WHEN THE CHURCH BECOMES THE DARKNESS
Halloween doesn’t frighten me nearly as much as what happens when people carrying crosses become the reason the wounded are afraid of Christ.
By Florida Night Train
October 2026
October is a peculiar month in the Church. Every year, almost on cue, Christians start arguing about Halloween.
Is it pagan? Is it demonic? Can Christians hand out candy? Are costumes acceptable as long as nobody dresses like the devil? Can the church hold a “harvest festival” instead, hand out the same candy, carve the same pumpkins and somehow make October 31 holy by changing the sign out front?
Scriptures get quoted. Lines get drawn. Opinions get louder.
And frankly, I’m tired. Not tired of truth. Truth matters.
I’m tired of Christians obsessing over where darkness might be hiding while remaining remarkably blind to the darkness sitting in the pews.
I’m tired of everybody’s theology about sin, love, hate, hell, judgment, marriage, sexuality, politics, music, alcohol, clothing and whatever other issue happens to be dividing Christians this week.
Who is saved? Who isn’t? Who is going to hell? Which denomination has it right? Which one has it wrong? What justifies this? What condemns that? After nearly forty years around churches, I’ve heard enough opinions to last several lifetimes. And somewhere along the way I began wondering whether we have become so busy defending Christianity that we have forgotten Christ.
I came to Jesus when I was around eight years old. A stranger introduced me to Him and His teachings, and even at that age something clicked. This Jesus guy sounded considerably better than some of the grown-ups who were supposed to be taking care of me…or of themselves for that matter.
Then came the promises many of us heard. Come to Jesus and your life will get better. You’ll have joy. You’ll have peace. Your problems will become easier…..Right. What a lie……at least if “better” means comfortable. Jesus didn’t make my world prettier. He opened my eyes to it.
And once your eyes are open, you begin seeing things you sometimes wish you hadn’t. You begin discovering that churches are populated by precisely the same species found everywhere else. Human beings.
And human beings are messy.
Behind pristine Sunday clothes I have seen hypocrisy, adultery, jealousy, addiction, dishonesty, sexual immorality, greed, pride, cruelty, broken marriages, wounded children and enough judgment to fill a courthouse.
There are abusers carrying Bibles. Addicts singing hymns. Thieves giving offerings. Adulterers teaching Sunday school. Prideful people preaching humility. And people capable of extraordinary cruelty speaking constantly about love.
That statement will offend some Christians. Good. Keep reading.
Because before anyone imagines I’m standing outside the church throwing rocks through stained-glass windows, I’m not. I’ve been sitting inside for almost forty years.
And I’m no better. I have judged. I have been arrogant. I have been hypocritical. I have hurt people. I have defended myself when I should have listened. I have confused my opinion with truth. I have sinned while being painfully aware that I was a sinner.
The older I become, the less impressed I am with my own righteousness. Perhaps that is one reason the words of Christ keep haunting me. Jesus reserved some of His harshest criticism not for prostitutes, addicts, tax collectors or society’s rejects. He aimed it at religious people. People obsessed with appearing righteous while corruption lived beneath the robes. He called them whitewashed tombs. Beautiful outside. Dead inside.
Two thousand years later, sometimes I think we simply upgraded the wardrobe. And then we wonder why churches struggle to make disciples. We blame culture. We blame government. We blame Hollywood. We blame schools. We blame sexuality. We blame social media. We blame younger generations.
Maybe every once in a while we should look in the mirror. Because there are people who are not necessarily rejecting Jesus. They are rejecting what happened to them at the hands of people who claimed to represent Him. And sometimes they have very good reasons.
I know someone I love deeply who has suffered enormously. I have watched wounds surface that I cannot repair. I have seen the anger. The fear. The terror. The confusion. The rage. The internal battles. And I have seen what religious trauma can do when faith becomes associated not with safety and grace but with abuse, condemnation and fear.
There are moments when everything inside me wants to say: If only you could see the Christ I see.
Not Christianity Incorporated.
Not denominations.
Not televangelists.
Not religious politics.
Not self-appointed morality police.
Not the people who harmed you.
Him.
Jesus.
I believe Christ can transform a human life. I believe He can bring meaning, hope, forgiveness, peace and healing into places human beings cannot always reach.
But I have also learned something important. Faith is not a psychiatric medication. Trauma does not disappear because somebody quotes Scripture. Mental illness is not proof of inadequate faith. And telling a deeply wounded person that Jesus will simply make everything better can become another form of cruelty when reality proves more complicated.
You cannot bully someone toward Christ while claiming to represent Christ. You cannot frighten a traumatized person into trusting God. You cannot debate someone into feeling safe. And you certainly cannot demand that a victim separate Jesus from Christians when Christians themselves spent years insisting they represented Him.
Sometimes the first thing you have to do is love. No conversion quota. No theological transaction. No spiritual sales pitch. Just love. Patiently. Consistently.
And that brings me to the photographs accompanying this article. They were not accidental. I conceived and directed this photoshoot intentionally. I wanted them uncomfortable. I wanted dirt. I wanted darkness. I wanted burlap. I wanted blackened skin. I wanted anger. I wanted screaming. I wanted the chalice. I wanted the cross. And yes, I wanted to provoke a reaction. Especially from the self-righteous.
I wanted to see how quickly people who spend their lives talking about discernment might look at these images and pronounce something evil before bothering to ask what the 
images actually represent. Some will look at them and see darkness. I see agony. Some will see sacrilege. I see suffering. Some may see demonic imagery. I see a human being screaming from wounds inflicted in places where she should have been safe. I see rage. I see helplessness. I see frustration. I see the accumulated scars of people who were told God loved them while human beings supposedly representing God were harming them.
Look again. The chalice is there. But it is empty. The cross is there. But in the photograph it is simply an object. Metal. Wood. Resin. Decoration. Because an empty chalice cannot heal anybody. A plastic cross cannot love an abused child. A church building cannot repent. A pulpit cannot apologize. A denomination cannot hold a terrified person while they cry.
People have to.
The power was never in the prop. The cross matters because of the One who hung upon it and what He taught us about sacrifice, mercy, forgiveness and love. When we preserve the symbol while abandoning its meaning, we have reduced Christianity to religious theater. And perhaps that is what these photographs really are. A mirror. Some people will stare at the dirt and miss the pain. Some will stare at the screaming and miss the wound.
Some will stare at the imagery and immediately start evaluating whether it is spiritually appropriate. Meanwhile, somebody who has actually lived through religious trauma may look at that screaming face and understand it immediately. They may recognize that scream. They may have screamed it themselves.
And if that makes some church people uncomfortable, perhaps discomfort is exactly what is needed. Because the Church has real ghosts. Not the Halloween variety. Children who were abused. Victims who were silenced. Families destroyed over doctrine. People ostracized because they asked inconvenient questions. Parents and children alienated because religious certainty became more important than relationship. People manipulated spiritually, emotionally or sexually by individuals entrusted with their care.
Catholic. Protestant. Independent. It crosses denominational lines because hypocrisy has never needed a particular theology. And yet…..and this is important….I have not abandoned the Church. I can’t. I will not. I still believe we need it. Perhaps desperately.
The contradiction disappears when you stop thinking of the Church as a showroom for saints. The Church should be more like a hospital. Hospitals aren’t filled with healthy people. They are filled with sickness. Blood. Pain. Infection. Fear. Broken bones. Cancer. Death. Even the doctors walking through their corridors occupy bodies that themselves are vulnerable to disease, aging and death. Sometimes hospitals are dirty. Sometimes doctors make terrible mistakes. Sometimes institutions protect themselves. Sometimes people entrusted with healing become the people who cause harm.
We don’t respond by concluding that medicine itself is worthless. We demand better medicine. We clean the instruments. We investigate malpractice. We remove dangerous practitioners. We hold institutions accountable. We protect patients. And then we keep treating the sick.
Maybe the Church needs exactly that mentality. Because the problem isn’t that sinners are sitting in church. That’s precisely where sinners belong. I belong there.
The problem begins when sinners forget they are sinners and start pretending they are God. When broken people begin diagnosing everyone else’s brokenness while hiding their own. When pastors protect institutions instead of victims. When theology becomes a weapon. When traditions become more sacred than human beings. When preserving appearances becomes more important than telling the truth.
And when the wounded finally walk out the doors, we shake our heads and ask why they abandoned God.
Perhaps sometimes God wasn’t the one they were running from. Perhaps they were running from us. I believe judgment is coming. I believe that deeply. And strangely, I take comfort in it. Not because I relish anyone’s condemnation. But because ultimately I do not get the final word. Neither does the preacher. Neither does the denomination. Neither does the abuser. Neither does the victim. God does.
And if God truly sees the heart, then He sees things none of us can. He sees motives. He sees secret rooms. He sees manipulation hidden behind religious vocabulary. He sees the frightened child living underneath the angry adult. He sees the person desperately trying to survive. And He sees the heart beneath the spotless suit sitting in the front pew just as clearly as He sees the tattooed, furious, wounded human being who refuses to walk through the church doors. That brings me considerable comfort. Because appearances become meaningless before a God who sees everything.
The suit cannot save you. The church title cannot save you. The offering envelope cannot save you. The theological vocabulary cannot save you. And neither dirt, tattoos, anger, illness nor rebellion automatically condemn another human being. God sees deeper. Thank God.
So this October, I am not terribly frightened by Halloween. Plastic skeletons don’t bother me very much. Neither do costumes. I’m more concerned about something considerably darker. I’m concerned about every person who might have reached toward Christ but encountered Christians first.
The abused child. The rejected teenager. The addict. The alienated fathers and mothers. The mentally ill. The ashamed. The angry. The traumatized. The person sitting somewhere alone convinced that God hates them because someone speaking in God’s name once made them believe He did. Those are the ghosts haunting the Church that interest me. And if Christianity wants an exorcism this October, perhaps we should begin there.
Exorcise the arrogance. The hypocrisy. The obsession with appearances. The addiction to judgment. Scandalous luxuries. The need to always be right. The instinct to condemn before listening. Then clean the hospital. Protect the wounded. Expose the abusers. Wash the instruments. And get back to the work Christ actually gave us.
Because outside the stained-glass windows are human beings desperately looking for what Jesus offered so freely: Mercy. Truth. Grace. Dignity. Hope. Love.
The Church does not frighten me because it is full of broken people. I belong there for exactly that reason. What frightens me is when broken people forget they are broken…..and begin speaking as though they are God.
Maybe the darkness isn’t where we thought it was. Maybe sometimes it is sitting in the pew beside us. Maybe sometimes it is standing behind the pulpit.
And if I’m willing to be completely truthful….. sometimes it is sitting in my own seat.
That realization doesn’t make me want Christ less. It makes me need Him more.
A collaboration by:
Photos: @johnny.kaufman.photography
Production: @FloridaNightTrain / www.facebook.com/floridanighttrain
Models: @arlothefaerie and @nikkijeanmodeling
@FloridaNightTrain / www.facebook.com/floridanighttrain
