Confessions of a Christian Twi-hard

Prologue

I don’t like vampire stories. I had a friend who was really into the whole Anne Rice Series. She had to read them as fast as they were published. I didn't think it was a good genre for a Christian girl. I thought she needed some kind of spiritual intervention. Not that I totally avoided them. When I was a teenager, my friends and I loved watching the daytime drama Dark Shadows. We were heartbroken when it was cancelled.

I am a movie junkie so I have seen Bram Stoker's Dracula" more than a few times, mostly because of Keanu Reeves. I have also seen the movie Interview with the Vampire" from one of the Anne Rice books because of Brad Pitt. I've even seen Anne Rice's home once on a tour of New Orleans. I was not too enthralled with any of it. I'm not into anything that I feel glorifies the Enemy, as in Satan, the Devil, the Serpent, the Great Dragon, the Prince of this World, etc. I had had enough run-ins with the enemy in my life; I didn't want to seek out any more. That's what I thought of the whole Vampire Genre—too much glorifying the Enemy.

I was aware of all the hype around the Twilight Saga. It seemed the vampire genre for the new millennium. I saw the interviews and some trailers for the movies as they came out. The stars were all young and gorgeous so I could see the appeal, similar to my Reeves-Pitt attraction to the older vampire movies. That was the limit of my interest.

Then one weekend in January 2011 we got free Showtime on TV, which is apparently the official Twilight Channel. It was free and I was curious. I watched Twilight and that was it; I was hooked.

I had to watch all three movies that had come out. Then I had to read Breaking Dawn and the prequels to get all the details left out of the movies. Finally, I was compelled to buy all the movies and watch them several times. Yikes!!! There was no denying it: this 50-something, divorced mother of a 22 year-old daughter was a Twi-hard!

Ok, so Edward is not a real vampire in that he doesn't commit murder by drinking human blood, but there is part of each story dedicated to murderous human-blood drinking vampires. Stories about the conflicts between good versus evil vampires. I guess that was part of the fascination for me. I related their battles to my spiritual journey in which I am battling true good and evil in the real world.

There is the love story between Bella And Edward. Edward is the ultimate bad boy because he thirsts for Bella's blood. But it is more than that. The love story is about devotion, sacrifice, loss, pain, hurt, betrayal, temptation, and redemption—things I have also experienced.

There was more to the story that drew me in and held me. The more I read, the more I found Truth amidst the fantasy. Truth about a spiritual reality that exists for those of us who embrace Jesus as Lord, and believe the truths of the Bible. The things that captivated me in the stories did so because I know that through Christ I could experience them in my life and will experience them in the immortal life ahead for me in heaven. There are things in my life that allowed me to experience emotionally what the characters in the saga experienced.

I felt a desire to share my perspective and, in sharing my journey and the exciting life that awaits those that embrace the true Supernatural in Christ, I hope others find it too.

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I can relate to Bella. She is clumsy and doesn't feel like she fits into this world as she reveals,
“Facing my pallid reflection in the mirror, I was forced to admit that I was lying to myself. It wasn't just physically that I'd never fit in. And if I couldn't find a niche in a school with three thousand people, what were my chances here?” (Twilight).

“I've always felt out of step. Like literally stumbling through my life. I've never felt normal, because I'm not normal, and I don't wanna be. I've had to face death and loss and pain in your world, but I've also never felt stronger, like more real, more myself, because it's my world too. It's where I belong," she com- ments on her desire to become a vampire in the movie Eclipse.

Bella is longing for a world she does not fit into. I can relate to that. I have always felt like I was watching my life rather than living it. I have felt awkward and unsure of myself. I have spent a lot of years putting on a good show. Maybe most people feel that way. I think it may be due to the fact that we have an eternal soul stuck in a fragile human body.

When my daughter was about three she looked at a picture of one of her cousins, taken before my daughter was born. She said, "Oh that was when I was in Jesus' pocket," as if understanding her real home was somewhere else and she was just waiting to pass through this life on earth. I am reminded of verses in the Bible that talk about believers in Christ belonging to another world. Jesus said in John,
“I have given them your word. And the world hates them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I’m not asking you to take them out of the world, but to keep them safe from the evil one. They do not belong to this world any more than I do. Make them holy by your truth; teach them your word, which is truth" (John 17:14-17).

I think as humans our feeling out of place in this life started when humans were kicked out of the Garden of Eden because of Adam's sin. We were not created to live in a world of trouble and pain and death, but because of the sin of Adam and Eve, sin and death entered the human condition. It is interesting that Stephanie Meyers also refers to mankind's fall by quoting Genesis 2:17 at the beginning of the Twilight Book,
“But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."

The book of Romans also refers to this sin and consequential death,
“When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned” (Romans 5:12).

“Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

For the believer in Christ this is more pronounced because of the Holy Spirit that comes to dwell in their body. The Holy Spirit is God's gift to those who believe in Jesus as their Savior,
“And now you Gentiles have also heard the truth, the Good News that God saves you. And when you be- lieved in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long
ago” (Ephesians 1:13).

The Holy Spirit is God's promise to us of our eternal life in heaven,
"But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. He is the first of a great harvest of all who have died.
So you see, just as "What I am saying, dear brothers and sisters, is that our physical bodies cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. These dying bodies cannot inherit what will last forever. But let me reveal to you a wonderful secret. We will not all die, but we will all be transformed! It will happen in a moment, in the blink of an eye, when the last trumpet is blown. For when the trumpet sounds, those who have died will be raised to live forever. And we who are living will also be transformed. For our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die; our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies” (I Cor 15:50-53).