Sapphira Adi: Twilight and the Bible

3:03 PM Edit This 3 Comments »
I'm not ashamed to admit: I love the Twilight saga. The books, not necessarily the movies. (I haven't even seen New Moon yet.) I wrote in my last blog about how our stories reflect God's Great Story, and I think there's a lot in Stephanie Meyer's vampire romance series that echoes our relationship with God.

My dear friend Sapphira Adi has pulled out a few of these ideas in her blog. I hope you find it as enlightening as I did! http://www.elyonscircle.com/blogs/SapphiraAdi/?p=968

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry, but you've got to be kidding me!!! How does vampires and blood and killing and Satanic stuff like that, even come close to anything about God?

Caitlyn said...

Thanks for dropping by, Amanda, and taking the time to share your thoughts! I'm excited that you're not blindly accepting that Twilight is awesome just because everyone says it is. I can tell you're really interested in pleasing God. :)

I'm wondering, though, have you read the books or at least seen the movies? The Cullens (the main family of vampires) do NOT kill people. They need blood to live, but they have learned to RESIST temptation (sound familiar?) and kill animals instead. None of them chose to be vampires, but they do honor human life and have chosen to use their special abilities to help people. (The father of the family is a wonderfully wise and compassionate doctor--in spite of the fact that every scent of blood arouses his appetite.)

The thing is, vampires are myths. Different stories portray them in different ways. In most stories, vampires are demonic monsters who seduce and kill people. Stephanie Meyer is doing something different. She has taken the general concept of vampires and completely reworked it into something that is NOT inherently evil. She has made them real people, not monsters. Like us, they have a choice.

To understand the story at all, you have to accept that basic premise. Twilight and Dracula are entirely different worlds.

You're right, there are actual Satanic cults that drink human blood and call themselves vampires. That, again, is something entirely different. If girls get excited about the idea of vampires because of Twilight and start googling "how to be a vampire" and end up getting into some truly Satanic cult...well, that would definitely be a problem. But such a thing I'm sure would be EXTREMELY rare, and would be completely straying from the story and world of Twilight itself. There's nothing close to Satanism at all about the books and movies themselves.

How does this have anything to do with God? As far as the actual "vampire" idea goes, again, I'd say the way the Cullens fight against their nature and honor human life despite the impulses which they can't even help. But the main place I see God in Twilight is the passionate love that Edward and Bella have for each other. In some ways (not all), I think it really is a picture of the way God loves us. Like Sapphira Adi wrote in her blog. :)

FYI, I answered a similar question in more detail over here (https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=1010199706474206329&postID=8115917043202926995) in case you wanted to check that out as well. :)

I'm not at all trying to say that Twilight is the Bible or anything. It has problems, I know this, and I hope that people who read it will prayerfully consider what to accept and what to question. But I also believe that Truth pops up in random places. If we learn to look with "eyes to see and ears to hear," we will see reflections of the One True God all around us. :)

Anonymous said...

Ok, sorry for coming on so hard about it. And no, I really haven't read any of the books or seen any of the movies, just becuz that type of stuff really doesn't interest me. But thank you so much for giving me your opinion on that, and for telling me all about the Twilight series. God bless!
Love, Manda