{"id":104,"date":"2010-10-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-10-30T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/fearofwhales\/2010\/10\/vampires-and-jesus-1.html"},"modified":"2011-06-23T09:27:37","modified_gmt":"2011-06-23T13:27:37","slug":"vampires-and-jesus-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2010\/10\/vampires-and-jesus-1.html","title":{"rendered":"Vampires and Jesus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright at-xid-6a014e87f1cb84970d01538dfeaf58970b\" src=\"https:\/\/fearofwhales.typepad.com\/.a\/6a014e87f1cb84970d01538dfeaf58970b-pi\" alt=\"William Dafoe in the morning\" width=\"360\" height=\"262\" \/>At this time of year it&#8217;s not surprising to see the vampire hysteria that&#8217;s overwhelmed out nations tweens reach a fever pitch. And with it the conservative counter-frenzy against vampires and all their demonic origins from the fundamentalist right. I thought I&#8217;d take this opportunity to put a moderate spin on this polarizing issue<br \/>\nConsider this, as you consider that more than 50 percent of the costumes you&#8217;ll see tomorrow are likely to be vampire themed in one way or another. Is that really such a bad thing for our youth to be fixated on?<\/p>\n<p>Yes, I know vampires are demonic, but they&#8217;re also the <em>bad guys<\/em> I know more than one piece of literature Christians approve of featuring demonic bad guys, not the least of which is the bible itself.<\/p>\n<p>And if the next generation of youth becomes preoccupied with a universe where vampires that stalk in the night, fear crosses and holy water, and make decisions to raise their family as &#8220;vegitarians&#8221; for fear of eternal damnation, then doesn&#8217;t that mean they&#8217;re preoccupied with a sort of christian universe? A universe where the cross still has power?<\/p>\n<p>And what of the modern vampires? The Post-Anne Rice breed of vampires that inevitably decide that they want to oppose the blood sucking variety and fall in love. Well that, to me sounds like a pretty fitting analogy for the christian life. What is Blade, or edward but<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A Damned being<\/li>\n<li>With an Evil Nature<\/li>\n<li>And a Dependency for Blood<\/li>\n<li>Granting Immortality<\/li>\n<li>Which is Torturous unless One denies Oneself<\/li>\n<li>To become a Champion for Good<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I can&#8217;t say I see anything particularly wrong with that message.<\/p>\n<p>Now of course the writing quality of twilight is another matter entirely. Surely <em>that<\/em> is a sin!<\/p>\n<p>Happy Halloween Everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At this time of year it&#8217;s not surprising to see the vampire hysteria that&#8217;s overwhelmed out nations tweens reach a fever pitch. And with it the conservative counter-frenzy against vampires and all their demonic origins from the fundamentalist right. I thought I&#8217;d take this opportunity to put a moderate spin on this polarizing issue Consider&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":391,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,253],"tags":[487,486,485,484],"class_list":["post-104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-culture","category-funny-2","tag-blood","tag-halloween","tag-twilight","tag-vampires"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Vampires and Jesus - A Fear of Whales<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2010\/10\/vampires-and-jesus-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Vampires and Jesus - A Fear of Whales\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"At this time of year it&#8217;s not surprising to see the vampire hysteria that&#8217;s overwhelmed out nations tweens reach a fever pitch. And with it the conservative counter-frenzy against vampires and all their demonic origins from the fundamentalist right. I thought I&#8217;d take this opportunity to put a moderate spin on this polarizing issue Consider&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2010\/10\/vampires-and-jesus-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"A Fear of Whales\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-10-30T04:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-06-23T13:27:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/fearofwhales.typepad.com\/.a\/6a014e87f1cb84970d01538dfeaf58970b-pi\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"rgaffney\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Vampires and Jesus - A Fear of Whales","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2010\/10\/vampires-and-jesus-1.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Vampires and Jesus - A Fear of Whales","og_description":"At this time of year it&#8217;s not surprising to see the vampire hysteria that&#8217;s overwhelmed out nations tweens reach a fever pitch. 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I thought I&#8217;d take this opportunity to put a moderate spin on this polarizing issue Consider&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2010\/10\/vampires-and-jesus-1.html","og_site_name":"A Fear of Whales","article_published_time":"2010-10-30T04:00:00+00:00","article_modified_time":"2011-06-23T13:27:37+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/fearofwhales.typepad.com\/.a\/6a014e87f1cb84970d01538dfeaf58970b-pi"}],"author":"rgaffney","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2010\/10\/vampires-and-jesus-1.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2010\/10\/vampires-and-jesus-1.html","name":"Vampires and Jesus - A Fear of Whales","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2010\/10\/vampires-and-jesus-1.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2010\/10\/vampires-and-jesus-1.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/fearofwhales.typepad.com\/.a\/6a014e87f1cb84970d01538dfeaf58970b-pi","datePublished":"2010-10-30T04:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2011-06-23T13:27:37+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/#\/schema\/person\/d1517242690f3eb7970adfa3b8e1a567"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2010\/10\/vampires-and-jesus-1.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2010\/10\/vampires-and-jesus-1.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2010\/10\/vampires-and-jesus-1.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/fearofwhales.typepad.com\/.a\/6a014e87f1cb84970d01538dfeaf58970b-pi","contentUrl":"http:\/\/fearofwhales.typepad.com\/.a\/6a014e87f1cb84970d01538dfeaf58970b-pi"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2010\/10\/vampires-and-jesus-1.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Vampires and Jesus"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/","name":"A Fear of Whales","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Ryan Gaffney","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/#\/schema\/person\/d1517242690f3eb7970adfa3b8e1a567","name":"rgaffney","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/author\/rgaffney"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/391"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":767,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions\/767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}