Touched by a Vampire (5 page)

The love in Twilight is also compelling because it is so serious. In our self-absorbed culture, we don’t see much that is serious
about love. So we enjoy reading Twilight because the love in the story is the opposite of the shallow loves that we know from television, movies, and life. It is the opposite of the random hookup, the false love that gets intimate one night and pretends nothing happened the next morning. Of course, we want a serious love.

Yet the serious love of Twilight is not a healthy love. It tries to find a center in another human being who cannot possibly be the center we need. It is open to danger, even to violence. Are we out of luck, then, if we want a serious love?

Thankfully, we are not. God provides us with a completely compelling, delightfully serious way of loving. God’s kind of love is not bland and passionless. We read about it in 1 Corinthians 13:

Now,
this
is a serious account of love. This is a love that is central. This is a love that is beautiful. It challenges the selfishness and lack of seriousness of “love” in our me-first world, but it does it in a different way than Bella and Edward do. This love is not about becoming a satellite, orbiting around someone else, yet it does protect and honor the loved one with all its might. This love is not a love that destroys. This love builds up. This kind of love cannot depend on another human being to give life meaning, though it does greatly honor the people we love.

Or consider this passage about the magnitude of God’s love:

Of course we long for love, but the good news is that we don’t have to try desperately to find it from a human being.
Serious love, deep love, real love has been given to us in Jesus, and nothing can tear us out of His arms. He is a center that will not disappoint.

T
HINK
A
BOUT
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/T
ALK
A
BOUT
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1. What do you want from love?
   

2. Is there a part of you that thinks “real” love acts jealous and controlling?
   

3. Where do we get our ideals about love? From media, books, family?
   

4. What aspects of love, as described in the Bible, are most compelling to you?
   

5. Love doesn’t allow for violence or abuse. If you or someone you know is a victim of dating or marriage violence, you need to be safe. Talk to an adult, friend, pastor, or teacher who can help. The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence has a Web site that will point you to resources that can help (
   www.ncadv.org
   ).
   

Body and Blood

T
HE
T
WILIGHT
S
AGA IS DRIVEN BY
the unrelenting physical longing between Edward and Bella. Throughout the story, their sexual desire grows increasingly intense, but they wait until the night of their wedding to give in to that desire. Some Christian readers have celebrated the fact that they save sex for marriage, finding in their story an example of purity and self-control. But should Christian readers really be encouraged by the details of this story?

The Twilight Saga covers a lot of pages, and the vast majority of those pages chronicle the sexual tension between Bella and Edward. Though they don’t have sex until after their wedding
in the fourth book, this doesn’t mean that the first three books are any less about sexuality. The drama of the books hinges on the intensity of their physical reactions to one another. The books are charged with sexual feelings, and the overall effect of this electric charge is heightened by the anticipation—Bella’s, Edward’s, and the reader’s—that is created by their choice to wait.

Meyer, of course, isn’t the first author to write vampire stories, and vampire fiction has always been sexually charged. A vampire’s thirst for blood, the very thing that defines him or her, is a symbol for sexuality. In Bram Stoker’s
Dracula
, the threat of the vampire is a threat to an innocent girl, to her purity and goodness. Like in
Dracula
, Edward’s deep thirst for Bella’s blood is a metaphor for his sexual desire for her. “Which is tempting you more,” Bella teases Edward, “my blood or my body?”
¹

Meyer gives this classic vampire theme a couple of interesting nuances. First, Edward’s struggle with this desire is portrayed very dramatically. He’s unlike vampires in other novels because he doesn’t want to be a murderer and he wants to protect the innocence of the one he loves. He struggles with the threat he poses to Bella. In reading the books, we feel how very much Edward wants to bite her. We sense the danger involved in his desire even as we understand his determination to fight against it. Second, Bella fully returns Edward’s desire. It is not
only that he wants her. She’s a modern girl, and she isn’t shy about wanting him in return.

Edward and Bella reverse some stereotypes. She is the one in the relationship constantly begging for more, the one pushing the boundaries. Edward continuously reestablishes those boundaries. Their choice to save sex for marriage is Edward’s choice, not Bella’s. Edward draws lines; Bella tries to blur them.

Because of the way Bella’s blood calls out to him, Edward must constantly police his own desire and behavior. In drawing near to Bella, Edward “hesitated to test himself, to see if this was safe, to make sure he was still in control of his need.”
²
Only then can he kiss her. His sexuality is charged with danger. Edward must constantly maintain his self-control, or he will stop being the good vampire Meyer has created and become the old threatening monster of other vampire stories.

Bella, though, takes little responsibility for her own self-control. All the hard work falls to Edward. Kissing him is too overwhelming. She forgets the danger and says her “will crumbled into dust the second our lips met.”
³
He’s frustrated with her for constantly challenging his restraint and chastises her for putting him through the pain of refusing her pleading. At one point, he has to ask her to stop taking off her clothes.

Bella and Edward may be “waiting” for sex for most of their story, but reading the novels is still very much an erotic experience. Edward tells Bella, “Just because I’m resisting the wine doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the bouquet.”
⁴

Because of her commitment to the values of the Mormon faith, Meyer has stated publicly that she will not write about premarital sex. In the Twilight Saga, Bella and Edward wait for sex for a number of reasons. Edward, after all, is from another time. He is committed to the old-fashioned morality he has brought into the present from that day long ago when he was frozen in his perfect seventeen-year-old body. Twenty-first-century morality may not have much patience with delaying sexual gratification, but Edward holds on to his old-fashioned morals. He tells Bella, “I’ve stolen, I’ve lied, I’ve coveted…my virtue is all I have left.”
⁵

In reading, we participate in Bella’s and Edward’s longing for each other. For people who have grown up with the values of mainstream culture, their story of longing and waiting is surprising. In a world where it is rare to delay gratification, Edward and Bella represent a way of caring for each other outside the
norm. In a world where all responsibility for restraint and self-control is often placed on women, reading about a man willing to step out of his selfishness and practice restraint is surprising and intriguing.

For people who’ve grown up in communities that teach sexual abstinence outside of marriage, this story of waiting for sex in the midst of intense anticipation is very familiar and oddly contemporary. In such communities, there is plenty of sexual tension. Christians committed to saving sex for marriage experience the difficulty that comes with waiting and can recognize themselves in Edward and Bella. These communities are also full of people who know what it is to constantly push against boundaries and to have sexual tension heightened even as sexual experience is delayed. The heightened tension widespread among Christian youth is reflected in the common question, “How far is too far?” and the way that Christian couples who are “waiting” so often push boundaries to the breaking point.

This is one of the reasons we should be careful about seizing on the Twilight Saga as a story that provides a positive example for people committed to sexual abstinence and to purity. While Edward and Bella wait for marriage, they wait in a way that is all too common among Christians. As they wait, they allow the tension between them to build. They encourage that tension to build. They push borders and boundaries, and they create a situation in which they’re always longing for more than
they can or ought to have. This is the way most Christian couples wait, engaging in all kinds of sexual activities while trying desperately to save intercourse for marriage.

Several things in Bella and Edward’s relationship encourage anguished desire instead of freedom from temptation. They’ve cut themselves off from people who can help them. Bella doesn’t want to discuss sex with her parents. Edward’s family surely would have been glad to help him with his struggles for self-control, but the couple cut themselves off from the support of friends and family. They are constantly alone together and spend nights alone in Bella’s room. This kind of isolation and lack of support is a recipe for temptation.

Christians need to rethink our models of dating and of waiting. Instead of desperately holding out, we need to find ways to protect ourselves from the temptations created by the kind of waiting Bella and Edward engage in. Waiting in tension makes waiting more difficult, and frankly, it often becomes a wasted effort. We need to find ways to practice sexual abstinence outside of marriage that don’t make us subject to the kind of anguished heightened anticipation that marks Bella and Edward’s relationship before marriage. Instead of asking, “How far is too far?” we need to be accountable to one another and encourage each other to truly live in the story of goodness and faithfulness that God gives us to help us understand sexuality.

Bella and Edward don’t have very convincing reasons to support their efforts to wait for sex. Edward waits because he is “old-fashioned.” I doubt this reason captures your imagination. It may be nice to think about those chivalrous, old-fashioned values, but in the face of desire, I don’t believe that just wanting to be old-fashioned will help anyone resist sexual temptation.