The promise of Scripture clearly links Jesus’s resurrection to the resurrection all Christians hope for one day. This resurrection promises the transformation of our whole lives—not just our souls, but our bodies too. Early Christians were very firm about this understanding because it was threatened by other kinds of hope, false hopes popular in the ancient cultures those Christians faced. Many people in those cultures didn’t think that hope, meaning, and purpose could have anything to do with this life or this body as we know it. These people thought the body was something irredeemable and this life was hopeless. In the face of this kind of despair, Christians worked hard to remind each other that God’s power is great enough to redeem all things. This body and this life are included in Christian hope and Christian purpose.
Paul talks about the resurrection of the body in his first letter to the church at Corinth, telling his readers that all of us can hope to share in Jesus’s resurrection. Just as “in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22).
Paul uses an analogy to compare the body as we know it in the here and now with the resurrection body. The body now is like a seed, and the resurrection body is like the tree that grows from the seed. There is both continuity and discontinuity in this analogy. An acorn and an oak tree are materially, physically continuous with one another, but at the same time, the oak tree is so much more than the acorn was.
The body now and the resurrection body are both continuous with one another and discontinuous with, or different from, one another. This continuity and discontinuity is very good news indeed. Continuity is good news because it means that our future hope can’t be disconnected from our present. When we believe that God has a good purpose for us, we don’t suppose that purpose is only in the future, with nothing to do with the here and now. The good things God intends for you and me are for you and me. Our ordinary human lives are good lives. They’re lives God loves, and they’re lives God won’t give up on.
Discontinuity is good news too, though. Our lives, bodies, and purposes now are messed up. We struggle. We’re weak. We suffer disappointment. People we love die, and we will face death too. But God promises to redeem all that. God promises to make it different, to make it new.
In that same chapter from 1 Corinthians, Paul talks about the differences between the body now and the resurrection body. The body now, he says, is perishable. The body now suffers dishonor. The body now lives in weakness. But in the resurrection, God will make all that new. The promised resurrection body will be, according to Paul, imperishable. Dishonor will be replaced by glory. Weakness will give way to power.
God promises a final transformation that takes all that we are, all that God has made us to be, and redeems it. Bella’s transformation, in a way, mirrors our own hope. As it is Bella, and not someone else, who emerges on the other side of the transformation, so God promises to redeem us—these bodies, these selves. As Bella’s past struggles are put behind her, God promises to free us from our weakness and suffering and disappointment.
Yet if Christians want to think about our hope and purpose, Bella’s transformation won’t be enough food for thought.
One of the most important parts of Paul’s talk about resurrection clearly connects our hope for transformation to Jesus Christ. “Just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man,” Paul says, “so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven” (1 Corinthians 15:49). Christian hope for transformation is a physical, material hope. It is a hope that God’s ultimate purposes for us will be continuous with who we are now and what God is doing with us now. It is also a hope for transformation beyond the problems and sufferings and weaknesses of the present. The verse I’ve just quoted, though, gives us the most important information we need about that hope. It is a Jesus-centered hope, a hope that we will “bear the likeness of the man from heaven.”
Our meaning and purpose is not random. It is not about our personal preferences. It is not a choose-your-own-adventure brand of pie in the sky. In becoming like Jesus, the image of God is renewed in us. In reflecting who Jesus is and becoming mirrors of His love, we’re able to again reflect God’s glory. The purpose and meaning that were stolen from us by sin are offered back again in Jesus.
Our meaning and purpose are found in Jesus. As God transforms us and gives us purpose, we’re going to find that transformation and purpose are all about Christlikeness. This is true of both our purpose now and our final, eternal purpose. It is about being transformed into the likeness of Jesus, God’s own Son, someone who loved us and the whole world enough to enter into our situation and die for us. Jesus, in His resurrection, conquered death and promises us victory over death.
Even Meyer’s immortal vampires aren’t truly free from death. Granted, killing a vampire is more work than killing a human being, but the Volturi or some other enemy could still destroy them. Christian hope as we see it in Jesus, though, offers us a final freedom from this threat. No enemy can destroy what God promises. Death will finally be conquered; its terrible effects will be undone.
This hope is not just for the future. While the promise of bodily resurrection is the final hope of Christians, that hope changes our lives in the here and now. It gives us meaning and purpose, not just later but now. When we look at our lives right now, our bodies right now, we can see the beginning of the transformation God is working on. We can reject our tendency to despair about finding meaning because we know that our meaning is found in Christ.
Hope in God is a trustworthy hope. When we put all our hope in other things—in romantic love, a fairy tale marriage, or even our own interests—that hope is sure to disappoint. Because our hope in God is trustworthy, it’s not just a future hope. It’s very real in the present. Because we’re people who live in hope, the resurrection changes our lives right here and now.
N. T. Wright puts it like this: “Because the resurrection has happened as an event within our own world, its implications and effects are to be felt within our own world, here and now.”4 Our lives and work in this world matter. If we’re artists, our art matters. If we’re poets, our poems matter. If we’re athletes or bakers or gardeners, our sports and bread and flowers matter. Our relationships with God and other people matter too. Those relationships aren’t just temporary things. They have a future. If we can show love, justice, or beauty to someone else in the here and now, that witness may have eternal implications.
Remember, Christian hope for transformation is a hope for continuity. I’m not longing to stop being myself. I’m longing for God to do something good with me. I’m longing for God to make me a reflection of His good purposes, and God starts this work in my life right now. As transformed Bella is still Bella, when God has finished transforming you and me, we will still be ourselves. Your body and soul and life right now matter. Because they belong to God, they have meaning and purpose.
THINK ABOUT IT/TALK ABOUT IT
Do you identify with Bella’s dissatisfaction with her ordinary life? With the slogan “Bella: Hope for clumsy girls everywhere”?
Spend a few minutes thinking about the truth that human beings are created in the image of God. List some ways this should change the way we think about our own lives and the lives of all humans.
Where have you witnessed God’s transforming power? God’s power to bring light out of darkness? goodness out of sin? life out of death?
What are the features of Bella’s transformation? Which ones might help us think better about Christian hope?
How does the Christian promise of transformation—the promise of the resurrection of the body—change the way you think about your life? your body? your purpose?
What would it look like, in day-to-day life, to “bear the likeness” of Jesus? What specific things about His life could be reflected in your own life?
1. Stephenie Meyer, Breaking Dawn (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008), 523.
2. Breaking Dawn, 426.
3. Breaking Dawn, 405.
4
. N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: HarperOne, 2008), 191.
Chapter 10
Passion for God
The Power of Desire in Twilight and in Real Life
DESIRE TAKES A CENTRAL ROLE in the Twilight Saga. There is deep desire for blood. There’s Bella’s desire for Edward and his for her. Bella’s and Jacob’s conflicted desire for each other. Edward’s desire to marry Bella and Bella’s to become a vampire. Sexual desire is worked through the entire series. There are desires for family, for closeness, for love. Desire to protect baby Renesmee and other loved ones. Desire to be strong, to be good, to be immortal. Perhaps most powerful of all, the desire to be transformed.
Desire is strong stuff. What we want shapes who we are. It shapes our lives, our actions, our time, and our commitments. Because of desire we go down one road and reject another. We’re deeply shaped by our desires.
We are what we crave, and Christians have a compelling story to tell about how desire can be shaped by God.
LOOKING FOR LOVE (IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES)
Throughout this book, I’ve expressed concerns that the Twilight Saga encourages us to spend our desire on things other than God. Bella is constantly looking for fulfillment in all kinds of things. She focuses her hope on love with Edward, expecting to find happiness in an immortal vampire life shared with him. She’s a clear example of what it might look like to suppose that your life can be made complete by someone else. She calls Edward the “core” of her existence.1 Her desire for him is overwhelming, and she fully expects him to meet her needs and make her happy.
In various chapters of this book, I’ve suggested that it’s a warning sign when we start pouring all our desire into one place or one person. When we put someone on a pedestal, that person is bound to come tumbling down. For instance, some of us center our hopes on families, wanting parents or children to be perfect, to be more than they can or should be. When our hope is centered on another human being, we’re asking that person for something he or she can’t and shouldn’t give.
Dreams about love, romance, marriage, and even sex can take over our lives. Those dreams can control all our passions. We look to all kinds of things to transform us—exercise, food, education, love—but we’re inevitably disappointed when these things don’t deliver fulfillment.
At many points, Scripture describes the problem with human beings as a problem of desire. We want what we shouldn’t want, crave what can never fulfill us, and throw our energy into loving things that lead us away from God. Second Peter 2:10 speaks of the “corrupt desire of the sinful nature.”
Our whole beings are shaped by what we desire and love. Martin Luther taught “that to which your heart clings and entrusts itself is, I say, really your God.”2 Luther wrote this when teaching about God’s command to “have no other gods” (Exodus 20:3). He recognized that whenever our hearts cling to things besides God, we are making false gods out of those things. Luther saw that we’re likely to cling to and desire all kinds of things—money, learning, power, tradition, and other people. He begged Christians to see that the only place to put our trust and hope, the only thing worth clinging to, is God. Luther explains that it is as if God were speaking directly to us and saying, “Whatever good thing you lack, look to me for it and seek it from me, and whenever you suffer misfortune and distress, come and cling to me. I am the one who will satisfy you and help you out of every need. Only let your heart cling to no one else.”3
In Romans 8, the Christian life is described as a life in which desire is changed from the desires of sin to desires for the things of God: “Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires” (verse 5). The sinful nature is all about wanting the wrong things. It’s about desiring things that aren’t God and about getting deluded into thinking that those things will make us happy. We can’t force ourselves to desire God instead of other things, but the Spirit helps us to see things as they are, to save us from loving the wrong things the wrong way, and to change our desires. When this happens, God begins to transform our whole lives.
WHAT WE WANT
In chapter 6, I talked about an ancient pastor named Augustine and his views on marriage as a good gift from God. Augustine was a good reader of Scripture and a good observer of the Christian life, and his take on being human has exercised more influence over Christian thought than any other thinker down through the centuries—outside of Jesus and the biblical authors. Augustine believed desire was central to what it means to be human. He thought it was central to both what’s wrong with us and to the way that God takes what’s wrong and makes it right. His thoughts on the subject help us think about the ways our lives are controlled by the things we want and love.
As Augustine describes the situation, there are two ways to love something. We can love with a love of use, or we can love with a love of enjoyment. The love of enjoyment belongs only to the things that make us truly happy. That love of enjoyment—I suppose we could call it “true love”—happens when we love something for its own sake. The love of enjoyment means that we’re satisfied with the thing we love; we’re content with it as itself.
The love of use is a love that helps us get to that place of real happiness. The thing we love with a love of use is meant for a certain purpose—a use—and we love it because it does what it’s meant to do. I might love my station wagon with a love of use. It’s not particularly lovable in itself. Not many people get excited about a boring car like a station wagon for its own sake, but I love it because it does what it’s made to do by getting me from point A to point B.
Augustine had a giant revelation in his life. He spent lots of time spending his desire on things that weren’t God. He desired women, knowledge, and power. After a long and painful process, he realized that it’s only God who makes us truly happy, and so he wanted to drive home the point that only God should be loved with that love of enjoyment. The only thing that is worthy of being loved for its own sake is God. Everything else will disappoint. Only God is truly lovable, which means we should love Him with true love, the love of enjoyment. Everything else—and Augustine really means it when he says everything—should be loved with a love of use.
Am I saying that we should love everything that isn’t God—all the big loves that drive the Twilight Saga, like romance and family, children and marriage—with the love Augustine calls a love of use? We’re supposed to use our loved ones? Augustine thinks we are. Before you close the book in disgust, hear him out.
Augustine thinks we should love everything that isn’t God with a love of use because only God is lovable in His own right. More importantly, we’re supposed to love everything that isn’t God with a love of use, but we can only do that properly when we understand what exactly it is that everything is useful for.
In Augustine’s way of thinking, everything has only one right use, only one proper purpose, and that is to love God.
He believes we’re supposed to love everything, absolutely everything, that isn’t God with the purpose of directing all of life toward loving and glorifying God. Love for God should be like a rushing river; the water should pour in one mighty channel in God’s direction, and every other side stream or tributary ought to be collected into that one main river. Every drop of water, every bit of desire, the purpose of every love, ought to flow toward God.
When Augustine suggests that I should love God with a love of enjoyment and, say, my husband with a love of use, he isn’t saying I should use my husband in the way we usually think of when we say, “She’s using him.” I’m not supposed to use him to take out the trash or earn a paycheck. I’m not supposed to use him to build up my self-confidence or help me feel less alone. I’m supposed to “use” him for the one purpose he’s actually intended for. When God created my husband—and everything else—there was one reason. My h
usband is intended to exist for the love of God. So if I’m to love him with a love of use, my love for him should be for God’s sake. My love shouldn’t stop with him, as though he were the point of my life. Our love should point each other toward the purpose we’re both created for, loving and glorifying God, who is love. Our love, instead of stopping with us, should flow through us and on to God.
You probably won’t be surprised to hear Augustine’s diagnosis of our human situation. We get loving wrong. We love the wrong things for the wrong reasons. Only God will make us truly happy. Only God is truly lovable, but we love everything else as though it could fulfill us. We love husbands and wives, children and parents, jobs and hobbies, and even pizza and cars as though they could make us truly happy. We love all these things for their own sakes. Then, to make matters worse, we love God, who truly is love, with a love of use. We love God because we think it might get us something—maybe loving God will get things to go our way. Or maybe we love God because we want a ticket to heaven. We love God to use Him and love everything else as though it will give meaning and purpose to our lives.
In Augustine’s diagnosis, we human beings are victims of a major love disorder. He compares us to “wanderers in a strange country” who will only be happy when we reach our true home. As wanderers, we need to use things in order to make that journey home. We need some way to get there—a boat, a car, a train, a pair of running shoes—if we ever hope to reach that place where real happiness lies. The problem is that we get sucked into the country we’re driving through, we get “engrossed” in false “delight,” and instead of hurrying home, we hang out in a country that can’t possibly make us happy.4 We’ve gotten our loving, our desire, and our wanting all messed up. As sinners, we love everything but God as though it could fulfill us.
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