Of Vampires ...

             So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. (Isaiah 41:10)

He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. (Isaiah 53:2)

            There is a subgenre of usually young adult books that I tend to think of as pedophilic. Two of the most popular examples are Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and the Twilight series. Technically, that’s the wrong terms- so don’t get mad at me. I know. But the main character is a teen-age girl, and she is romantically (even obsessively) pursued by a vampire that is more than 300. I won’t share my entire rant on the subject, but one of the points is that after 300 years, you’d think he’d be bored spitless with teenage girls and their angst, even if he had not been in a relationship with one - unless he was either a hermit, or deranged.

            As I read the verse above this morning, that was sort of my reaction about God. Granted, His interest isn’t sexual, it’s parental and proprietary. Granted, this was spoken to the nation of Israel. But after thousands of years and billions of people and He only knows how many tribes and nations, why in the world would He want to deal with an angsty middle-ager who has (in the world’s eyes and her own) failed at everything? If you’re tired of hearing me describe myself this way, imagine how God feels when He hears me start to confess how miserable I am.

There’s a scene in the final episode of a season of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer when Nigel (the mentor) describes what their current foe’s goal is: the end of the world. Buffy and the friends who are with her turn to him and say (in unison,) “Again?” In the third book of the Suzanne Collin’s book, Mockingjay, Katniss and the other tributes makes it clear that she sees their rebellion really as nothing more than yet another round of the Hunger Games. The point isn’t that I’m so pathetic. Why in the world would He want a relationship with you, however you see yourself? No offense, but He’s seen it all before. None of us holds intrinsic interest as a case study.

And yet, what we find in Scripture is not only that God takes an interest in the failures of the world, but He seems to take extra interest in them, and even went so far as to send His Son to Earth as a nobody, as a failure. After all, He didn’t conquer Rome. He didn’t establish Himself as the Ruler of the world. He wasn’t rich. According to Isaiah 53:2, He wasn’t “tall, dark, and handsome.” In spite of the fact that He astounded the teachers in Jerusalem when He was a kid, He didn’t become a disciple of any rabbi of the day and work His way up the intellectual ladder.

“But…but…” you may say.

And I say, “Yes, that is the point.”

In spite of having seen it all before and heard it all before, He is willing to step into our lives for our good. And that is the thing that makes the involvement of the Ancient of Days so much different from the involvement of a 300+ year old vampire. God’s interest in us feeds us and gives us life. The vampire’s interest - or the narcissist’s - is designed to feed the vampire or the narcissist at the expense of the victim.