Much has been made of the fact that Stephenie Meyer is a Mormon and that her wildly popular Twilight series contains a romance that demands no sex before marriage for fantastical reasons that at times stretch the bounds of credulity. Some have argued that this is a kind of proselytizing technique, a different version of the Mormon missionaries knocking on your door and converting your daughters to the bizarre religion. While I think that Meyer’s Mormonism deeply affects her writing, as religious beliefs and other worldviews necessarily affect any writer, the more interesting Mormon doctrine infusing Twilight is, in my opinion, the uniquely Mormon version of the Garden of Eden story. That apple on the front cover is not there for nothing. And it isn’t the temptation of sex at all that is at the heart of the controversial Mormon doctrine. It’s all about female power.
To begin with, I am going to admit that I am not a typical nor a conservative Mormon. My own beliefs are in process, so it is possible that I may end up distorting some doctrines without intending to. I will also try to point out what is doctrine and what is my own implications to be drawn from the doctrine. I also need to state up front that while I believe that understanding Mormonism is a useful way to understand some parts of Twilight, I do not by any means think that the series can be reduced to Mormonism. No writer of any interest simply parrots a religious belief, and I think Meyer has been extremely inventive in her retelling of this Mormon myth. I do not know if this was done consciously or not and it hardly matters.
In either case, there is no intention here to slam Meyer, her book, or to continue the rather disturbing trend of making a book written by a woman and loved by many women young and old into a point for denigrating women and their interests or achievements. I recently wrote an essay called In Defense of Twilight in which I reacted to a recent writing convention I had gone to where multiple panels ended up being “Twilight bashing.” The panelists openly admitted to never having read a single sentence of the series, but still felt perfectly well qualified to mock it and its proponents because it wasn’t “real literature” or because whatever version they had heard was “simply ridiculous.”
This reminded me too sharply of my years in graduate school at Princeton in the 1990s, when women students asked the all-male professors on staff why we had no female role models and we were told there were simply no women — on the planet —who were qualified to be hired at Princeton. In addition, when I asked a professor why, in a course of German Romanticism, there was not a single woman listed on the list of course materials, he replied that we simply had “no time” to study the “minor authors of Romanticism.” We were at Princeton, so of course, we were going to study all the “important” authors who were the men that had been venerated since Romanticism itself. We were certainly not going to investigate the patriarchy that had chosen those men as “most important” from the first.
After spending several years teaching German at a university, I eventually gave up academia in pursuit of a career as a young adult fantasy writer. In the past several years since I was published, I have become increasingly disturbed by the outcries (by men) in various news outlets since J.K. Rowling and Meyer have become both wealthy and powerful by writing children’s stories. What is the world coming to, if women writers (not to mention women editors) are taking control of the publishing industry? Where are the books for boys?
We are supposedly facing a national crisis because there are NO books written for boys and our poor young men will be forced to read that “icky” Twilight if there is nothing to counter this trend. Young men reading Twilight is surely the proof that our civilization has reached its nadir, because no one wants young men learning to have sexual self-control in a relationship with a woman, nor do we want them to be that dangerously “feminized” Edward Cullen who can read minds and has become a “vegetarian.” (Worse still would be women becoming used to the idea that attractive young men might rip off their shirts and display their washboard abs at every moment to the catcalls of the crowd, because only men should be able to demand a sexual display like that, yes?)
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The Mormon story of the Garden of Eden is a variant of the original. Adam and Eve were placed in the garden and were told not to eat of the fruit of a certain tree because it would mean their deaths. But Mormons do not believe in original sin. They call the choice Adam and Eve made a “transgression” rather than a “sin”. What this means is that they took the fruit knowing that it would make them mortal and send them out of God’s presence and into the world. They broke a law, but it was a law that they had to break. It was only by being forced out of the garden that the rest of the “Plan of Salvation” or “Plan of Happiness” could come to be. Mormon scholar Daniel Judd argues that the Fall was a step downward, but also a step “forward.”
Furthermore, Mormons do not believe that Adam and Eve were sent out of the garden because of a sexual transgression. Sex is, in Mormon theology, not an evil to be avoided by the most pure. Quite the contrary (despite what you may think, based on the accusations that Meyer is attempting to convert young readers to sexual abstinence), sex is considered a holy act. Dallin H. Oaks, one of the current “apostles” of the Mormon Church writes “The power to create mortal life is the most exalted power God has given his children”. Mormons insist on the use of sex only within the bonds of marriage, but there is no psychic spiritual guilt to be associated with the act itself. Mormon couples are generally assured that sex is good for their marriage and that it is not only because they are meant to multiple and replenish the Earth (a commandment that many Mormons take to heart), but also to build bonds of love and commitment between spouses.
Finally, instead of seeing Eve as a figure of hatred or blame, Mormons praise Eve for her decision to take the fruit first, because she saw more wisely than Adam did that living a life of joy would also entail experiencing pain. There are some Mormons who believe (and at this point I will say that this is not doctrine, but rather speculation I have heard repeated inside the church) that Adam and Eve engaged in a thousand year long debate on the topic of the fruit and whether or not to take it. Adam and Eve could not have children in the garden and therefore could not fulfill the other commandment which God had given them, in addition to not partaking of the fruit, which was to have children. Again, in Mormon theology this is not because they could not have sex, but only because their bodies were not mortal and were not fully capable of producing children. Speculation again is all I can use to answer why. Perhaps because having children inherently causes pain (in childbirth, but also in many other ways) and pain could not be part of the Garden of Eden.
I am not the first scholar to see Twilight through the lens of the Mormon creation story. Lisa Lampert-Weissing has written a fascinating study of Twilight as a retelling of Milton’s Paradise Lost. She sees Twilight in the long tradition of women writers following Mary Wollstonecraft-Shelley, who wrote about the “monster” in Frankenstein that is in many ways Eve’s side of the story of the creation and the Fall. Though Frankenstein’s monster is purportedly male, he enacts many female dilemmas, as being created second and seen as a dark creature, full of sin. Lampert-Weissing wisely sees the importance of free will and “agency” in Mormon doctrine and cleverly argues that Bella herself is engaged in a project of making herself an equal to Edward by becoming a vampire. She wants to not only be Lois Lane, but Superman. She wants to be able to protect herself and her child and not depend on Edward for that. She wants the power that becoming a vampire will give her, the eternal youth that will make her Edward’s equal in eternal beauty, and she wants to be god-like, as he is. In this way, Lampert-Weissig sees Bella as a feminist hero, demanding equality and making her own choices rather than allowing herself to be told what to do by the authoritarian Edward or the other god-like Cullens.
But the Mormon story of creation as it informs Twilight goes deeper than simply the story of Eve’s free will to choose to fall in taking the fruit. It is not only in becoming a vampire that Bella becomes god-like. She gains immortality, yes, but that is at the hands (or teeth) of Edward, the patriarch of all patriarchs here. She forces him to it by coming close to death in childbirth. And it is in childbirth that Mormon doctrine ennobles women. Thus, the argument that Meyer’s Twilight is all about keeping women in traditional roles is true. But it also has a powerful demand that women in these roles be seen as heroic, even as super-human. Immortality in Mormonism comes to women through their work as wives and mothers quite literally.
Mormons believe in a universal resurrection and in a nearly universal heaven. The only hell in Mormon theology is a waiting space like purgatory, but which Mormons call “spirit prison” where those who do not acknowledge Christ await missionaries to come to them and teach them. As soon as they are converted and have temple work done (thus the Mormon need to continually do ordinances for those who are dead), they can cross from “spirit prison” into “spirit paradise” where all the righteous converted dwell.
Once the final judgment happens, all will be allowed to choose a kingdom (celestial, telestial, terrestrial) depending on where they are most comfortable. Each kingdom will be ruled over by a member of the Godhead, and only a very small handful of God’s children will be sent to a place called “Outer Darkness” where they are forever cut off from the presence of God (and even these will be immortal in resurrected bodies). My understanding of this doctrine is that there is likely to be movement between the kingdoms in the eternities, and that ultimately, all will eventually complete the path to godhood. But this whole plan is dependent on women. Why? Because only women can give birth to bodies, and it is these bodies which are the stuff of immortality.
Mormons believe that God Himself has a body, that it is a necessary part of godhood to be flesh and blood (though exalted, immortal, resurrected flesh and blood). According to Joseph Smith, God was at one point a mortal man, and He became a god through the same process that will be open to all men. Women, on the other hand, may have a slightly different path to immortality and godhood, and that path demands becoming wives and mothers, because only through women can all of the waiting spirits of God’s children, begin the path to finding their own bodies which can be transformed into godly stuff.
In Twilight, Bella does not realize that she can get pregnant when she and Edward consummate their marriage. She assumes, in fact, that she can’t. Nonetheless, when she is given the choice between saving her own (physical, mortal) life and saving the life of her child, she chooses her child. Now, many read this as Meyer’s Mormonism stepping in to argue against abortion. I won’t say absolutely this isn’t true, but it is at the very least incomplete. For Bella to choose completing a pregnancy over saving her own life, is, in the Mormon view of women’s possible godhood, her choosing immortality over mortality.
In the final and fourth book of the series, Breaking Dawn, Edward has to bite Bella to make her a vampire, but it is her child through whom Bella saves the world. Even if Edward had let Bella die, the story of Twilight demands that we believe that Renee-esmee is the most important person ever born. Bella is, in this situation, a new Mary. She has given birth to a new Christ who will save the vampires (and possibly humans). Whether Bella lives or dies after that is almost insignificant. She has been elevated to godhood already, by making the god of all gods, the vampire of all vampires.
Valerie Hudson Cassler, a convert to Mormonism from Catholicism, argues passionately that of Christian religions, Mormonism is the most feminist because of the Mormon view of Eve as a wise woman who made the right choice to leave the paradise of Eden and accept the pain of mortality and motherhood. Cassler argues that other versions of Christianity teach “that a woman’s body is unclean, that God meant women to submit to their husbands and in general be subservient to men, and that divinity is male and male alone.” Mormons, by contrast, teach in their temples that women will becomes “priestesses” and “goddesses” alongside their husbands.
Cassler writes
It is through women that souls journey to mortality and gain their agency, and in general it is through the nurturing of women, their nurturing love of their children, that the light of Christ is awakened within each soul. And we should include in that list of souls Jesus the Christ. Even Christ our Lord was escorted to mortality and veiled in flesh through the gift of a woman, fed at his mother’s breast, and awakened to all that is good and sweet in the world. Women escort every soul through the veil to mortal life and full agency. It is interesting to think that even Adam, who was created before Eve, entered into full mortality and full agency by accepting the gift of the First Tree from the hand of a woman. In a sense, Adam himself was born of Eve.
Mormon men have the priesthood which allows them to seal families together, and in essence, to return these families to God, thus healing the wound that the Fall created. In a sense, the Mormon Edward officiates over Bella’s passage through death back to eternal life.
But Bella’s female and divine power is separate from Edward’s. She cannot make herself a vampire, true. But she has a far more important role. Within the Mormon context of male/female relationships, Bella is equal to and perhaps more powerful than Edward. Her female “sphere” of giving birth isn’t a “curse” that follows because of Eve’s choice to take the fruit in the Garden of Eden and thus ensure the suffering and death of all mankind. Rather, she clings to her own power despite the cost and the voices around her demanding that she cede all power to Edward. She makes the choice, and, as in the Mormon version of the Fall, the reluctant Adam/Edward follows after. Ultimately, Edward is forced to admit that this Fall was also a fortunate one, that all his years of debating with Bella, he was wrong and she was right. She was always meant to be a vampire at his side, a “monster” who has power over life and death in her femininity. Bella takes up the Mormon role of motherhood to become the divine path to birth and life on Earth, a role as important as Mormon priesthood, which rules over death and the final approach to immortality.
Twilight is by no means a typical feminist narrative. Instead of demanding that women are capable of taking over male roles (a vital part of Amerian political feminism), Twilight glorifies the traditional female roles of wife and motherhood and points out the power inherent in those. I don’t mean to argue that this point of view should be accepted without question. Certainly, within the Mormon Church and in plenty of other churches and cultures, women have been told that if they only accept their role, they will find power within the existing structure of patriarchy. I am suspicious of Mormonism’s exclusively male priesthood and the insistence that men and women are eternally different with different roles. But on the other hand, I am equally suspicious of being told that there is no power in motherhood, since as a mother, I have felt tremendous satisfaction and yes, even power. Twilight is a powerful story about a woman finding power in motherhood and if that seems regressive, I think that is not seeing the story deeply enough in its reconception of divine female power within the Mormon mythos.
Not a bad post. There’s a really interesting book written by a Methodist woman that explores in depth the Mormon themes in Twilight called The Gospel According to Twilight. She did a great job expounding on the LDS Themes. The only oversight I remember was that she was stumped why the Cullens family were wealthy. I guess no one told her about the complicated relationship Mormons view and see money.
I really enjoyed this post as well. I think a good bit of the discomfort with Twilight (as well as a good part of its appeal) is that it sees traditional femininity as positive and powerful in a way that’s quite rare in popular culture these days. It’s interesting to see the way that positive take on traditional femininity can be traced to Mormonism in some ways.
I didn’t like Twilight, but I, too, find myself frustrated with people who harshly criticize the book without ever having read it. Many people treat bashing like it’s a fine skill, but it’s not. Bashing is easy. Phrasing criticisms with respect and insight is a skill.
Young men reading Twilight is surely the proof that our civilization has reached its nadir, because no one wants young men learning to have sexual self-control in a relationship with a woman, nor do we want them to be that dangerously “feminized” Edward Cullen who can read minds and has become a “vegetarian.”
I feel like my eyes have just been opened, XD. This is a really good point!
Edward is definitely bishonen.
That’s so great. Not just the points about femininity, which are very intriguing, but about the Fall. Making pleasure and knowledge more complex than mere “sins” is a pretty important idea to think through.
Also– I still have lots of sympathy for anti-reproductive philosophies, so I probably won’t convert to Mormonism. But if Twilight is repressive in its empowerment via reproduction (which I don’t feel it necessarily is) it’s hardly a simple-minded piece of propaganda.
Some corrections on your Mormonism:
“Mormons believe that God Himself has a body, that it is a necessary part of godhood to be flesh and blood (though exalted, immortal, resurrected flesh and blood).”
There is a difference between flesh and blood that represents mortality and flesh and bone that represents immortality. Eternal Glorified bodies will have Spirit to replace Blood. That is a very important theological difference in Mormonism, because what has blood can get sick and die.
“My understanding of this doctrine is that there is likely to be movement between the kingdoms in the eternities . . . ”
This falls into one of those speculation positions that very few Mormons believe is possible. Once you are judged there isn’t a way to move between the Glories that is doctrinally supported. There is also speculation if those die on Earth and go into “Outer Darkness” will ever have bodied again. Certainly, the overwhelming majority who go there have never and will never have bodies because they rejected the plan to gain mortal bodies to begin with and were cast out of Heaven with Lucifer.
I must admit that, besides a few places where I think you misinterpreted Mormonism properly, this post is among only a few that didn’t make me want to scream “square peg in round hole!” I can see forced interpretations of Mormonism in the Twilight series by the number of simplistic outside views of the religion in the criticism. Can’t explain why this one didn’t bother me so much.
Enjoyable and informative; thanks, Mette!
You know I am a Mormon, right? I feel like I just raised my hand in Sunday School and got shot down big time by the teacher. As usual, this makes me mostly feel like I should just shut up at church because no one wants to hear what I have to say. Sigh!
There must be theological disputes within Mormonism, as within any religion, surely?
Big Love ended with a feminist message about Mormon polygamy, which disappointed me — not because it was feminist, but because it was a cheap way to get the audience to feel satisfied for having sympathized with the characters for 5 years. It was more interesting as a look into a conservative polygamous family. I’m guessing many Mormons hated the show.
I bring that up, because the head wife in the show received a similar reaction (albeit much more hostile) from the church elders regarding her feminism as Mette does above.
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Mette Harrison says:
You know I am a Mormon, right? I feel like I just raised my hand in Sunday School and got shot down big time by the teacher. As usual, this makes me mostly feel like I should just shut up at church because no one wants to hear what I have to say. Sigh!
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Presumably this is in response to Jettboy’s “Some corrections on your Mormonism” remarks.
But, I see no reason why a person of any religion being told they were not accurate in certain comments/interpretations of their doctrine…
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A new survey of Americans’ knowledge of religion found that atheists, agnostics, Jews and Mormons outperformed Protestants and Roman Catholics in answering questions about major religions, while many respondents could not correctly give the most basic tenets of their own faiths…
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http://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/TheGoodFight/archives/2010/09/29/christian-ignorance-this-explains-a-lot
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Pew survey reveals basic ignorance of Christian belief
…The good news is that the media hype about this survey is somewhat overblown—no group really scored very well on this survey. The bad news is that religious knowledge in general, including knowledge of one’s own religion, is abysmal. This includes ignorance of some very basic teachings…
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http://creation.com/religion-survey-reveals-ignorance-of-bible
…necessarily invalidates everything they say or think about that religion. Much less meaning that they should “shut up,” and that “no one wants to hear what [they] have to say.”
Why, Jettboy himself noted that “besides a few places where I think you misinterpreted Mormonism properly…” (Note the qualifiers; he was hardly saying, “you are an ignorant idiot, and should just shut up!”), your post was one of “only a few” that did not feature “forced interpretations of Mormonism in the Twilight series by…simplistic outside views of the religion.” Not quite all-out praise, but overall a positive assessment.
It enjoyed this essay because of the insight into the character development. You have shown that there is something deeper than most people give Meyers credit. As for the previous comments about religion I think you have done well in explaining LDS doctrines and your personal insight. Your comment about the degrees of glory was one I had not heard but I believe that in the future all of this will be made clear and so I don’t think that it merits criticism when taking the overall theme into account. In the end I found your blog to be entertaining, intriguing and well worth the read.
Why are all the men on here talking down to the author?
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I have had a few qualms with Twilight from a feminist perspective–especially as it is geared toward teenage girls…however, this article introduces some good food for thought. As a Mormon, I am appreciating the author’s application of the theology to this particular text–it allows me to see these books in a different light for a minute. Nicely done.
Ok. Just because shes mormon doesn’t mean that she was creating an elaborate biblical illusion with Twilight. For real, when i read “Bella wanted to become a vampire to lift herself up to a god-like status” and “to protect her child” i almost died. Did any of you READ Twilight?!?! She was all like “i have to be with Edward my soulmate forever”!!!!!!! And Theyr was NO VAMPIRE BABY until THE VERY LAST BOOK, and she STILL wanted to b a vamp through books 1-4!!!! But somehow your summery is still Twilight is about finding power in motherhood. You might think about revising that outlandish claim and replacing Twilight with breaking dawn, which anyone who had actually read the books would know. And her saving her child over her own life? HELLO anyone would to that, why would that scream oh shes choosing immortality!! Also your claim about Bella becoming a new “Mary” and saying her kid is like an allusion to christ because in Twilight( actually, again, Breaking Dawn) shes the most important person ever born is also crap because if you read the book you would now that Renessme is basically allowed to live because of Alice finding others who are JUST LIKE HER. Opps, guess shes NOT the most important person ever born, huh? Then when you were like “they’re were voices all around her demanding that she cede all power to Edward” and your acting like Twilights a big step for woman and equality when all Bella did was cling on and completely rely on Edward the whole book. And how is her constantly wanting to be a vamp to BE WITH HIM AND PLEASE HIM NOT “ceding all power to him and the Cullen’s???!?!?” Look, you took a pathetic vampire romance novel and turned complete cliches into biblical allusions. It was a book sappy teenage romance book about Vampires and werewolves. It was written on an eighth grade level and you want to turn it into an elaborate, well-thought out biblical allusion to mormon doctrine. Do you really thing Stephanie was capable of that? I have some advice for you, there wasn’t anything in Twilight deep enough to analyze.
Well, I could say more but ill just stop
I think this post misses the fact that Twilight just isn’t very good: it’s poorly written (with sentences and complete paragraphs that don’t actually make sense, words misused and overused, dreadful plotting, I could go on and on), Bella is a cipher who has hardly any personality (mostly, consciously or not, to invite the reader to step into her shoes), and her entire life revolves around Edward to a disturbing extent. She puts herself into dangerous situations to try and make Edward stick around, and then later on she deliberately puts herself in danger to try and hear his voice. So basically, some of her strongest personality traits, in that she has any at all, are to manipulate the man she claims to love and then to risk her own life for visions of his voice, instead of doing something constructive.
Not to mention that Edward is a borderline abusive stalker with serious control issues, who Meyer holds up as the perfect romantic hero. This is a man who, when he wants Bella not to visit the Reservation, doesn’t sit down and talk to her as a fellow human being, he steals the freaking engine from her car. A lot of Bella’s excuses and reasonings for Edward’s actions are exactly the kind of things one hears from women in abusive relationships.
It’s not even till the fourth book, if memory serves, that Bella even thinks about parenthood, it’s not till she’s got a bun in the oven that she considers having children to be A Good Thing, and when she does have a child Meyer basically takes every last difficult part of raising a child and excuses Bella from it.
You’re really trying to tell me that this is, intentionally or not, a glorification of Motherhood and a retelling of Mormon theology? Wow. That’s giving Stephenie Meyer a lot more credit than she deserves.
The reason people rag on her is not because she’s a woman writing fantasy, it’s because she’s a poor writer. Defend female writers who can actually write. When people claim Meyer is being attacked for her gender, it’s embarrassing. As a woman, I can see she’s not a good writer, and defending her because she also has two X chromosomes just makes me cringe. She’s not. She’s a horrible writer, in so many ways, writing pulpy romance that glorifies controlling and abusive relationships.
There are plenty of female writers out there who can write, and who can plot, who are getting crap thrown at them for their gender – J. K. Rowling is a case in point. They deserve the defence. A hack like Meyer does not.
J.K. Rowling is a pretty crappy writer. Not much better than Meyer I don’t think — and the endless Harry Potter sequels, with the plot grinding on and on and on seem a lot more hackish than Meyer, who’s thoroughly dedicated to her vision, whatever you think of that vision’s quality.
Meyer’s prose is dicey, but not worse than lots of very popular writers (Tom Clancy, John Grisham…Ian Fleming, really. He’s a pretty bad writer.) Lots of prose on the best seller list just isn’t that great, is the truth.
Rowling is a crappy writer? I haven’t read any of these books but that’s news to me. A lot of her reviewers seem to indicate that she’s above average. Especially her new crime series which seems to be getting lots of raves.
I know Veronica Roth isn’t especially good since her’s is the only “new” YA series which I’ve touched. The mediocre movie helped iron out a few of the problems (and added some others).
I thought this article was very well written and thought provoking. For someone who is not a Mormon, they did quite well to portray Mormon doctrine, except perhaps for the corrected items in the comments that corrected a couple of angles. I suspect that both angles are right, there is a chance for advancement in the next life, but it is limited based on our honest chances towards progress in this life, and the choices that we make and how well understood they were. Gods judgments are perfectly just and merciful; he knows our hearts and where they belong. I gather that God makes the final judgement, but we have a say in the process where we go based on our actions and attitudes. I myself am a “Mormon,” a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and a pretty good one. Although the best source of finding out our doctrine is by going to http://www.lds.org or http://www.mormon.org. None of us are perfect and no can we be as Christ was in this life, yet we are striving to be. However, I have read all of the Scriptures available as well as all of the Twilight saga and the movies.
Just like the Bible one can interpret the Twilight saga differently, but the main source for the Bible and further scriptures is God, and the main source for the Twilight saga is the author. Nevertheless, it is very interesting and perhaps helpful in your own, personal progress to do your best to interpret the deeper meanings. One can view Bella as a feminine version of an archetype of Christ to some extent anyway. Christ, who did not know who he was fully yet either early on and had to learn as we do line upon line over time; and practice keeping the laws of God as well as experience opposition, and be tested to see if we choose to follow the will of God and to be one with them, as Christ prays for us in the intercessory prayer. Bella was a typical Christian girl, who did not yet know who she was and was in the process of becoming a girl of power so to speak. The actress version of Bella indicated that she didn’t care about salvation and cared about Edward and their relationship, the book version of Bella seems not to be thinking much about that when captivated by Edward, but when he indicated his concern about salvation and perceiving himself as a Demon doomed for hell, she indicated that she saw him as a higher creature than he did, and uplifted him and raised him up indicating that he still had a fighting chance to make it to heaven, since he is working so hard to sacrifice much, by not killing humans nor drinking their blood. Except earlier on in his vampire existence when he justified taking the justice of God into his own hands, and partaking of the blood of criminals, yet recognizing his own personal fall that all humans are prone to, but not doomed to. He chose to cease that in a penitent way, but still viewed himself doomed and that the reaches of Christ’s atonement didn’t extend to him. In a way she saved him from his fallacy of logic accepting his flaws while yet inspiring him to be better, like Christ, whatever his physical vampire nature and immortal condition is, he still has the ability to over come his vampire nature and be uplifted towards a more divine nature.
Parallel to her human nature and temptations to act married even when not. He too can be quite noble, seeing her in a way by raising her up above her perceptions of marriage and encouraging her to wait until they are married and asked her to marry him. In such ways, only in such a relationship can each the other become more Godly in our pathways towards perfection by selflessly inspiring better actions in our lives journey towards perfection and exaltation. As the Bible says we are children of the most high God and we can inherit his kingdom (in the New Testament), and Gods are ye Christ quotes–psalms 82. We interpret this literally. As we practice Christ-like virtues such as selflessness, virtue, and charity, and practice living the laws of God we can become like Him, as beings made in his image as Genesis describes, His creations as his children and as we create children we have the sacred responsibility to raise them up to Him. This is empowering and creates infinite synergy of creation, a very beautiful thing!
As far as the quality of writing of the Author, I thought it was excellent! To the point that I have been inspired by her writing and have been working on a series of my own. I suppose to be an author, one needs to be able to thicken their skin from such comments. As a T-shirt my husband gave me says, “If you can’t stand the heat don’t tickle the dragon.” Authors tend to be sensitive as are artists, who are very good at what they do because they are so well versed in feeling and expressing emotions of the human condition in word format. It is a free country, however I encourage respectful comments, speaking the truth, but with empathy in the spirit of grand human love as authors etc. share their thoughts and feelings selflessly and similarly with you.:) (Please pardon any errors, all part of human progress.)
P.S. For the one who commented about not getting to speak up in church, I suggest either talking to the teacher between class or a another church leader about your thoughts and concerns. Best wishes to you on your journey to figure it all out:)