Jud, I don’t know who you are, but when I read your comment on this blog I could not keep myself from saying, “Amen.” Thank you for your willingness to speak truth.

I’d love to give you more credit than just your name, so if you’re reading this, please let me know!

1) I’ve read and heard enough from Mclaren.

2) Most American Pastors now refer to themselves as “followers of Christ”. Mclaren considers himself a “follower of Christ”. Ghandi considered himself a “follower of Christ”. The Dali Lama considers himself a follower of Christ.None of the latter three speak as to the ATONEMENT and the BLOOD of Christ. Myself? I follow the Chicago Cubs.

2) It’s ridiculous for McLaren or anyone else to use “the American Church” as a political pawn the way he does. As much as 80% of American Christians are “people who said a prayer” not in fact Born Again Christians. So it’s pathetic to say that American Christianity represents Jesus in the first place. A LONG time ago evangelism became a NUMBERS game. We are a people who create “experiences ” and manipulate peoples emotions… they say a prayer before they even think about the COSTS… we chalk one more up and they walk away ever battling doubts confident in the prayer they said.

3) The Holy Spirit represents Jesus. MANY in the Church (Pastors included) are Lost as can be… their lives are not led by the Spirit. Look around… our worship services are about the FLESH. The senses MUST be addressed because an emotional experience has replaced solid Bible teaching and discipleship, Godly sorrow and Repentance. WORKS and Social Justice are the fillers for opiating the carnal conscience.

4) Our creativity, our innovations, our “vision casting” our egos and our cleverness have replaced the cornerstone. We’ve become a people of self promotion. We aren’t broken and humble, we are smooth, we are slick, we are successful, we are appealing to the flesh. We are approved by the World. The pale echoes of the martyrs haunt us.

-Jud

This is preliminary, I’ll probably edit it and include it in my overall discussion of the series, but I wanted to go ahead and get this out there. Please understand that I am coming at this from (most likely) a different approach on dating and it’s informed by a Christian worldview. I’m really not interested in arguing my points right now and may be deleting comments that I deem inappropriate.

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Okay, I’m almost done with the first one and here’s what I think so far…

• Yes, it is engaging. If you want a romance that requires little thought, this is it.
• The writing is juvenile, but probably does well to appeal to the target audience (only speaking for the first book here).
• The magnetic pull that Bella feels for Edward is incredibly disturbing to me and I will go into that later.
• Bella calls Edward her “savior” at least once and says that she would rather die than be without him…I don’t like that.

Here’s the deal. By the time all of this stuff is going on they have known each other for a few months, but have had about a dozen kind of probing conversations. And she’s “unconditionally and irrevocably” in love with him. I understand this is fiction, but what really upsets me is that there are teens and tweens out there reading this stuff and setting up some really ridiculous expectations for relationships. Bella does not question Edward (so far) on anything. He tells her time and time again that he is dangerous and that she needs to stay away from him. Bella feels no fear whatsoever in his presence and her chief concern from about 100 pages or so into this thing is him, how he feels, and what he is thinking. It is an all-consuming, obsessive “love” she feels for him (I’m sorry, but at this point there is nothing that makes me feel like there is love between them, at least nothing more than either A. the puppy variety or B. some supernatural hold he has on her that rids her of her senses in his presence).

This is a problem for me. And it’s a problem because it’s young girls reading it who don’t know the difference, who don’t know that this is NOT REAL. I’m not even talking about the vampire aspect. I’m saying that Meyer is selling some cooked up version of “love” to a generation of females who are going to understand how sadly mistaken (and misled) they were when they realize that this isn’t the way things happen and that ultimately your feelings are NOT what you need to be trusting. I feel like I can say this pretty well-informed at this point, since I have a few cousins that have been obsessed with these books since the first one came out (they were all around 12/13 at the time), who have CLEARLY had their views on relationships affected by this. Can’t even go there right now.

I won’t lie, it’s been an enjoyable, easy-to-read (if you can get past all of the CHAGRIN!!!) distraction that conjures up the butterfly feelings of crushes. I just can’t see it being beneficial for younger ladies. This is exactly the sort of thing I would have jumped into when I was in middle/high school and it was NOT what I needed back then.