So I’ve received some comments on my going to see the Twilight movie …
Since I don’t know who sent them, and thus cannot respond to them personally, I’ll reply here.
Yes, Twilight is a book about vampires. Vampires are not real. Neither are Ents, trolls, hobbits, dragons, werewolves, fairies, fairy godparents, talking bunnies, talking ducks, scheming coyotes, the list goes on and on. I do not only read about or watch things that are real. I think God gave us imaginations; I do not think it is wrong to read about imaginary things.
No, Twilight is not about God. God is not addressed in this book – mortality is addressed later on, but that has more to do with where one goes rather than Who one meets upon death.
Yes, Twilight was a good book. It is not classic literature; I wouldn’t rate the writing of it up there with Austen or Dickens, but it was a good read. The morality of the characters is basically good – I found it refreshing to read a book that wasn’t filled with teenage angst or lots of sex.
No, Twilight does not turn one away from God. In fact, my first thought on reading the book was, “Wouldn’t it be cool if someone could write a story about Christians being the irresistible ones and how everyone wanted to be like us?”
I grew up very sheltered. In some ways, that was good and I am thankful for it. In other ways, I wish I had been more prepared for what lay ahead of me. When I got to college, I began learning how my world view differed from others’. I began to learn to evaluate all that I read and watched and heard by my world view. With our boys, we tend to talk a lot about the books they read, the shows they watch and who they hang out with. We talk about character, how you see what people believe by how they act. We talk about how some of the shows they see don’t reflect our world view. We don’t stop them from watching the shows, but we do help them see what’s right & wrong.
I don’t think people should not read Twilight. I think they should read it and evaluate it from a Christian world-view, just was we do (or should do) with all the books we read and all the TV we watch and all the radio/music we listen to. Will you refuse to read the Fellowship of the Ring because it isn’t about God? Will you refuse to read Dickens because they are just stories and not about God? I wouldn’t. I think you can see the influences of the authors. Even though Tolkien didn’t want his books to be allegories like C. S. Lewis’ books, you still see underlying threads of his belief system in the books. Dickens’ books all carry Christ-figures as major characters. In all honesty, I would be more worried about Mrs. Meyers being a Mormon than about her writing about vampires.
I can see where people are worried about the occult coming into normality (?) but that has been the case for a long time, and Twilight has nothing to do with that. The books downplay the dark stuff a lot – the vampires are trying their best to live in the world and not be monsters. In fact, Twilight is more about true, even sacrificial, love than anything else.
anyways, I’ve said my piece. Thanks for commenting. 🙂
