Touched by a Vampire

by Beth Felker Jones

  LOVE THAT SACRIFICES

  It makes sense that we find power in a love that is willing to make sacrifices. In so many ways, we live in a selfish culture, a place where people don’t often give something up for someone else’s sake. One of the reasons Twilight is compelling is that it shows a love that’s very different from the bland me-first love we so often see. The love God promises us in Scripture is a love that sacrifices too, but sacrificial love in the Bible looks very, very different from Bella’s self-erasing sacrifice.

  Bella’s sacrifice for Edward is not the compelling self-sacrifice that Christians learn about in Scripture. The model of Christian sacrifice is Jesus Christ. In 1 John 3:16, we know what love is because “Jesus Christ laid down his life for us,” and this is our model for laying down our lives for others. In many ways, Bella’s sacrifice is doable because she sees her life as so very trivial. In contrast, Jesus’s sacrifice is of cosmic significance because of who He is as God. If we hope to imitate Christ’s sacrifice, we cannot despise what we are sacrificing. This is especially true for women and girls in a culture that often subjects them to abuse and violence.

  Christian self-sacrifice, particularly for women, is not about the erasure of a life for the sake of romance. It is about sharing the love and grace of Jesus Christ. Bella, despite Edward’s many protests, is too reminiscent of so many women who have been counseled to suffer anything for the sake of a man, to accept abuse, to die for love.

  Yes, real love makes sacrifices, but real love does not assume that the thing that is sacrificed has little worth. It doesn’t seek pain for pain’s sake or hide the truth of pain from a loved one. Real love, then, looks very different from Bella’s love for Edward. Real love happens between two people of value, not between a girl who thinks she is nothing and the boy is everything.

  A DIFFERENT KIND OF LOVE

  The love in Twilight is also compelling because it is so serious. In our self-absorbed culture, we don’t see much that is serious about love. So we enjoy reading Twilight because the love in the story is the opposite of the shallow loves that we know from television, movies, and life. It is the opposite of the random hookup, the false love that gets intimate one night and pretends nothing happened the next morning. Of course, we want a serious love.

  Yet the serious love of Twilight is not a healthy love. It tries to find a center in another human being who cannot possibly be the center we need. It is open to danger, even to violence. Are we out of luck, then, if we want a serious love?

  Thankfully, we are not. God provides us with a completely compelling, delightfully serious way of loving. God’s kind of love is not bland and passionless. We read about it in 1 Corinthians 13:

  If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

  Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

  Love never fails. (verses 1–8)

  Now, this is a serious account of love. This is a love that is central. This is a love that is beautiful. It challenges the selfishness and lack of seriousness of “love” in our me-first world, but it does it in a different way than Bella and Edward do. This love is not about becoming a satellite, orbiting around someone else, yet it does protect and honor the loved one with all its might. This love is not a love that destroys. This love builds up. This kind of love cannot depend on another human being to give life meaning, though it does greatly honor the people we love.

  Or consider this passage about the magnitude of God’s love:

  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38–39)

  Of course we long for love, but the good news is that we don’t have to try desperately to find it from a human being. Serious love, deep love, real love has been given to us in Jesus, and nothing can tear us out of His arms. He is a center that will not disappoint.

  THINK ABOUT IT/TALK ABOUT IT

  What do you want from love?

  Is there a part of you that thinks “real” love acts jealous and controlling?

  Where do we get our ideals about love? From media, books, family?

  What aspects of love, as described in the Bible, are most compelling to you?

  Love doesn’t allow for violence or abuse. If you or someone you know is a victim of dating or marriage violence, you need to be safe. Talk to an adult, friend, pastor, or teacher who can help. The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence has a Web site that will point you to resources that can help (www.ncadv.org).

  1. Stephenie Meyer, Twilight (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2005), 304.

  2. Stephenie Meyer, New Moon (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2006), 201.

  3. Stephenie Meyer, Eclipse (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2007), 68.

  4. Stephenie Meyer, Breaking Dawn (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008), 1.

  5. New Moon, 219.

  6. Twilight, 267.

  7. New Moon, 69.

  8. Eclipse, 324.

  Chapter 3

  Body and Blood

  Twilight’s Take on Abstinence and Sex

  THE TWILIGHT SAGA IS DRIVEN BY the unrelenting physical longing between Edward and Bella. Throughout the story, their sexual desire grows increasingly intense, but they wait until the night of their wedding to give in to that desire. Some Christian readers have celebrated the fact that they save sex for marriage, finding in their story an example of purity and self-control. But should Christian readers really be encouraged by the details of this story?

  LIVING IN TENSION

  The Twilight Saga covers a lot of pages, and the vast majority of those pages chronicle the sexual tension between Bella and Edward. Though they don’t have sex until after their wedding in the fourth book, this doesn’t mean that the first three books are any less about sexuality. The drama of the books hinges on the intensity of their physical reactions to one another. The books are charged with sexual feelings, and the overall effect of this electric charge is heightened by the anticipation—Bella’s, Edward’s, and the reader’s—that is created by their choice to wait.

  Meyer, of course, isn’t the first author to write vampire stories, and vampire fiction has always been sexually charged. A vampire’s thirst for blood, the very thing that defines him or her, is a symbol for sexuality. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the threat of the vampire is a threat to an innocent girl, to her purity and goodness. Like in Dracula, Edward’s deep thirst for Bella’s blood is a metaphor for his sexual desire for her. “Which is tempting you more,” Bella teases Edward, “my blood or my body?”1

  Meyer gives this classic vampire theme a couple of interesting nuances. First, Edward’s struggle with this desire is portrayed very dramatically. He’s unlike vampires in other novels because he doesn’t want to be a murderer and he wants to protect the innocence of the one he loves. He struggles with the threat he poses to Bella. In reading the books, we feel how very much Edward wants to bite her. We sense the danger involved in his desire even as we understand his determination to fight against it. Second, Bella fully returns Edward’s desire. It is not only that he wants her. She’s a modern girl, and she isn’t shy about wanting him in return.

  Edward and Bella reverse some stereotypes. She is the one in the relationship constantly begging for more, the one pushing the boundaries. Edward continuously re
establishes those boundaries. Their choice to save sex for marriage is Edward’s choice, not Bella’s. Edward draws lines; Bella tries to blur them.

  Because of the way Bella’s blood calls out to him, Edward must constantly police his own desire and behavior. In drawing near to Bella, Edward “hesitated to test himself, to see if this was safe, to make sure he was still in control of his need.”2 Only then can he kiss her. His sexuality is charged with danger. Edward must constantly maintain his self-control, or he will stop being the good vampire Meyer has created and become the old threatening monster of other vampire stories.

  Bella, though, takes little responsibility for her own self-control. All the hard work falls to Edward. Kissing him is too overwhelming. She forgets the danger and says her “will crumbled into dust the second our lips met.”3 He’s frustrated with her for constantly challenging his restraint and chastises her for putting him through the pain of refusing her pleading. At one point, he has to ask her to stop taking off her clothes.

  Bella and Edward may be “waiting” for sex for most of their story, but reading the novels is still very much an erotic experience. Edward tells Bella, “Just because I’m resisting the wine doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the bouquet.”4

  DELAYED GRATIFICATION

  Because of her commitment to the values of the Mormon faith, Meyer has stated publicly that she will not write about premarital sex. In the Twilight Saga, Bella and Edward wait for sex for a number of reasons. Edward, after all, is from another time. He is committed to the old-fashioned morality he has brought into the present from that day long ago when he was frozen in his perfect seventeen-year-old body. Twenty-first-century morality may not have much patience with delaying sexual gratification, but Edward holds on to his old-fashioned morals. He tells Bella, “I’ve stolen, I’ve lied, I’ve coveted…my virtue is all I have left.”5

  In reading, we participate in Bella’s and Edward’s longing for each other. For people who have grown up with the values of mainstream culture, their story of longing and waiting is surprising. In a world where it is rare to delay gratification, Edward and Bella represent a way of caring for each other outside the norm. In a world where all responsibility for restraint and self-control is often placed on women, reading about a man willing to step out of his selfishness and practice restraint is surprising and intriguing.

  For people who’ve grown up in communities that teach sexual abstinence outside of marriage, this story of waiting for sex in the midst of intense anticipation is very familiar and oddly contemporary. In such communities, there is plenty of sexual tension. Christians committed to saving sex for marriage experience the difficulty that comes with waiting and can recognize themselves in Edward and Bella. These communities are also full of people who know what it is to constantly push against boundaries and to have sexual tension heightened even as sexual experience is delayed. The heightened tension widespread among Christian youth is reflected in the common question, “How far is too far?” and the way that Christian couples who are “waiting” so often push boundaries to the breaking point.

  This is one of the reasons we should be careful about seizing on the Twilight Saga as a story that provides a positive example for people committed to sexual abstinence and to purity. While Edward and Bella wait for marriage, they wait in a way that is all too common among Christians. As they wait, they allow the tension between them to build. They encourage that tension to build. They push borders and boundaries, and they create a situation in which they’re always longing for more than they can or ought to have. This is the way most Christian couples wait, engaging in all kinds of sexual activities while trying desperately to save intercourse for marriage.

  Several things in Bella and Edward’s relationship encourage anguished desire instead of freedom from temptation. They’ve cut themselves off from people who can help them. Bella doesn’t want to discuss sex with her parents. Edward’s family surely would have been glad to help him with his struggles for self-control, but the couple cut themselves off from the support of friends and family. They are constantly alone together and spend nights alone in Bella’s room. This kind of isolation and lack of support is a recipe for temptation.

  Christians need to rethink our models of dating and of waiting. Instead of desperately holding out, we need to find ways to protect ourselves from the temptations created by the kind of waiting Bella and Edward engage in. Waiting in tension makes waiting more difficult, and frankly, it often becomes a wasted effort. We need to find ways to practice sexual abstinence outside of marriage that don’t make us subject to the kind of anguished heightened anticipation that marks Bella and Edward’s relationship before marriage. Instead of asking, “How far is too far?” we need to be accountable to one another and encourage each other to truly live in the story of goodness and faithfulness that God gives us to help us understand sexuality.

  FAITHFULNESS

  Bella and Edward don’t have very convincing reasons to support their efforts to wait for sex. Edward waits because he is “old-fashioned.” I doubt this reason captures your imagination. It may be nice to think about those chivalrous, old-fashioned values, but in the face of desire, I don’t believe that just wanting to be old-fashioned will help anyone resist sexual temptation.

  Christians have much more powerful reasons than being old-fashioned for insisting that sex belongs within marriage. Christians’ belief that sex belongs within marriage is not because we are old-fashioned. We believe sex belongs within marriage because God wants good things for us. Sexuality is part of the compelling story of God’s faithfulness to us, His people. God is faithful to Israel. Christ is faithful to the church.

  Bella gets much closer to the point when she thinks about sex after her marriage: “How did people do this—swallow all their fears and trust someone else so implicitly with every imperfection and fear they had—with less than the absolute commitment that Edward had given me?”6 In Bella’s thinking, knowledge, trust, and commitment make sex possible. She acknowledges the intense vulnerability that is part of sexuality and realizes that her marriage to Edward, their “absolute commitment” to each other, provides a safe, trustworthy context for that kind of vulnerability. Bella implies that sex could not have been good outside of marriage, hinting at the ways sexual purity is a gift.

  Christians also believe that sex belongs within marriage because marriages ought to be a beautiful reflection of God’s love for us and faithfulness to us. In several places in Scripture, sexual faithfulness in marriage is used as an image for the way God loves us. Hosea’s story teaches us about God’s faithfulness by showing an example of unfaithfulness. God tells the prophet Hosea to marry a woman who is a prostitute. Hosea takes “an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the LORD” (Hosea 1:2). Hosea marries Gomer, and his faithful love for her, even in the face of her unfaithfulness, is a living picture of God’s redeeming love. Hosea loves his unfaithful wife the way God loves us even though we chase after all kinds of things that are not God. Even though we are unfaithful, God promises steadfast love and mercy.

  Human beings are the unfaithful ones in this story, but God is steadfast and true. God doesn’t expect us to remain unfaithful though. God’s transforming power allows us to lead a different kind of life, and faithful Christian marriage is one image of that kind of life. If we look at the picture of God’s love that we see in the story of Hosea and Gomer, we see that waiting for sex until marriage is not just some arbitrary rule. Instead, it’s a beautiful image of the faithfulness God shows to us and the way God can turn us into people who reflect His own faithful way of loving.

  In a world full of unfaithfulness, faithfulness is an amazing witness to who God is and what God can do. We live in a world full of constant choices. Do I want the navy shoes or the gray ones? The pepperoni pizza or the veggie special? Will I take the elective in advanced chemistry, or should I have fun in an art class? We make endless choic
es, and we encourage even little children to express their personal preferences about all kinds of things. They can choose the french fries or the fruit, for instance, to go with their fast-food kids’ meal. We can constantly update our “favorites” on our Facebook profile page or rearrange what we want to watch next on our Netflix queue.

  Though it’s difficult for people who’ve always had so many choices to imagine, not every society has so much pressure to choose. When I was living in Kenya, I remember the confused look on a friend’s face when I asked her what her favorite food was. In a village where nearly everyone ate maize and beans 99 percent of the time, my question didn’t make any sense. Food, for my friend, was not about preference. She wanted to know not about my favorite food, but about what the staple food was where I came from. For her, food was about survival, not choice. Her world didn’t include the daily pressure to pick favorites, and she certainly wouldn’t have defined herself by her favorite food or band or brand of jeans.

  All the choices we have in our culture aren’t necessarily a bad thing—they can be a lot of fun. But living in a world of endless choice does create a certain mind-set in us. We think that we are what we choose, and we’re constantly on the lookout for a different choice, a better choice. We’re free to be fickle, to want the newest update. We’re perfectly willing to choose a new favorite food if something tastier than yesterday’s favorite comes along.

  This means we live in a condition where being faithful isn’t something we’re particularly used to. We’re used to moving on to whatever is newer and better, not staying put and loving what was old and good. We’re used to consumer choices, and it isn’t too much of a stretch to go from choosing a favorite food or a favorite movie to choosing a new favorite person to love.