Free Touched by a Vampire by Beth Felker Jones Page A

that we see in Edward and Jacob is a harmful masculine stereotype, a result of sin and not of what God wants for boys. As Christians seeking God’s truth and asking Him to heal our ways of seeing and knowing, we want to look for God’s perspective on what being male and female is all about. We can’t just buy into stereotypes and assume they reflect God’s will for our lives.
C REATED M ALE AND F EMALE
    If sin twists our ability to know what God wants for us as men and women, how can we hope to know God’s good intentions for us? How can we hope to be godly men and women? Thankfully, we’ve been given a way to see what God’s good intentions are through reading Scripture. God heals our brokenness and gives us the power of the Holy Spirit to help us live lives that match up with those good intentions.
    The fact that God created us male and female (Genesis 1:27) is an important place for us to start. Though sinful eyes make it tough to see what God wants for us as male and female, we know from the very beginning of Scripture that the simple fact that we exist as male and female
is
God’s intention, part of the good plan He has for us. It means that God created us to live with each other and to be different from one another.Dangerous stereotypes are instruments of sin, but difference itself is a good thing. God made us to be different from each other and to love and be there for each other through our differences. When God created us male and female, God looked at the situation and called it good (verse 31).
    God’s Word also gives us encouragement as we think about challenging the way stereotypes cause harm in our lives. When we look at the way Jesus lived His life as a man, we see that some of our worst stereotypes about what it means to be male must not be true. Jesus is a savior who chose to accept death on a cross. When Jesus was being arrested, one of His friends cut off the ear of a servant of the priest. Jesus told the man to “put your sword back in its place” (Matthew 26:52). This flies in the face of our assumption that boys have to love violence. Jesus also interacted with women in ways that surprised His friends. He treated women not as lesser beings, but as valued friends.
    Paul affirms that what Jesus has done for us as Christians includes both men and women. So “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). When the Holy Spirit is poured out on God’s people, Peter explains that a prophecy from the book of Joel is being fulfilled. “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they willprophesy” (Acts 2:17–18). Sons and daughters, men and women, male and female, all witness to God’s power.
    Figuring out how to love and give glory to God as the male and female people we are isn’t easy. It’s not as simple as saying, “Look, we’re all the same; there shouldn’t be any difference.” After all, God created us this way. It’s also not as simple as looking at the way “traditional” roles dictate that we live and assuming that “tradition” reflects God’s will. After all, tradition may well be sinful.
    We can work together, though, as sisters and brothers in Christ, to love and glorify God as we are created—male and female. We can work together to discover what that means, to challenge sinful assumptions, and to honor and care for each other in our differences. We can work together to learn from Scripture and from the Spirit’s presence in our lives what it means to be who we are and to give glory to God.
T HINK A BOUT I T /T ALK A BOUT I T
Do you identify with certain characters in the Twilight Saga in the ways they live their lives as male and female?
How do characters in the books perpetuate