants don’t celebrate the day of the dead, Catholics have been willing to weave in this aspect of Andean culture.

“The most unique way of welcoming the dead in Bolivia occurs in Chipaya, where the people exhume their dead, taking the mummified corpses to their homes. Once they’ve cleaned the bodies of the deceased, changed their clothes, and combed their hair, friends and family sit them at the table to feed them and give them drinks. After that, the whole group, living and dead, go to the town’s plaza for festivities of drinking and dancing. Once the celebration ends, participants carefully wrap the dead and put them back in the ground.

“On November 8, another interesting custom occurs. Some Bolivians take skulls, which they’ve dug up at some point during the last year, to the church to be blessed by a priest. The skulls are then taken home, where the skull, it is believed, provides protection for the living.”

Tom: Dave, this is serious endeavor on these people’s part. Some, I’m sure, are grossed out by what’s been read by Gary…

Dave: Unbelievable!

Tom: On the other hand, there’s a fascination with regard to the dead, with regard—in some cultures it’s ancestral worship—why is that?

Dave: Ancestral worship is almost universal. You find it all through Africa, South America, and Japan, India—almost everywhere you go. Well, they’re looking to someone for help, for guidance, and they get the idea that once you have died, you have gone to the “other side.” You must know what they don’t know—the living certainly haven’t been there yet, so maybe you can tell them about it. Maybe you can help them, and so forth. Maybe you can become wiser. In some places it’s a form of respect as well. They respect their parents and they respect their grandparents, even the dead ones.

It’s an abomination to God, of course.

Tom: It’s necromancy…

Dave: Yeah…

Tom: …which the Bible condemns.

Dave: …absolutely forbidden in the Bible, because the dead can’t help you, and they can’t help themselves, and your prayers won’t help the dead. As the scripture says, “It is appointed unto man once to die, and after this the judgment.” They have either gone to heaven if they’re believers in Christ, or they’ve gone to hell, separated forever from Him, and there is nothing further that can be done for them.

So, what it does, Tom, it blinds people to the truth, it gives them a false hope, something to be preoccupied with…and I imagine Satan is just chortling, rubbing his hands in glee, that he has human beings doing this sort of thing. Death is the final stamp on our lives, and after that we have either known the Lord or we haven’t, and that will determine our destiny.

Tom: Dave, this is from an English article, but it’s out of The Bolivia Times, and it’s interesting that the article notes how Catholicism really fits in with this, and this has sort of blessed, in a sense, some of these rituals. For example, that last aspect—digging up skulls and having them brought to the church to be blessed by the priest—well, the church would identify with that, because they’ve always been into relics of the saints, and so on.

Dave: Well, there’s a church in Rome, as you know—they just have a whole basement full of bones. I don’t know the great significance. They’re not all supposedly of saints, but… “saints,” of course, is another error of Catholicism. The Bible was written to the “saints at Colosse,” “saints at Corinth,” and so forth. We are called to be “saints.” Living people are saints—sanctified, set apart by God. But Catholicism is very much involved in communication with the dead. Prayers to the dead. In fact, Pope John Paul II, as you recall, a few years ago he was in West Africa, and he spent some time with a voodoo priest, and basically, what he said to them was, “You can become Christians [what he means is Catholic]. You don’t have to change anything. We pray to the dead. You pray to the dead. So you don’t have to change that much.”

Tom: But also there’s a strong aspect of occultism here. What could be efficacious about a dead…basically, a bone from a dead body? I mean, these skulls are brought, and then after they’re blessed to the home, to provide protection for that family, and the Church, at least in Bolivia, condones this!

Dave: But this is sacramentalism. So, again, you take a wafer, and you supposedly turn it into the Body and Blood of Christ, and now this physical object has spiritual power. You ingest it into your stomach. It’s very much the same idea, and, in fact, as you know, as a former Catholic, the host, then, is put on display in the tabernacle with a light lit, and people come and they sit, what they say, “in the presence of Christ and talk to Him…”

Tom: Well, it’s in the monstrance, Dave, not in the tabernacle.

Dave: Right. But it is in the little tabernacle, too, inside…

Tom: Oh, right, when you come into the church. But sometimes it’s on display during the Eucharistic Devotional Hour.

Dave:  Right.  And this is then supposed to be Jesus Christ and you’re in His presence. It’s very similar to what they’re doing. But, Tom, the Bible says, “The god of this world has blinded the minds of those who do not believe, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ should shine in unto them.” And these people have a hope, they have an alternate. They have the dead that they’re trusting instead of in the living, resurrected Lord, who died for our sins, but He rose from the dead and is alive, and if we are in…we can be in communion with Him! So, Isaiah—he ridicules them! He says, “Why do you go to the dead? Why talk to the dead? Why don’t you talk to the living?”