I’m not sure how a snippet from the 1960s The Twilight Zone showed up in my YouTube feed. I like videos that make me laugh, and this wasn’t it. It was about a bratty, mind-reading kid who, if he sensed you not having fun, would turn you into something scary and teleport you out into the “cornfield.”
In this snippet, a guy named Dan got drunk on his birthday, started talking about what he really thought, and found himself transformed into a dead, head-bobbling jack-in-the-box. I suddenly felt a kinship with all the worry-prone Boomers I know—watching that as a 60s kid would have done it.
Seeing Dan turned into Jack made the other adults all the more agreeable, playing along with the six-year-old’s whims the rest of the episode.
Playing along with a wicked person’s whims. Sounds terrifying, but that’s how a lot of the world operates. When the regime calls for the same number of bricks but this time without straw, you grumble but keep ahead of the whips.
Seems to work that way in the spirit realm too. Many of the gods people serve are bound to no law but appetite, which is why their laws are so impoverishing. When the spirits are unpredictable and mischievous, we have to figure out ways to appease them or go undetected. 
“Many of the gods people serve are bound to no law but appetite, which is why their laws are so impoverishing.”
Interestingly, playing along is how trick-or-treating came about. The pre-Christian Celts celebrated the festival Samhain (pronounced saw-win), during which they believed the veil between the spirit world and ours became thin. Ancestor spirits would visit houses, looking for offerings. In anticipation of this, people would disguise themselves as ghosts for a couple reasons: first, to go undetected by the actual ghosts, and second, to visit homes and receive the offerings meant for the dead. With hungry spirits canvasing their town, they played along by pretending to be one of them.
Many people still play along to get along in a wicked, whimsical world, the same as our pre-Christian ancestors. Any of these rules sound familiar?
- Unsure if people truly love you? DO NOT stop working on your image.
- Betrayed by someone you trusted? DO NOT let anyone that close again.
- Scared by the unpredictability of this season of life? DO NOT allow your mind to rest or your body to Sabbath.
- Unable to climb social ladders because of faith commitments? DO NOT let your faith jeopardize your advancement. Know the difference between what enhances your life and what makes it worth living.
- Unable to stop feeling hurt by what someone did? DO NOT allow peace until you get even.
- Afraid others are getting ahead? DO NOT put other’s interests above your own. No one looks out for you like you can and must.
- Feeling down? DO NOT rest until you’ve found a thrill to pick you back up.
“We too play along to get along in a wicked, whimsical world, same as our pre-Christian ancestors.”
Granted, none of this is what we would do in an ideal world. But it’s a wicked world with warped rules.
Where wicked rulers and capricious spirits reign, people play along to get along. But the apostle Paul tells us we don’t have to. He describes “elemental spiritual forces of this world” that issue harsh regulations: “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!” (see Colossians 2:20-23).
The “Colossian heresy” had convinced even churchgoers to wear themselves out obeying rigid rules, mistreating their bodies, and pursuing mystical experiences. Only then, they believed, would they find fullness.
Nope, says Paul. “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness” (Colossians 2:9-10a, NIV). He’s our hope—the soil from which springs the good life: faith in God and love for others (see Colossians 1:3-5).
“For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness.”
Must be nice, we mutter on our way to meeting another demand by the wolfish spirit fattening us for eventual consumption.
But you don’t have to be ruled by these wannabe overlords. You can have one Lord, says Paul (Ephesians 4:5), one who is bound by goodness and brimming over with grace.
“Why,” Paul asks, “as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules?” Why keep playing along? That game is lame and it’s rigged against you. But God’s rules are made for you. “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath,” Jesus said. You don’t have to play along in the dark when he has already entered the room and flipped on the light.
