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!
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