On vampires and sin(ners)

 I love movies, stories, and theories about cryptids. Bigfoot, werewolves, chupacabras, mothman, all of that, I absolutely love it. The other day I was watching a vampire movie and they dove a bit deeper into the lore of vampires. In most modern movies vampires are just creepy/seductive bloodsuckers who want your blood, but there is a lot more to them than that. In this movie it went more into some of the classic vampire ideas. Their goal wasn’t just to stay alive and hidden in the shadows, it was to make everyone like them. They would wait to attack when someone was comfortable and at ease. But most importantly, they couldn’t enter a building without being invited. This movie was awesome and I really enjoyed it. 

However this movie stuck with me after I finished watching it, and I’ve been chewing on it for about a month now. The parallels that can be drawn between vampires and sin are fascinating, and this movie did an amazing job with it. When was temptation to sin strike the hardest? Generally when you are alone, or not too many people are around. It generally looks fun! These vampires would never go after a group where there were more people than there were vampires. They also made their life look super fun with music and dancing. The temptation was real and it was there for those people. 

However, my favorite parallel between vampires and sin is this; It must be invited in. Vampires can’t cross the threshold of a building until they have been invited in. You, the victim, must invite in the element of your destruction. Once a vampire is in it is HARD to get rid of, and generally takes a lot of gross bloody violence. The same can be said about sin in your life. You have to make a choice to let it in, and when it is in it can take some gross bloody figurative violence to get it out. Jesus put this into perspective in the sermon on the mount

“If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.”

‭‭Matthew‬ ‭5‬:‭29‬-‭30‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Vampires takes sunshine, lots of fire, or a stake through the heart to kill. If you want to truly work to eliminate a sin from your life it takes work. It takes exposure to the sun, it can’t be allowed to stay in the dark. It takes a stake to the heart of that sin, cutting out the root of it, to truly work toward removing it. It is next to impossible to take on a vampire solo, they are stronger, faster, and have a lot more tricks up their sleeve. It takes a group, or community, to eliminate one. The same can be said about sin. We are designed to live in community, and that community makes it harder for sin to take root, but also makes it easier to remove that vampire of sin from your life (so long as you are honest with your community… but that is a whole other topic). 

Anyways, those are just my quick thoughts that I’ve been chewing on lately. Now go open the curtains and stake the vampires! 

A life without fear… that’s the dream

 So there I was wondering through Costco, looking for things for men’s breakfast and for an end of summer youth group bbq when I get a FaceTime from my wife. I answer with the spotty connection that you get inside Costco to see the tear stained face of my daughter Talia. She had to have a blood draw with her dr appointment that morning and had a severe anxiety attack with it. In her fear she just wanted to call and see when I would be home because she wanted/needed a hug. So I talked to her for a while more and then wrapped up what I was shopping for and headed home. 

A few hours before this I was sitting in a room with 150-200 other church staff members from multiple churches across the state of Alaska. There was a pastors panel at one point where all the lead pastors of these churches got to share some thoughts, and one of them really stuck out to me. “What could we do if we didn’t live in fear.” This question has now been rattling around inside my brain for over a week. It’s a big question, and it just keeps on getting bigger. 

In 2 Timothy 1:7 it says “…For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power, love, and self control” (ESV). This verse combined with the question of “what could we do if we didn’t live in fear” is a massive topic, but I’m just going to hit the two main pieces God has been working on me in. 

The first way I started thinking through this question was what could we do for the kingdom of God if we didn’t live in fear, but instead lived in “power, love, and self control”. In the context of the verse Paul is writing to Timothy about using his God given gifts, to “Fan them into flame”. To practice and use them and grow them like a muscle. How many times a day are you stopped from doing something out of fear? For me honestly it’s quite a bit. Sometimes it’s not saying a kind/encouraging word to someone because I am unsure of myself or I don’t want to get stuck in a conversation I don’t want to get into. Sometimes it’s not speaking up when I feel God prompting me to share a word with people I don’t know well. I can hear it now “But BJ, you are a pastor, it’s your job to do those things!”… I know… but it doesn’t make them any less intimidating, if anything it makes them more intimidating! 

Later in the week I started thinking in a slightly different way. The thought process was still about the fear of what others think of me, specifically when I am weak. Making a phone call to someone, or sending a text, when you are at a weak moment in life is one of the hardest things to do. Be it wanting to cave to temptation or addiction, or being low in depression and anxiety and overall mental health. Admitting weakness is one of the most difficult, bravest things you can do. How much more would you reach out for support and help if you didn’t have a fear that other people would look down on you, or that you didn’t fear you were letting other people down. I know my answer would be that I would be sending a lot more texts for support (not phone calls… I hate phone calls.) 

What would life look like if I lived without fear? My life would look pretty much the same, but would feel much different. I would speak up more about what I felt God was telling me. I would open myself up for more support from the people around me. It would be much more community driven by allowing people to know who I truly am. I would stop and pray for a lot more people. I would reach out for help more. It would look a lot more like Gods plan for unity in community.   

Hopefully these rambling thoughts of a man who is continually working on and dealing with his own anxiety, and thinking through how to best help his daughter through it as well, has sparked the question of “how can I live without fear” and you are able to take one step closer to living in “power, love, and self control”