Look to the East

In the second book of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, wars and rumors of wars build around the kingdom of Rohan. In the Battle of the Hornburg, all seems lost.  Evil is building to seemingly overwhelming proportions. Friends seem harder and harder to find. They are surrounded by death. In the movie version, King Theoden poignantly asks, "what can men do against such reckless hate?"

His answer is to ride out against the evil.  He doesn't try to solve every problem. He knows that he cannot.  But he can ride out in faith and do his part.

"...King Theoden rode from Helm's Gate and clove his path to the great Dike. There the company halted. Light grew bright about them. Shafts of the sun flared above the eastern hills and glimmered on their spears. But they sat silent on their horses, and they gazed down upon the Deeping-coomb.

.... There suddenly upon a ridge appeared a rider, clad in white, shining in the rising sun. Over the low hills the horns were sounding. Behind him, hastening down the long slopes, were a thousand men on foot; their swords were in their hands. Amid them strode a man tall and strong. His shield was red. As he came to the valley's brink, he set to his lips a great black horn and blew a ringing blast."

The answer came at dawn, in the east. When the world looked darkest, a light shone from the east, promising final victory over evil.  Tomorrow morning, on Christmas day, the light shines for us from the east, from Bethlehem, and we receive the promise anew.

"...(F)ear and great wonder had come upon them with the rising of the day." It comes on us as well, not with a flash of light and sound of trumpets - at least not yet - but it comes.  He comes. Maranatha!

The Twilight of Morality?

Over at LifeTeen's blog, Christina Mead listed five reasons why she's not seeing Twilight: Breaking Dawn 2.  I agree with most of her points, though I want to take number four a little further.  She says that "Vampires are weird", and she's right.  Yes, vampires are weird, but modern vampires are differently-weird.

Early vampires were weird. Unnatural. Demonic. They were set apart in just the opposite way that Christians are set-apart. They take life from the blood of others, while Christians receive life from the blood of Christ.  They live in darkness and shun the light, while Christians are called to walk in the light and turn away from darkness.

Early vampire stories pit good against evil. Modern vampire stories pit good-evil and really-evil-evil - a relativistic showdown.  These monsters here are okay; those monsters are bad.  They teach us that a certain amount of evil is okay - as long as its the right kind.

And for Bella, Edward is the right kind of evil. He's not so bad. In the end, she dies for him, not to save him but to join him - to become inhuman.

In the end, her reckless and, at times, destructive behavior pays off.  Teen angst and attempted suicide work. She gets her "man".

What lessons does Twilight have to teach us?  Put your life in danger for a boy. Lay in bed together, as long as you try your really very best not to do anything. Give up even your humanity, your soul, to get what feels good right now.  The series is appropriately named, as we see in this, perhaps, a twilight of the traditional vampire story, and the lessons in morality and faith that accompanied it.

Your New False god

While Supernatural has some very out-there theology, it also sometimes makes very good points. In the first episode of season seven, "Meet the New Boss", Castiel introduces local churchgoers to their "new god".

This new, false god is young and sexy. He's open to alternate lifestyles. His first decree: "I am utterly indifferent to sexual orientation."

He stands up for "tolerance" and against hypocrisy (or, at least, the hypocrisy he sees in others).

Hell exists as a threat to hold over people to make them behave. "I need a threat to hold over my enemies."

He says things that sound scriptural (enough so to fool his listeners). "And he who lies in my name shall choke on his own false tongue and his poisonous words shall betray him, for I am the Lord your God."

He proclaims loudly his goodness: "I'm cleaning up one mess after another -- selflessly."

He is a new god for a new age - a post-Christian era of self-worship. I am god. What I want is what god wants. You are a hypocrite; I am tolerant. Death - in Supernatural, a wise, if indifferent, old man - calls him on it.  "I know God, and you, sir, are no God."

Castiel knows it too. He cannot bear the sight of the true God, and when he sees an image of Jesus in a stained glass window, he alters it. He changes the image of Jesus to the image of himself. To himself, he is Christ. His will be done.

That is possibly the greatest modern heresy - not that God is one person instead of three, or that Christ is only human or only divine, but that God is me. Replace the stained glass windows with mirrors. Replace the Word with the whim. And each man bow to his new god.