Touched by a Vampire (3 page)

More than anything else, romance in the Twilight universe is something fated. Bella and Edward are meant for each other. They are the ideal of what romantic soul mates should be. Their connection is powerful, immediate, and irresistible. They are drawn to each other, pulled together as though by a magnetic
force. Bella seems to exist just for Edward. Her very makeup, who she is at the core, is a perfect match for his desire.

In addition to Bella and Edward’s romance, the series portrays another strong instance of fated romance. In Jacob’s werewolf pack, werewolves find romance through “imprinting.” When he meets the “one,” the fated love, the werewolf immediately imprints on the other person. Jacob describes this in strong terms. He explains to Bella, “It’s not like love at first sight, really. It’s more like…gravity moves. When you see her, suddenly it’s not the earth holding you here anymore. She does. And nothing matters more than her.”
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Imprinted pairs experience “peace and certainty.”
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Sam, the leader of Jacob’s pack, has imprinted on a woman named Emily. Sam accidentally harmed Emily when he was in his wolf phase. Before he imprinted on Emily, though, Sam was in a committed relationship with someone else, Leah, but when he imprints, he has no choice but to leave Leah behind. The treatment of Leah’s situation in the series is incredibly frustrating. Her rage and pain at Sam’s rejection isn’t handled with much seriousness. Sam, in the romantic world of Meyer’s series, has no control over this rejection. The bonds of a loving relationship cannot hold him when fate steps in and he imprints on Emily.

Emily also receives very little attention in the narrative. We see that the injury Sam caused her is a source of pain, particularly for him, but we don’t see much about the difficulty of living with and loving a werewolf who unintentionally scarred you. We don’t hear much of Emily’s voice or about what choice she had in loving Sam. She would, presumably, have had very little choice if fate truly meant her to be with him.

We hear even less of the voices of other characters imprinted on by werewolves. Jacob’s friend Quil imprints on a child named Claire. The reader is assured that there is nothing inappropriate in his loving devotion to the toddler. Quil will not desire her romantically until she is a grown woman. For now, he is a devoted baby-sitter. But the narrative doesn’t address the question of the inherent imbalance of power in a relationship between a girl and a man years older than her. Even if Quil would still be physically young when Claire grew old enough for him, he’d still have years of experience she wouldn’t. It would be difficult for there to be much that was mutual about such a relationship. Quil would always have the upper hand, the stronger voice.

The assumption that romance is fated is very widespread, and it’s portrayed in a compelling way in Twilight. What are the consequences of accepting this idea of romance? First, if romance is determined by fate, if my love has to be my soul mate, the one I am meant for, then the possibilities of choice and accountability disappear. I’m no longer free to make good choices about who I want to share my life with. Instead, I am
bound by fate. Also, I can no longer seek the good advice of other Christians about my romantic life. Fate is the only advisor I need.

Fated romance thus not only destroys our freedom to choose at the beginning of a relationship, but it also threatens our freedom to
continue
to choose love in the face of difficulties and distractions. If I were bound by the idea of the fated romantic soul mate, I would follow him whenever I found him, even if that meant leaving someone else behind, like Sam leaves Leah for Emily. The idea of fated romance destroys good marriages in just this way. If I become convinced that someone other than my husband is actually my soul mate, then I lose the freedom God gives me to keep on loving my husband through thick and thin. I lose the freedom to continue to choose love daily, to keep my commitments, and to enjoy all the rich blessings of a steadfast love.

The idea that you belong with a soul mate, then, robs you of your freedom. It steals from you the power God gives you, through the Holy Spirit, to make good choices, choices that are for God’s glory. The idea of a soul mate binds us. It wraps us in chains.

Why, then, are we so captivated by this idea? I think it’s because we want to be loved by someone who is just for us, someone who really fits with who we are. We want it desperately. We’re hurt and we’re broken, and we want someone to meet us exactly where we are.

No human being, however, can fulfill us. No human being can complete us. No human being can give our lives meaning. If what we hope for from romance is fulfillment, completion, and meaning, we are going to be sadly disappointed. We’ll demand something from another person that he or she cannot possibly give.

The good news is that we don’t have to give up our hopes. But we do need to put them in the right place. God is so much more than human beings can ever be. This doesn’t mean that God will do whatever you want or that you can mold God to be the way you’d like Him to be. It does mean, though, that God has a really beautiful way of meeting us exactly where we are.

God knows exactly what human need is and knows exactly what to do about it. God jumped right into the world with us. God became “flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). God-in-the-flesh fits what we need so perfectly. Jesus is God there for us, experiencing what we experience, struggling with our struggles. He’s been tempted. He’s known need.

We needed to touch and see God’s love for us, and God came to us as the touchable, seeable, Jesus. We needed to be healed, and Jesus took on all of our mess, all of our guilt, to heal us. We needed to know who God was, and Jesus came so that we could see “his glory” (verse 14).

This is more compelling than a consuming romance. This reaches right into the depths of our being to touch us as we truly are.

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1. What are your favorite romance stories? What makes them so compelling?
   

2. Who can you turn to for accountability? Wait. Don’t skip over this question. I hope, if you’re young, that the answer might include your parents, but if there are reasons it can’t right now, do some brainstorming. A family friend? Someone at church? at school? down the block?
   

3. Who can you offer accountability to? Who can you help to see what kind of choices will serve God’s glory?
   

4. Even with no vampires around, how can romance become dangerous in our lives?
   

5. What would it look like for romance to be about glorifying God?
   

6. Talk about the concept of the soul mate. Do you think it is a problematic concept? Does it have a lot of power in your life?
   

Dazzled

W
E’VE TALKED ABOUT ROMANCE
and seen the way that romantic attraction in Twilight is governed by a sense that people have little control over that attraction. When you meet your soul mate, you can’t resist. So when two people have been drawn together in this way, what does the love between them look like?

For Bella and Edward, love is all-absorbing. Bella centers her entire life, her whole being, on Edward. Everything else becomes unimportant in the light of her love. Because this love is so total, so overwhelming, it is also something that can destroy. Because Bella’s whole life is about Edward, love makes her exceptionally vulnerable. Without him, her very existence is threatened. She’ll do anything for him. This captivating,
potentially destructive love exists in uneasy tension with other kinds of love.

We’ll examine the way all of this operates in the world of Twilight. What does it look like? How does it compare to the love God promises?

Love takes over Bella’s and Edward’s lives because they complete one another. Each is the reason for the other’s existence.

Edward spent decades believing he “was complete,”
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but falling in love with Bella teaches him otherwise. Though his vampire “parents” and “siblings” are paired off in loving relationships, Edward believed he didn’t need someone else in his life. All those years, he thought he was okay. Yet, as Meyer writes it, for all those years, his life was not whole. Then Bella changed his world. Bella gave his life the purpose he hadn’t known he lacked.

Bella compares her existence without Edward to a “lost moon,” a moon without a planet, circling “around the empty space left behind.”
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This is a powerful illustration for the way Edward becomes the true center of her life. She orbits around him.
Bella’s mom, Renee, uses a similar image when she expresses concern about the intensity of her daughter’s relationship with Edward. “You orient yourself around him without even thinking about it,” Renee says. “When he moves, even a little bit, you adjust your position at the same time. Like magnets…or gravity. You’re like a…satellite, or something.”
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Renee worries that Bella has surrendered everything to Edward. Her every movement and thought is a response to Edward. All her choices begin with him. The way Renee sizes up the situation, Edward is the dynamic one in the relationship. He is the actor, Bella the reactor. Bella has become a
satellite
. Jacob compares Edward’s effect on Bella to that of an eclipse. As an eclipse blocks the sun, preventing light from reaching the ground, Edward blocks off any possibilities for Bella but that she will be with him, belong with him, and center her life on him.

As Bella describes her love for Edward, we see that she would do anything for him. She believes she would respond to his voice under any circumstance. She would answer his call even if she were dead. The words and images she uses for her love reflect burning intensity and deep devotion. Her life is absorbed in his. To her, he is an angel, a miracle. Bella thinks Edward is perfect.

So she is angry and resentful at any suggestion that her reasons for loving Edward or her way of loving him might be
questioned. She doesn’t want her parents’ interference. She dismisses Renee’s concern that she has become a satellite, something peripheral that circles around the thing that
really
matters. Neither will she accept Jacob’s warnings. Jacob’s depiction of Edward as an eclipse, blocking Bella’s sun, is not a picture she can or wants to challenge. Her ability to see anything but Edward has already gone. The love in the novels is the love of two people centered on one another. For both Bella and Edward, the other becomes the center of their being.

If love is about becoming a satellite, that love expects another human being to be
worth
orbiting around. Christians need to raise questions about a picture of love that assumes another human being can complete us, can be the rightful center of our world. If we think that another person can give us everything we need, if we think another person can give meaning or purpose to our lives, we are setting ourselves up to be disillusioned. We’re setting ourselves up to go running off to find a new “center” the moment our human center disappoints us. No human being can possibly fulfill us.

All people are weak and limited. Our loves are not immortal, superstrong vampires. They are ordinary human beings who have annoying habits and make mistakes. The great thing is that we too are weak, limited, annoying human beings. If we think love has to be about loving someone worthy, who can complete us, we will find, first, that no other person can fill this role.