In the Twilight Saga In the Gospel Story
Human nature flawed, but essentially good good as created by God but broken by sin
Evil desire runs deep and strong but can be overcome key to who we are and what we want; we can’t turn away from it
What is possible free to choose good or evil trapped by sin
Effort vigorous effort can make you good; the harder you work, the better you’ll be nothing we can do will make us good
Escape from evil comes through moral effort, which God will reward comes through the grace of Jesus; a gift we do nothing to earn
The good life requires constant striving is a gift God gives us; God transforms us
Because we are sinful creatures, born into a sinful world, we are no longer free to choose good or evil. Sin has wrapped us in heavy chains, and we can’t escape. Human beings are broken creatures, and we have no way to break free from our love of sin, and sin isn’t just an individual choice. Sin infects the world and changes what it means to be human. I can no more choose to turn my back on sin than I can choose to grow six inches. I can no more will myself to live in goodness than I can will my hair to start growing in lavender and curly instead of brownish and straight. I can no more decide to climb out of the hole I am stuck in than I can decide to learn to fly.
In Romans, Paul explains that “righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (3:22–24). Righteousness—being good and right in God’s eyes—doesn’t come from our own moral efforts, even the most strenuous efforts. There are no exceptions from the rule of sin. All people are caught in sin. Being good and right in God’s eyes is a gift He gives through faith in Jesus.
In recognizing that we can’t make ourselves good by our own efforts, we can find true freedom. God can set us free us from all our desperate and hopeless attempts to make ourselves worthy. Are there things about yourself that you think will never be good enough? Things you keep hidden because you’re convinced God couldn’t love you if your weakness showed? Maybe you’re someone who constantly sets goals and boundaries, resolving to do better, and then ends up yelling at yourself because you’ve failed once again. Maybe you don’t bother to set goals because you’re so beaten down and discouraged by your own repeated failures. If you’re frustrated by your own efforts to be good, you’re not alone. God can set us free from all of this, from all our self-loathing and useless efforts to make ourselves into the people we think we ought to be.
We cannot force ourselves to be good. Sinful human nature is drastically unlike vampire nature in the Twilight Saga because it cannot be overcome through effort or will. Human beings are trapped by sin. We are mired in our dark desires in ways that we cannot shake free. This may sound negative, gloomy, and hopeless, but it is truly incredibly good news. It sets us free from our useless efforts to save ourselves, to force ourselves to be good. Understanding the way we are trapped can help us understand just where our hope lies. We need the grace of Jesus Christ if we are to hope for transformation. We tremble in need of grace. We are broken and in need of healing.
GRACE, GRACE, GRACE
God pours grace over us. Tons of it. Amazing grace. Abundant grace. Overflowing grace. God gives us countless good gifts, and He doesn’t give them because we’re deserving. God doesn’t give them to us because we put forth a lot of effort. God’s gifts are given freely, graciously. There are no conditions we have to meet before we can be worthy to receive them. God gives grace to save us, grace to transform us, and grace to make us truly good. All of it comes to us even though we’re broken, even though we’ve failed, even though we sin.
The book of Romans tells us about this free grace. “You see,” Paul says, “at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (5:6–8). Notice how Paul points out that we didn’t have any power in all this. God shows us His love by offering us something we can never make ourselves ready for or worthy of.
THE GOOD LIFE
We’re set free from useless striving to make ourselves good. This doesn’t mean, though, that God doesn’t have good plans for us or that we can be content with sin and evil. In Romans 6, Paul connects God’s gift of grace in making us right in His eyes to God’s gift of grace in making us good and setting us free from the sin that entraps us. “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer” (verses 1–2)?
Later in the same section, Paul gives us a description of the good life God intends for us:
Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.
What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. (verses 11–18)
Oh yes, Christians believe in the good life, but that good life isn’t something we can win through our own efforts. Instead, we trust in God’s goodness, goodness God shares with us as a free gift. In that gift, God changes us, setting us free from the chains of sin and opening up new possibilities for us. What would have been impossible through human effort is given to us through God’s grace and goodness.
THINK ABOUT IT/TALK ABOUT IT
What’s your reaction to the idea of vegetarian vampires? What does it say about what it means to be good?
Does the Twilight Saga help you rethink your attitude toward violence?
What are the key differences between the good life in the Twilight Saga and the good life God promises in Scripture?
In what ways is your life affected by constant effort and striving?
How does God set us free from sin?
1. Stephenie Meyer, Twilight (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2005), 188.
2. Twilight, 263.
3. Twilight, 306.
4. Stephenie Meyer, Eclipse (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2007), 300.
5. Eclipse, 299.
6. Stephenie Meyer, Breaking Dawn (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008), 603.
7. Eclipse, 558.
8. Stephenie Meyer, New Moon (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2006), 35.
9. New Moon, 36.
10. New Moon, 36.
11. Twilight, 307.
12. New Moon, 37.
13. New Moon, 37.
Chapter 9
My True Place in This
World
Bella’s Search for Purpose
THE QUESTIONS ARE OLD ONES, and they are one key to how the Twilight Saga connects with us as readers. What is the meaning of life? What’s our purpose? What does it mean to be human?
Bella’s story is certainly about purpose, about what her life is for. She struggles with herself throughout the series because of her desire for something more in life. Finally, in becoming a vampire and being united with Edward and his family, she finds transformation, purpose, and meaning.
Most of us, like Bella, struggle with the meaning of our lives and our place in t
he world. We, too, want something more, something that matters. What can we learn from Bella’s search for meaning? From her transformation at the end of the series?
TROUBLE BEING HUMAN
At Bella’s first encounter with the Cullens, she is floored by their beauty, which she describes as inhuman. This inhuman beauty is the opposite of Bella’s perception of herself—she is, in her own reckoning at least, absolutely ordinary. Many readers can identify with her sense of dissatisfaction. She is clumsy and graceless. She doesn’t feel like she truly belongs anywhere, either at home or at school.
As her story unfolds, Bella longs more and more deeply to stop being her plain human self and to share in the “inhuman” beauty of the Cullens. Part of her frustration with Edward’s long refusal to change her into a vampire is her horror at growing older. Getting older, for Bella, symbolizes all her ambivalence about and even distaste for her ordinary human life. She sees Edward sparkling in the sun, beautiful, glorious, and frozen in time. He is forever young. Bella can only compare herself to him in negative ways. She doesn’t shine. If Edward doesn’t change her, she will grow old. She will fade and die.
We identify with Bella because we too feel ambivalence, even distaste, about those aspects of our lives that so easily seem meaningless. Plenty of people relate to Bella’s belief that she is nothing special and doesn’t particularly belong anywhere. Like Bella, we have issues with being merely human.
Yet there is so much to love about ordinary human life. It is clear in Scripture that God has good intentions for human beings. God intends purpose and meaning for us. In Genesis 1:27, we learn that human beings are created in God’s image. This is an enormous claim, a valuable claim, a claim that ought to give us a purpose.
It’s no small thing to reflect God. Over the years, Christians have done a lot of thinking about what it means for humans to be created in God’s image but haven’t been able to agree exactly what it is about us that reflects God’s image. Scripture points to a variety of possibilities. Maybe it’s that we, like God, are spiritual beings who can do spiritual things like think, speak, and hope. Maybe it’s that we, like God, are meant to live in relationships. God didn’t create us to be alone but to love each other and to love Him. Maybe it’s that we, like God, have a responsibility for the rest of creation. As God is the creator, perhaps we’re to reflect His image by being caretakers of creation. Maybe being in the image of God reflects some combination of these things.
Whatever else it means, Christians agree that to be created in God’s image means something unshakable about the importance and purpose of human life. We are supposed to reflect the amazing, loving, perfect God who made us. This means our lives are valuable and meaningful in ways we often don’t consider.
WANTING SOMETHING MORE
Why then do we, like Bella, still long for purpose and meaning that our ordinary lives don’t seem to deliver? Because something has gone wrong with human life.
We were created in God’s image, which means great things for us, but humans chose sin and death instead. Sin and death changed the whole world, and they changed human life too. While our purpose was to be carriers of God’s image, reflectors of His glory, God’s image in us is now tarnished. That image was broken by sin.
Of course, we long for something more. We are no longer what God intended us to be.
In Romans 8:22–23, Paul beautifully expresses this sense of longing:
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.
We’re not alone in wanting more. Something isn’t right, and all of creation is waiting, groaning, and longing. And, Paul says, we human beings are included.
Those who belong to Jesus Christ have the “firstfruits” of the something more we crave. The Holy Spirit starts a good change and a good work in our lives, but that change is not complete. We’re still eager, still groaning, still waiting.
What are we waiting for? For God to adopt us, to make us children in His family, by transforming our bodies. There is enormous promise here. All of our dissatisfaction will end in hope.
TRANSFORMATION
In many ways, Bella’s final transformation is my favorite part of the Twilight Saga. At the end of the series, all of her dissatisfaction comes to an end. She finds, finally, a transformed life full of meaning, purpose, and happiness. As we think about our own hope in God’s transforming power, there is, for Christians, a lot to think about in Bella’s story.
All of Bella’s struggles with herself and her own humanity end when she is transformed into a vampire. Where she was awkward, she is now supremely graceful. Where she was, in her own mind at least, ordinary, she is now a stellar beauty. Where she was average, she now excels in every way.
Bella thought she would never be anything special. She thought her life could never be important, that whatever purpose or meaning her life might have could only be of the most insignificant kind. After her transformation, though, she comes fully into her own. The ugly duckling has turned into the swan. “It was like I had been born to be a vampire,” Bella says. “The idea made me want to laugh but it also made me want to sing. I had found my true place in the world, the place I fit, the place I shined.”1
Isn’t this what we all want? For our lives to truly matter? To find the reason we were made? To really belong somewhere in a way that makes our purpose clear? Bella comes to this joyful place where the pieces fall together, and at last, everything makes sense.
Newborn vampire Bella astounds the Cullens with her impressive skills and unprecedented self-control. Everyone expects her to be a helpless captive to her thirst for human blood. She, too, expects to lose herself, to be driven out of her mind by her new vampire desires. Instead, she is great at being a vampire. She is more herself than ever before.
Shortly after her transformation, Edward takes Bella out for her first hunt. They catch the scent of human blood, and Edward is terrified for Bella, positive she won’t be able to control her urge to hunt and murder a human being. He is taken aback when Bella is able to stop herself from pursuing the scent. Her self-control is unprecedented in Edward’s experiences with new vampires.
Not only is vampire Bella highly skilled and in command of herself, but she also marvels at the way her transformation has heightened her senses and increased her love. “My old mind hadn’t been capable of holding this much love. My old heart had not been strong enough to bear it.”2 Her ability to love—Edward, her child, her family—is intensified in ways she hadn’t believed possible. She loves better than she could before. She even sees more clearly the beauty of her loved ones. Her transformed vampire eyes show her loved ones in a new light.
While her dissatisfaction and weaknesses have come to an end and her abilities have been heightened and become something new, she is still Bella. Her transformation doesn’t mean that she isn’t herself any longer. She still hates surprises. She is still incredibly uncomfortable receiving gifts. In her new immortal and beautiful face, Bella can still find herself:
I stared at the beautiful woman with the terrifying eyes, looking for pieces of me. There was something there in the shape of her lips—if you looked past the dizzying beauty, it was true that her upper lip was slightly out of balance, a bit too full to match the lower. Finding this familiar little flaw made me feel a tiny bit better.3
There is both discontinuity and continuity between human Bella and vampire Bella. She is new, but she is also old. That “flaw” in her lip is evidence that the amazing, transformed Bella is still the Bella Edward loves, the same Bella who wanted this new life.
HOPE FOR CHANGE
As human beings created in God’s image but in whom that image has been broken by sin, we have a great hope. We hope not just that God’s image will be renewed in us—though that alone would be amazing—but that God
will finish the good work He intends for us by completing in us a marvelous transformation. Because we can rely on the good promises God made to us, we don’t hope in vain.
Bella’s transformation helps us think about Christian hope for transformation, but ultimately, our hope is for something more, something even better than the happiness she finds in her new life.
The pinnacle of Christian hope for transformation is found in the promise of the resurrection of the body. God will not leave us stuck in the mire of sin and death. Instead, God promises us a great change. This change will allow our whole human lives—body, soul, and spirit—to make sense and to serve the beautiful purpose for which we were made. This resurrection will transform us into human beings who are fully able to glorify God. We will be set free from all those things that, right now, get in the way of our ability to glorify God. We’ll be set free from weakness, from sin, from death, and from our own worst tendencies so that we can be truly free for that delightful purpose for which we were created—glorifying God.
Unfortunately, Christians sometimes lose sight of our hope for the resurrection of the body. The earliest Christians worked hard to clarify that their hope was not only that their souls might fly away to heaven someday. Those Christians insisted their hope was much more, much better than that, because Christian hope for transformation is grounded in what we see in Jesus.
After Jesus suffered the agony of the crucifixion, after He was laid in the grave, He didn’t simply rot there while His soul went off to be with His Father. No, Jesus was resurrected. He rose into new life, a transformed life, and His resurrection gives all Christians a bright glimpse at what God promises to us.
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