Touched by a Vampire (13 page)

Abortion often happens when mothers feel a sense of desperation. When women have no support—emotional, financial, or spiritual—they sometimes feel driven to abortion as the only way out of what seems like a hopeless situation. The church needs to find ways to offer real support to parents in
these situations. Stassen and Gushee maintain that “the best way to be prolife is to deliver people from the causes of abortion.”
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Though Bella is determined to protect her pregnancy, her situation is also one full of desperation, and her one support is in Rosalie. Perhaps her story can challenge us to create situations in which pregnancy brings not desperation, but hope.

I am compelled by Bella’s strong determination to protect the life of her unexpected little one. In our society, it is becoming more and more common for mothers to be advised to have abortions when the babies they are carrying are seen, like Bella’s half-vampire/half-human daughter, as being “abnormal.” Parents are offered genetic screening, and babies with Down syndrome and other genetic conditions are often aborted. It takes courage to go against social pressure and to love and protect vulnerable children as Bella did, and Scripture continually presses us to protect those who are most vulnerable and to defend those who have no defenders.

Bella is a brave mother, but other messages in her story are quite disturbing. The story plays up fears that pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood are dangerous and that they might just destroy you. It’s not uncommon to have some fear that motherhood
might ruin our bodies, rob us of our freedoms, and make us lose ourselves, but it’s hard to imagine a more terrifying portrait of pregnancy and childbirth than the one we find in the Twilight Saga.

Pregnancy is not a disease, and childbirth is not a medical emergency. In a society where many people have never seen a baby being born, the gory vampiric C-section in
Breaking Dawn
may seem especially terrifying, but the birth of a baby can be an incredibly precious and happy event. It needn’t be violent or dangerous.

Yes, babies change our lives, but no, they do not destroy us. Sure, pregnancy can be uncomfortable, but babies do not suck the very life from their mothers. Birth is certainly a dramatic experience, but it is not a kind of death. I don’t want to idealize pregnancy and childbirth, but I do want girls and women, especially girls and women who haven’t had babies, to know that there is so much that is good and precious about this part of female life. In the New Testament, being a mother is depicted as both a “calling and privilege,”
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a gift from God.

There is some truth mixed in with the lie that motherhood destroys the mother though. Having a baby
is
a dramatic change in life. Pregnancy is not the cute and comfortable romantic thing that it looks like in the media’s depictions of
movie star moms. Among other things, pregnancy involves lots of trips to the bathroom, weird aversions to foods, nausea, and medical care that invades any sense of privacy you might have. Babies aren’t just cute. They’re also messy, drooly creatures who fill up lots of diapers. Unlike Renesmee, they don’t grow up immediately. Babies need years of constant care, and it takes a long time before they’re capable of saying “I love you” back to their moms and dads. Babies aren’t cute accessories; they’re living, breathing, needy human beings. Being a parent requires tremendous time and energy, and it isn’t something to take lightly.

Yet despite the way children change us and the demands they make on us, this isn’t a bad thing. The daily responsibilities of caring for children force us to love someone besides ourselves and to recognize our own selfishness. God can use parenting as a way to teach us to be less selfish, to train us to reflect God’s love more closely.

Of all the events in the Twilight Saga, Bella becoming a mother has drawn the most disapproval from readers, and this has come from both fans and critics. Some have seen Meyer as glorifying teenage pregnancy. Others have regretted the way the story makes childbirth seem terrifying. For fans, though, I think feelings about this are more complicated. For those who’ve identified closely with Bella throughout her story, her sudden pregnancy and devotion to being a mother may be difficult to relate to. Motherhood just seems too foreign and too far away to many readers.

It can’t hurt, though, for us to spend some time thinking about God’s intentions for parents and children. Pregnancy should not be romanticized or glorified, but it also shouldn’t be despised. In God’s story, pregnancy makes sense as a good divine gift, a blessing that is part of marriage, something to be embraced and protected. We don’t have to fear that pregnancy will mess up our bodies, because we know that bodies exist for the glory of God. I’ve never felt more pleased with my body than in seeing how it could nourish my babies. In God’s story, the pregnant bride isn’t devoured and destroyed by husband and child. Instead, husband and child can be seen as gracious gifts, as part of God’s intention for a life meant for His glory.

If thinking about Bella’s unexpected baby gets us to think more about what it means as Bella does from the first, to love children, I hope that the
ways
we love children will be shaped by God’s witness to us in Scripture. In looking for a biblical lens to help us focus our understanding of children, several big themes can help to shape our thinking and our actions. First, children are an important gift, a gift that comes from God. Second, God places parents and children in a relationship that He intends to be good for children and to teach them about God. Finally, Jesus treasures children and shows us that there is something about children that reflects His kingdom.

Again and again, the stories of Scripture present children as an important gift from God. This gift is part of God’s good intentions for married couples, reflected in God’s words at creation: “Be fruitful and increase in number” (Genesis 1:28). These words are words of blessing. The fact that children are a gift from God means that this gift isn’t something that we human beings can control. This gift isn’t ours by right. It belongs to God.

There are many stories in Scripture in which people who thought they would never have children suddenly and unexpectedly become parents. Abraham and Sarah were old, but God promised that they would found a nation and gave them a son, Isaac, even when it seemed impossible. Rachel was jealous of her sister Leah, who had many children, but God finally gave her a son. Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, also becomes a mother against the odds and against her own expectation. Hannah prays for a child, and when her son Samuel is born, she dedicates his life to God.

In all these cases, we see that God is the author of life, the giver of children who surprise their parents and become the way that God keeps promises. It is God, not us, who grants life.

Because of this, giving birth to children and parenting children cannot be the most important thing in a person’s life. God is always the most important. God tests Abraham by asking him to give up his son, Isaac, even though Isaac is the child
God had promised and the way God is going to use Abraham to do something important in the world.

Scripture also speaks to the ways that God intends a good relationship between parents and children to play out. Children are a blessing to their parents, and parents are supposed to care for their children. Parents have a responsibility to nourish the gift God has given. Scripture speaks of the importance of parents teaching their children about who God is and what God has done in this world.

This relationship between parents and children is supposed to be mutual. Both parents and children should reap good things from it. Children are to “obey your parents” (Colossians 3:20), and parents, in turn, are not supposed to “embitter your children, or they will become discouraged” (verse 21). When these words were written, no one would have been surprised to hear children being told to obey, but the charge for parents to be careful guardians of their responsibility was unusual. Parents have a responsibility to nourish and discipline, but they are supposed to do it in ways that reflect God’s own love, not as tyrants.

In the Bible, we also see Jesus treat children in a special way, a way that His friends find surprising. In the book of Matthew, we read how Jesus “called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: ’I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of
heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven’” (18:2–4). Jesus’s kingdom is a place where, like with children, status doesn’t matter. Humility before God, obedience, and trust in the goodness of God are ways in which we all should be like children.

Whether we are young or old, children or parents, all human beings are children in relationship to God. All of us are vulnerable. All are dependent on God. All are loved and protected by our Creator, and all of us should come to God with the humility and trust that Jesus treasured in the little children He knew.

Some of us have wonderful parents and some have terrible parents, but no matter what our human parents are like, God is trustworthy and offers us unfailing love. In Jesus, God has given us everything that rightly belongs to His children. We aren’t strangers; we’re God’s daughters and sons. We aren’t beggars outside God’s door, but beloved members of the family, children who God has made into “heirs” (Galatians 3:7, 29). God gives us the gift of a loving relationship with Him.

In 1 John, we read words of celebration and promise. We can delight in the facts that we are God’s children and that God promises us good things:

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1. How did you react to Bella’s surprise pregnancy in
   Breaking Dawn
   ?
   

2. When you think about the possibility (or reality) of being a mother, do you tend toward romantic daydreams? terrifying fears?
   

3. Does reading Bella’s story make you think differently about Christian attitudes toward life? about societal attitudes about abortion?
   

4. How should the portrait of children in Scripture influence your actions toward the children in your life?
   

5. Can you take comfort in the promise that you’ve been made a child of God? What does this mean in your life? What privileges belong to God’s children?
   

Inhuman Strength

E
DWARD’S FAMILY IS UNITED BY
a commitment to being “good” vampires. They strive against their dark natures. They make a tremendous effort to resist their thirst for human blood, and this effort is an intriguing part of the drama of the stories. The Twilight Saga implies that there are certain ways to think about what it means to be evil or to be good. It also has a specific understanding of the conflict between good and evil and how we can hope to live lives that matter.