The Salty Peanut Gallery

Some time ago a dear lady in our church approached me about a subject she believed was of utmost importance that needed to be addressed with our young people. “Are you familiar with the Vampire books?” she asked. I had to admit at the time I had no clue what she was talking about. “This is some pretty bad stuff. You really need to go by the local book store and check this out. These books are really popular with the teenagers and I really think we need to be telling our kids to stay away from this kind of thing.”

I really didn’t think much of it at the time. I had no clue what the poor woman was talking about. It wasn’t until much later when the movie version first hit the theaters last year that I put two and two together and realized she must have been talking about the “Twilight” books. For those of you who have been living in a cave for the past year, “Twilight” is a series of fantasy romance novels by author Stephenie Meyer about a teenage girl, Bella, who falls in love with Edward, a 104-year-old vampire. Book one was made into a motion picture and released in theaters last November 2008. The second installment, “New Moon” was just released last weekend and broke box office records as the biggest midnight screening and opening day in history.

So the burning question is this. Can a Christian in good conscience enjoy the “Twilight” series? For that matter, can a Christian in good conscience enjoy fantasy stories of any kind?

Angie Hunt is a Christian Novelist, a blogger and an old friend from college. She writes a pithy article on the subject entitled Twilight Apologetic. Here’s an excerpt:

Okay, let’s look at Deut 18:10: “For example, never sacrifice your son or daughter as a burnt offering. And do not let your people practice fortune-telling, or use sorcery, or interpret omens, or engage in witchcraft, or cast spells, of function as mediums of psychics, or call forth the spirits of the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord.”

Now, with all that said, let me say that if a Christian’s conscience is pricked, then don’t read the books. No one is holding a gun to your head. OR you can celebrate the creative imaginations that God gave all his creatures and enjoy them with a clean conscience.

It’s so easy for Christians these days to get themselves all stirred up over fighting the cultural war. You know. “Grab your torch and pitchforks.” You may recall a couple of years back when Laura Mallory began her year long crusade to have the Gwinnett County Board of Education in Georgia ban the Harry Potter books from library shelves. After the local board refused her request, she took her case to the Georgia Board of Education, which upheld Gwinnett County’s decision. Mallory who’s an evangelical Christian said she found the books offensive to her Christian faith and harmful to her children’s spiritual health. Though she never read them she said she wanted to protect her kids and others from evil.

Freelance writer and blogger La Shawn Barber asks this serious question “for Christians who avoid Harry Potter because of the magic depicted in the books: Do you also avoid reading books and watching TV shows and movies that contain fornication and adultery, and depict lying and thievery and murder, all of which are condemned in the Bible?”

Good question. Because quite frankly those depictions in my humble opinion are far more damaging. No matter how personally offensive you might find fantasy stories about vampires and sorcery the fact is young people today are NOT being drawn into the occult because of Twilight or Harry Potter, or for that matter The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, Bed Knobs and Broomsticks or Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It’s fantasy. It’s make-believe. It isn’t real. It’s meat that has been sacrificed to idols and “an idol has no real existence” (1 Corinthians 8:4).

The Apostle Paul puts it this way, “Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him (Romans 14:3). For why should my liberty be determined by someone else’s conscience?” (1 Corinthians 10:29)