Touched by a Vampire (16 page)

Those who belong to Jesus Christ have the “firstfruits” of the something more we crave. The Holy Spirit starts a good change and a good work in our lives, but that change is not complete. We’re still eager, still groaning, still waiting.

What are we waiting for? For God to adopt us, to make us children in His family, by transforming our bodies. There is enormous promise here. All of our dissatisfaction will end in hope.

In many ways, Bella’s final transformation is my favorite part of the Twilight Saga. At the end of the series, all of her dissatisfaction comes to an end. She finds, finally, a transformed life full of meaning, purpose, and happiness. As we think about our own hope in God’s transforming power, there is, for Christians, a lot to think about in Bella’s story.

All of Bella’s struggles with herself and her own humanity end when she is transformed into a vampire. Where she was awkward, she is now supremely graceful. Where she was, in her own mind at least, ordinary, she is now a stellar beauty. Where she was average, she now excels in every way.

Bella thought she would never be anything special. She thought her life could never be important, that whatever purpose or meaning her life might have could only be of the most insignificant kind. After her transformation, though, she comes fully into her own. The ugly duckling has turned into the swan. “It was like I had been born to be a vampire,” Bella says. “The idea made me want to laugh but it also made me want to sing. I had found my true place in the world, the place I fit, the place I shined.”
¹

Isn’t this what we all want? For our lives to truly matter? To find the reason we were made? To really belong somewhere in a way that makes our purpose clear? Bella comes to this joyful place where the pieces fall together, and at last, everything makes sense.

Newborn vampire Bella astounds the Cullens with her impressive skills and unprecedented self-control. Everyone expects her to be a helpless captive to her thirst for human blood. She, too, expects to lose herself, to be driven out of her mind by her new vampire desires. Instead, she is great at being a vampire. She is more herself than ever before.

Shortly after her transformation, Edward takes Bella out for her first hunt. They catch the scent of human blood, and Edward is terrified for Bella, positive she won’t be able to control her urge to hunt and murder a human being. He is taken
aback when Bella is able to stop herself from pursuing the scent. Her self-control is unprecedented in Edward’s experiences with new vampires.

Not only is vampire Bella highly skilled and in command of herself, but she also marvels at the way her transformation has heightened her senses and increased her love. “My old mind hadn’t been capable of holding this much love. My old heart had not been strong enough to bear it.”
²
Her ability to love—Edward, her child, her family—is intensified in ways she hadn’t believed possible. She loves better than she could before. She even sees more clearly the beauty of her loved ones. Her transformed vampire eyes show her loved ones in a new light.

While her dissatisfaction and weaknesses have come to an end and her abilities have been heightened and become something new, she is still Bella. Her transformation doesn’t mean that she isn’t herself any longer. She still hates surprises. She is still incredibly uncomfortable receiving gifts. In her new immortal and beautiful face, Bella can still find herself:

There is both discontinuity and continuity between human Bella and vampire Bella. She is new, but she is also old. That “flaw” in her lip is evidence that the amazing, transformed Bella is still the Bella Edward loves, the same Bella who wanted this new life.

As human beings created in God’s image but in whom that image has been broken by sin, we have a great hope. We hope not just that God’s image will be renewed in us—though that alone would be amazing—but that God will finish the good work He intends for us by completing in us a marvelous transformation. Because we can rely on the good promises God made to us, we don’t hope in vain.

Bella’s transformation helps us think about Christian hope for transformation, but ultimately, our hope is for something more, something even better than the happiness she finds in her new life.

The pinnacle of Christian hope for transformation is found in the promise of the resurrection of the body. God will not
leave us stuck in the mire of sin and death. Instead, God promises us a great change. This change will allow our whole human lives—body, soul, and spirit—to make sense and to serve the beautiful purpose for which we were made. This resurrection will transform us into human beings who are fully able to glorify God. We will be set free from all those things that, right now, get in the way of our ability to glorify God. We’ll be set free from weakness, from sin, from death, and from our own worst tendencies so that we can be truly free for that delightful purpose for which we were created—glorifying God.

Unfortunately, Christians sometimes lose sight of our hope for the resurrection of the body. The earliest Christians worked hard to clarify that their hope was
not only
that their souls might fly away to heaven someday. Those Christians insisted their hope was much more, much better than that, because Christian hope for transformation is grounded in what we see in Jesus.

After Jesus suffered the agony of the crucifixion, after He was laid in the grave, He didn’t simply rot there while His soul went off to be with His Father. No, Jesus was resurrected. He rose into new life, a transformed life, and His resurrection gives all Christians a bright glimpse at what God promises to us.

The promise of Scripture clearly links Jesus’s resurrection to the resurrection all Christians hope for one day. This resurrection promises the transformation of our whole lives—not just our souls, but our bodies too. Early Christians were very firm about this understanding because it was threatened by other
kinds of hope, false hopes popular in the ancient cultures those Christians faced. Many people in those cultures didn’t think that hope, meaning, and purpose could have anything to do with this life or this body as we know it. These people thought the body was something irredeemable and this life was hopeless. In the face of this kind of despair, Christians worked hard to remind each other that God’s power is great enough to redeem all things. This body and this life are included in Christian hope and Christian purpose.

Paul talks about the resurrection of the body in his first letter to the church at Corinth, telling his readers that all of us can hope to share in Jesus’s resurrection. Just as “in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22).

Paul uses an analogy to compare the body as we know it in the here and now with the resurrection body. The body now is like a seed, and the resurrection body is like the tree that grows from the seed. There is both continuity and discontinuity in this analogy. An acorn and an oak tree are materially, physically continuous with one another, but at the same time, the oak tree is so much more than the acorn was.

The body now and the resurrection body are both continuous with one another
and
discontinuous with, or different from, one another. This continuity and discontinuity is very good news indeed. Continuity is good news because it means that our future hope can’t be disconnected from our present. When we believe that God has a good purpose for us, we don’t
suppose that purpose is
only
in the future, with nothing to do with the here and now. The good things God intends for you and me are
for you and me
. Our ordinary human lives are good lives. They’re lives God loves, and they’re lives God won’t give up on.

Discontinuity is good news too, though. Our lives, bodies, and purposes now are messed up. We struggle. We’re weak. We suffer disappointment. People we love die, and we will face death too. But God promises to redeem all that. God promises to make it different, to make it new.

In that same chapter from 1 Corinthians, Paul talks about the differences between the body now and the resurrection body. The body now, he says, is perishable. The body now suffers dishonor. The body now lives in weakness. But in the resurrection, God will make all that new. The promised resurrection body will be, according to Paul, imperishable. Dishonor will be replaced by glory. Weakness will give way to power.

God promises a final transformation that takes all that we are, all that God has made us to be, and redeems it. Bella’s transformation, in a way, mirrors our own hope. As it is Bella, and not someone else, who emerges on the other side of the transformation, so God promises to redeem us—
these
bodies,
these
selves. As Bella’s past struggles are put behind her, God promises to free us from our weakness and suffering and disappointment.

Yet if Christians want to think about our hope and purpose, Bella’s transformation won’t be enough food for thought.

One of the most important parts of Paul’s talk about resurrection clearly connects our hope for transformation to Jesus Christ. “Just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man,” Paul says, “so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven” (1 Corinthians 15:49). Christian hope for transformation is a physical, material hope. It is a hope that God’s ultimate purposes for us will be continuous with who we are now and what God is doing with us now. It is also a hope for transformation beyond the problems and sufferings and weaknesses of the present. The verse I’ve just quoted, though, gives us the most important information we need about that hope. It is a Jesus-centered hope, a hope that we will “bear the likeness of the man from heaven.”

Our meaning and purpose is not random. It is not about our personal preferences. It is not a choose-your-own-adventure brand of pie in the sky. In becoming like Jesus, the image of God is renewed in us. In reflecting who Jesus is and becoming mirrors of His love, we’re able to again reflect God’s glory. The purpose and meaning that were stolen from us by sin are offered back again in Jesus.

Our meaning and purpose are found in Jesus. As God transforms us and gives us purpose, we’re going to find that transformation and purpose are all about Christlikeness. This is true of both our purpose now and our final, eternal purpose.
It is about being transformed into the likeness of Jesus, God’s own Son, someone who loved us and the whole world enough to enter into our situation and die for us. Jesus, in His resurrection, conquered death and promises us victory over death.

Even Meyer’s immortal vampires aren’t truly free from death. Granted, killing a vampire is more work than killing a human being, but the Volturi or some other enemy could still destroy them. Christian hope as we see it in Jesus, though, offers us a final freedom from this threat. No enemy can destroy what God promises. Death will finally be conquered; its terrible effects will be undone.

This hope is not just for the future. While the promise of bodily resurrection is the
final
hope of Christians, that hope changes our lives in the here and now. It gives us meaning and purpose, not just later but now. When we look at our lives right now, our bodies right now, we can see the beginning of the transformation God is working on. We can reject our tendency to despair about finding meaning because we know that our meaning is found in Christ.

Hope in God is a trustworthy hope. When we put all our hope in other things—in romantic love, a fairy tale marriage, or even our own interests—that hope is sure to disappoint. Because our hope in God is trustworthy, it’s not just a future hope. It’s very real in the present. Because we’re people who live in hope, the resurrection changes our lives right here and now.

N. T. Wright puts it like this: “Because the resurrection has happened as an event within our own world, its implications and effects are to be felt within our own world, here and now.”
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Our lives and work in this world matter. If we’re artists, our art matters. If we’re poets, our poems matter. If we’re athletes or bakers or gardeners, our sports and bread and flowers matter. Our relationships with God and other people matter too. Those relationships aren’t just temporary things. They have a future. If we can show love, justice, or beauty to someone else in the here and now, that witness may have eternal implications.

Remember, Christian hope for transformation is a hope for continuity. I’m not longing to stop being myself. I’m longing for God to do something good with me. I’m longing for God to make me a reflection of His good purposes, and God starts this work in my life right now. As transformed Bella is still Bella, when God has finished transforming you and me, we will still be ourselves. Your body and soul and life right now matter. Because they belong to God, they have meaning and purpose.

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