Again and again, the stories of Scripture present children as an important gift from God. This gift is part of God’s good intentions for married couples, reflected in God’s words at creation: “Be fruitful and increase in number” (Genesis 1:28). These words are words of blessing. The fact that children are a gift from God means that this gift isn’t something that we human beings can control. This gift isn’t ours by right. It belongs to God.
There are many stories in Scripture in which people who thought they would never have children suddenly and unexpectedly become parents. Abraham and Sarah were old, but God promised that they would found a nation and gave them a son, Isaac, even when it seemed impossible. Rachel was jealous of her sister Leah, who had many children, but God finally gave her a son. Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, also becomes a mother against the odds and against her own expectation. Hannah prays for a child, and when her son Samuel is born, she dedicates his life to God.
In all these cases, we see that God is the author of life, the giver of children who surprise their parents and become the way that God keeps promises. It is God, not us, who grants life.
Because of this, giving birth to children and parenting children cannot be the most important thing in a person’s life. God is always the most important. God tests Abraham by asking him to give up his son, Isaac, even though Isaac is the child God had promised and the way God is going to use Abraham to do something important in the world.
Scripture also speaks to the ways that God intends a good relationship between parents and children to play out. Children are a blessing to their parents, and parents are supposed to care for their children. Parents have a responsibility to nourish the gift God has given. Scripture speaks of the importance of parents teaching their children about who God is and what God has done in this world.
This relationship between parents and children is supposed to be mutual. Both parents and children should reap good things from it. Children are to “obey your parents” (Colossians 3:20), and parents, in turn, are not supposed to “embitter your children, or they will become discouraged” (verse 21). When these words were written, no one would have been surprised to hear children being told to obey, but the charge for parents to be careful guardians of their responsibility was unusual. Parents have a responsibility to nourish and discipline, but they are supposed to do it in ways that reflect God’s own love, not as tyrants.
In the Bible, we also see Jesus treat children in a special way, a way that His friends find surprising. In the book of Matthew, we read how Jesus “called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: ’I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven’” (18:2–4). Jesus’s kingdom is a place where, like with children, status doesn’t matter. Humility before God, obedience, and trust in the goodness of God are ways in which we all should be like children.
CHILDREN OF GOD
Whether we are young or old, children or parents, all human beings are children in relationship to God. All of us are vulnerable. All are dependent on God. All are loved and protected by our Creator, and all of us should come to God with the humility and trust that Jesus treasured in the little children He knew.
Some of us have wonderful parents and some have terrible parents, but no matter what our human parents are like, God is trustworthy and offers us unfailing love. In Jesus, God has given us everything that rightly belongs to His children. We aren’t strangers; we’re God’s daughters and sons. We aren’t beggars outside God’s door, but beloved members of the family, children who God has made into “heirs” (Galatians 3:7, 29). God gives us the gift of a loving relationship with Him.
In 1 John, we read words of celebration and promise. We can delight in the facts that we are God’s children and that God promises us good things:
How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. (3:1–2)
THINK ABOUT IT/TALK ABOUT IT
How did you react to Bella’s surprise pregnancy in Breaking Dawn?
When you think about the possibility (or reality) of being a mother, do you tend toward romantic daydreams? terrifying fears?
Does reading Bella’s story make you think differently about Christian attitudes toward life? about societal attitudes about abortion?
How should the portrait of children in Scripture influence your actions toward the children in your life?
Can you take comfort in the promise that you’ve been made a child of God? What does this mean in your life? What privileges belong to God’s children?
1. Stephenie Meyer, Breaking Dawn (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008), 132.
2. Breaking Dawn, 133.
3. Breaking Dawn, 177.
4. Breaking Dawn, 375.
5. Glen H. Stassen and David P. Gushee, Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 215.
6. Kingdom Ethics, 227.
7. Andreas Kostenberger, “Marriage and Family in the New Testament” in Marriage and Family in the Biblical World, ed. Ken M. Campbell (Downer’s Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2003), 272.
Chapter 8
Inhuman Strength
Twilight and the Good Life
EDWARD’S FAMILY IS UNITED BY a commitment to being “good” vampires. They strive against their dark natures. They make a tremendous effort to resist their thirst for human blood, and this effort is an intriguing part of the drama of the stories. The Twilight Saga implies that there are certain ways to think about what it means to be evil or to be good. It also has a specific understanding of the conflict between good and evil and how we can hope to live lives that matter.
Christians also have ways of thinking about goodness, violence, and the effort we make to be moral. These themes are central to our understandings of what is wrong with our lives and what God does to save us.
VEGETARIAN VAMPIRES
While vampires thirst for human blood, Edward and his family choose to deal with their thirst by hunting large animals. Edward explains to Bella, “I’d compare it to living on tofu and soy milk; we call ourselves vegetarians, our little inside joke.”1 The blood of beasts and bears can keep them going, but it doesn’t satisfy their most basic cravings or strengthen them in the same way human blood would.
The drama of the Cullens’ choice to live without destroying human life comes from the understanding Meyer gives us of just how deeply they desire human blood. If the desire weren’t so strong, so firmly rooted in who they are, their self-control wouldn’t be so impressive. Moment to moment, day to day, they must be masters of their own dark urges.
Longing for human blood is basic to being a vampire. It’s very much part of vampire nature, who vampires are at the depths of their being. Their physical characteristics are even designed to lure in their human prey. They’re supernaturally strong, unbeatable hunters, and no human being stands a chance against them. On top of this, they’re incredibly attractive, drawing people to them like bees are drawn to flowers. Edward rants against what he is when he tells Bella, “I’m the world’s best predator, aren’t I? Everything about me invites you in—my voice, my face, even my smell. As if I need any of that!”2
As she gets to know Edward, Bella recognizes that murdering humans simply is vampire nature. She asks him, “Why do you do it? I still don’t understand how you can work so hard to resist what you…are. Please don’t misunderstand, of course I’m glad that you do. I just don’t see why you would bother in the first place.”3 Most vampires don’t bother. Many of the tensest moments in the stories come when vampires follow their natures by
taking human life. Bella sees the Volturi bring in a large group of people to murder, and she shudders at the way they indulge their bloodthirsty natures without any hint of hesitation or remorse.
VIOLENCE
The goodness of the Cullens and the moral fabric of the universe Meyer has constructed are based on a rejection of violence. At the same time, violence remains an important part of the stories, and most of the characters engage in battle and in the killing of enemies.
Edward’s brother Jasper has a particularly violent past. As a new vampire, he was used by a power-hungry vampire to try to gain advantage in vampire wars. He was responsible for a massive amount of killing. In explaining his past, Jasper reflects on the effects that participation in violence has on the moral life and on human relationships. Jasper believes that the “years of slaughter and carnage” turned him into “a monster of the grisliest kind.”4 Living in violence ate away at who he was, damaging his basic character. He also believes that violence damages relationships with others, making it difficult to form lasting bonds. “When you live for the fight, for the blood,” he says, “the relationships you form are tenuous and easily broken.”5 The Cullens’ friend Eleazar, also a vegetarian vampire, confirms Jasper’s insight about the way that living without violence fosters close relationships. Eleazar explains that “abstaining from human blood makes us more civilized—lets us form true bonds of love.”6
Many aspects of the Twilight Saga, then, work as a critique of violence. The characters value human life and the ability to live in peace. They see that violence changes individuals and communities by destroying compassion, trust, and the ability to form close ties with others. The Cullens are willing to fight against their most basic impulses in order to live without violence.
But other aspects of the stories make violence appear in a more positive light. Violence is seen as a natural response to any threat, and the male characters are described as prone to fighting and revenge. All the books include threatened battle or fighting, though in Breaking Dawn the actual battle is avoided even though the characters have trained carefully for it.
In many ways, the vampires in the story are more aware of the moral difficulties of violence than Bella is. Though the werewolves and vampires in her life don’t reject violence when they’re threatened by enemies, they certainly don’t take it lightly. At one point, Edward turns to Bella in disbelief and says, “I just beheaded and dismembered a sentient creature not twenty yards from you. That doesn’t bother you?”7 In fact, it doesn’t bother Bella.
As Christians, we follow a Lord who is the Prince of Peace. He counseled His followers to reject violence, and He Himself submitted to death when many people would have preferred Him to lead a violent rebellion against the government. Christians don’t all agree about how to live lives that are faithful to Jesus in this regard. Some believe that Christians can engage in violence in order to protect the weak. Others are convinced that the most faithful witness to Jesus’s love comes when we refuse all violence, even if it means that we, like Him, pay with our lives. While Christians don’t agree about exactly how to respond to violence in this world, we do agree that violence should not be taken lightly. Perhaps the role of violence in the Twilight Saga can provide some food for thought as we think about the ways violence damages our world and the ways we can be witnesses against that violence, witnesses to God’s love.
RESISTING WHAT THEY’VE BECOME
Carlisle’s story explains why he and his family make the tremendous effort needed to reject who they are and fight against their own natures, against their very selves. We learn that in Carlisle’s human life, he was the son of a fanatical preacher, a man who hunted darkness and evil in all forms and devoted himself to destroying vampires. Carlisle joined his father’s hunt and suffered a vampire bite. When he realized he was becoming one of the monsters his father was so intent on destroying, he had a crisis. He couldn’t reconcile himself to living as an evil being. In pain and self-loathing, he struggled against the urge to take human life that was now a part of who he had become.
He became determined that he would reject life as the murderous creature he’d once hunted, that he could overcome his new nature and longings and refuse to destroy human life. Carlisle describes this as a choice he made, an act of will. “Like everything in life,” Carlisle explains to Bella, “I just had to decide what to do with what I was given.”8 In this case, though, what he had been given was a nature that longed for human blood, and his decision to reject that nature was in no way an easy one.
Carlisle’s basic moral character is shaped by his past as a human being who defended others against evil. His compassion for others marks both his human and vampire lives. He rejects his father’s zealotry and closed-mindedness, but he holds on to at least some aspects of the faith of his upbringing. He tells Bella, “I didn’t agree with my father’s particular brand of faith. But never, in the nearly four hundred years now since I was born, have I ever seen anything to make me doubt whether God exists in some form or the other. Not even the reflection in the mirror.”9 Carlisle explains, “I’m sure all this sounds a little bizarre, coming from a vampire. But I’m hoping that there is still a point to this life, even for us. It’s a long shot, I’ll admit. By all accounts, we’re damned regardless. But I hope, maybe foolishly, that we’ll get some measure of credit for trying.”10
Carlisle’s faith and hope in God are vague though. He believes in God “in some form or the other,” but he doesn’t have the specifics about God as revealed in Scripture that would give his hope some direction. He hopes for goodness and purpose in life, but he doesn’t have a distinct place to put that hope.
HUMAN NATURE AND HUMAN EFFORT
In the world of the Twilight Saga, good stands up against evil, and people struggle heroically to combat their own worst desires. The universe Meyer has created is, without a doubt, a moral universe, but the rules of goodness in that universe have crucial differences from the way Christians understand goodness and morality to work. Let’s think about the ways we try to be good and the kind of creatures we are, and I’ll clarify the differences between the picture of goodness we get from the Twilight Saga and the good news about goodness that God offers to us.
The vampire desire for human blood is deep and strong, but it is also something that can be defeated. Though the Cullens crave blood, they are able, through effort and practice, to keep the impulse at bay. As Carlisle explains things, “Just because we’ve been…dealt a certain hand…it doesn’t mean that we can’t choose to rise above—to conquer the boundaries of a destiny that none of us wanted. To try to retain whatever essential humanity we can.”11 At first, this looks inspiring. It appears to be an image of moral courage we can all aim for, but there’s a serious flaw in this way of thinking. That flaw reveals that this image of moral courage is not inspiring. It’s actually a recipe for despair.
The flaw, the great untruth, in the moral world of the Twilight Saga is the belief that human beings are able to rise above the darkness of our natures. This untruth is dangerous because if we believe it, we will be trapped in a hopeless place where we’re always trying to dig ourselves out of the deep holes we’re trapped in when there is simply no way for us to rescue ourselves. We can’t work up our courage and make ourselves be good. We can’t overcome our own evil.
There’s good news though—the best of news—behind this terrifying image. God can and does rescue us. God can change our sinful natures into something new and good. God offers us transformation—not transformation we achieve through our own desperate efforts, but transformation we receive as a gift.
In the Twilight Saga, human beings are free to choose good or evil. When Carlisle hopes for goodness, he’s hoping to hold on to his essential humanity. Even when that human nature is distorted by a vampire’s bite and the human becomes a monster, Carlisle discovers that enough goodness remains, enough ability to fight against evil lingers, that a vampire can reject the thirst for human blood. In the Sag
a, then, the moral life is a choice to be made. Goodness is an option for all, human or vampire, who will make the required effort. Choosing goodness isn’t easy, but it’s certainly possible.
The Cullens hope God will see their effort and reward them. Edward isn’t at all optimistic about the question of whether he can still have a relationship with God, but Carlisle finds great comfort in Edward’s goodness. He sees that goodness as evidence that God will look on Edward favorably. Carlisle tells Bella, “I look at my…son. His strength, his goodness, the brightness that shines out of him—and it only fuels that hope, that faith, more than ever. How could there not be more for one such as Edward?”12 Bella agrees that the goodness the Cullens have worked to achieve must be something that God would reward. Her thinking about the implications that being a vampire might have on eternal relationships with God ends with her conclusion that “I couldn’t imagine anyone, deity included, who wouldn’t be impressed by Carlisle. Besides, the only kind of heaven I could appreciate would have to include Edward.”13
The portrait of the good life we find in the Twilight Saga matches the understanding of human nature held in the Mormon faith. There are several crucial differences between this picture of the good life and the good news of Jesus Christ.
Touched by a Vampire Page 10
