No Kids Dressed as the Devil

Bottom line up front: Out of 400 to 500 trick-or-treaters at our barn outreach this month, not one came dressed as a devil. That’s cute on Halloween, but it’s sobering when the same pattern shows up in our research.

If you’ve known me for a while, you know Char and I have an equestrian ministry. Every October we throw open the gates for Not-So-Spooky Trick or Treat. The horses get costumes, the kids get costumes, and there’s a contest for both… though honestly, the horses usually win all the carrots.

This year I stood at the fence and counted. Princesses. Superheroes. A couple of dinosaurs. One very convincing cowboy. Somewhere between four and five hundred kids walked past me. But among all of them, there was not one devil. Not one set of plastic horns, and no pitchforks.

Maybe that’s a good thing for a barn outreach on a fall afternoon. But it stuck with me, because I’d spent that same week staring at a number that says the same thing about grown-ups.

Less than 1%.

That’s how many Americans in our State of Christianity study expect to spend eternity in hell. Meanwhile, 32% expect heaven because of faith in Jesus, 20% expect heaven because they’re a good person. And 25% say they honestly don’t know what happens when they die.

Of all the questions on the SALT Index, this one tells me the most about an American’s faith. Hand someone a doctrinal statement and they’ll usually nod along. Ask them where they’re going when they die, and why, and you find out what they’re actually staking their life on.

As far as I can tell, Hell didn’t get argued out of existence. It got shrugged out. It has simply drifted out of view, the way things do when nobody talks about them anymore, and most people haven’t noticed it’s gone.

I think the reason is fairly simple. People don’t expect hell because they no longer see themselves the way Scripture describes them. In that same survey, 23% of Americans, nearly one in four, disagreed with the statement “I am a sinner.”

That’s the soil the less-than-1% grows in. If you don’t think you’re a sinner, hell isn’t a threat. It’s irrelevant. And if hell is irrelevant, so is rescue. So is the cross. So is grace.

I wouldn’t call this the old-fashioned works-righteousnes. What I’m seeing is gentler and harder to spot. Put the two numbers side by side: one in five Americans think being a good person is enough to get them to heaven, and nearly one in four don’t think they’re sinners at all. We can’t prove those are the same people, but neither group has much use for a Savior. Underneath both is a quiet assumption that God grades on a curve, that decent, kind, reasonably ethical people will get in, and that the eternal ledger will more or less balance itself out.

Over the past few months I’ve been to five funerals for friends and family. Some of you have had a stretch like that too. I’ll be honest: every one of them made me think about my own. Once you’re past 50, those thoughts come with the territory, and I don’t think it’s morbid to admit it.

So much of the fear of dying comes from not knowing, and trusting Jesus settled that for me. I know what’s waiting, and I know it rests on what He did rather than anything I did. Nobody ever had to explain to me that I needed saving. A storm off the coast of Alaska took care of that, with the boat going sideways and nothing left to be good enough about. What I needed someone to explain was the other half of the story: that Jesus had already done what I couldn’t do for myself. I needed both halves, and I’m convinced that’s what so many people are missing today. Some have never really been told they need rescuing, and others have never been told there’s someone who already did the rescuing.

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:23).

Now for the number that keeps me up at night, though in a good way.

One in four Americans is carrying around an unsettled question about eternity. It may be the biggest question a person can carry, and they haven’t answered it yet. Most of them aren’t hostile to faith, and they haven’t rejected grace. I suspect most have simply never heard it explained in a way that makes clear the difference between respecting Jesus and trusting Jesus.

I find that number more hopeful than discouraging. Jesus told His disciples the fields were already white for harvest, and that’s what this looks like to me: a lot of people who are open to the question and just don’t know where to take it.

The trouble is what we usually do with it. The church tends to answer a question people aren’t asking, which is whether they’d like to come join us, when the question they’re actually carrying is what’s waiting for them when they die, and on what basis.

If you’re over 50, as most of you reading this are, you’re the person that one-in-four is most likely to ask. People don’t usually ask a 25-year-old what happens when we die. They ask someone who has buried a few friends. The church sometimes talks about older believers as the generation it needs to replace, but on this question, you may be the people it needs most.

So here’s your assignment this week. Think of one person who stood near you at a funeral this year. Maybe it was the son who gave the eulogy and never mentioned God, the neighbor who hung back by the door, or the grandkid who asked you in the car afterward what happens now. When you find an unhurried moment, ask them one question: “Can I tell you why I’m not afraid of dying?” Then tell them both halves of the story, your need and your Jesus.

Then LMK, as the kids say. Email me at arnie.cole@bttb.org and let me know who you talked to and what happened. I read every one, and I’d like to pray for them by name this week.

All in, eyes up!

P.S. On this week’s Spiritually Fit Today podcast I talk with Braden Pedersen who shares about facing anxiety, embracing prayer, and building supportive relationships that can transform your spiritual journey.