In the Peanuts Halloween television special It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, Linus believes in a Santa Claus-like figure called the Great Pumpkin, whom Linus is sure will appear on Halloween. Every year Linus waits in the pumpkin patch for this savior to appear, but he never does. Humiliated, yet undefeated in his belief, Linus vows to wait for him the next year with even more anticipation and devotion.
When I was 8 or 9, this television special caused a tremendous disturbance in me. I wondered: Could this Great Pumpkin be the “Messiah” that my father had promised would come? Would we, like Linus, wait for him year after year in humiliation? I dared not breathe a word of this to anyone, but this doctrinal doubt took the form of a physical pain in my stomach.
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