Can I please just start out with a confession?! I. heart. guilty. pleasures. PERIOD. I mean, don’t we all love to vegg in front of the T.V. after a long day at work and immerse ourselves in the lives of others on reality T.V.? Or, maybe you’re one of those who curls up in bed with Hershey Kisses and reads chic lit? Mine is a bit of both. I rarely miss an episode of my newest obsession, T.V. show Flash Forward. If I must miss it, you better believe it is DVRd. But, lately I have been intrigued by those Twilight books. Interested in what the fuss is all about, I rented the first movie of the wildly popular series. I really do see where all the craziness comes from over these books and movies: the characters are attractive, the storyline pulls you in and there are even a few interesting moral undertones: redemption and abstinence.

But in the midst of my evaluation of this hit movie, some verses in Titus came to mind and smacked me right out of my Hershey Kisses sugar rush.

Titus 2:11-14 (The Message)

“God’s readiness to give and forgive is now public. Salvation’s available for everyone! We’re being shown how to turn our backs on a godless, indulgent life, and how to take on a God-filled, God-honoring life. This new life is starting right now, and is whetting our appetites for the glorious day when our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, appears. He offered himself as a sacrifice to free us from a dark, rebellious life into this good, pure life, making us a people he can be proud of, energetic in goodness.”

The tie-in from this verse to Twilight is not subtle. Most of these vamp books and movies have a strong, dark, spiritual undertone. It can be dangerous when we fill our brains with darkness. This darkness can easily permeate into our heart and soul. No matter which way the vampire is portrayed as the protagonist (handsome and all…) he is still a vampire and the folklore still comes from dark spiritual practices. There is so much in the world around us that is evil, ugly and terribly dark and in creeps its way into my life so easily. Does this happen to you as well? The world of pop culture invites us to participate in viewing and reading many things that are fascinating. On top of “dark” things that creep into our lives, pop culture allures us with images of perfectly sculpted women with gorgeous clothes and hair blowing in the wind. A picture that even that beautiful model can’t live up to since the magazine editors photo shopped her picture into a person unrecognizable. It is no wonder that we all get caught up in the frenzy to keep up with the latest and greatest. What is important to remember that, whether it be dark vampires, or pristine models, the things of the present are ever fleeting and changing. I have personally worked on {keyword: worked on} remember my ever solid, never changing LORD. He fights the darkness, brings light into this world, AND He thinks that I am beautiful. (Psalm 45:11) I try to remember my Rock when I am tempted and swept up by the latest movie craze or fashion movement. It is not easy, those things of the world are so much fun, but in the end I know I have made the right decision when I choose to look away.

It is my conviction that it is a God given call to influence the world (ie. people around us in our workplace, school, at the gym, etc.) for good with out being influenced, ourselves. This is a hard thing to accomplish, I admit. I strive for awareness of pop culture around me so that I can call out good, moral themes and use them to point people back to the goodness and LIGHT of JESUS. Boy, this surely isn’t easy since I really do love my guilty pleasures. {wink, wink} When my friends speak around the water cooler at work about the latest Twilight movie, I do my best to take the conversation to the next level by asking their opinion about the underlying moral themes, etc. They usually find the question interesting and we have a great conversation. I don’t bombard them with my thoughts on vamps and the dark spiritual world, but I do engage them in a conversation that gets them thinking about what they spend their time on and if it is time well spent and valuable.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this and if you have an good advice on how to protect ourselves from invaluable things of the world as well as how you engage your friends around this topic. Lets take some time to encourage and challenge each other on how we choose to partake, or not partake, in the culture around us.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this. This is not an attempt to bash the Twilight series, but rather to make us really evaluate what we are spending our time on and consuming our minds with. Let me know what you think in the comment section and lets get some good dialogue going!