Last Monday evening our mother opened her online Titus 2 series, “Evenings with Victoria Botkin.” Women tuned in from computers all over the world, getting up to listen at 3AM in some times zones. Feedback is still pouring in. A few of the notes we’ve received on last session:

“I just want to say thank you so much for making this series available to me. This morning’s session was so edifying — a perfect reminder, and so worth getting up at 3:30 a.m. to prepare! I only wish that I could get more ladies to join us.” - D

“Last night was like OUCH! Very good, very convicting, and wish it had all been shared earlier in my life. Better late than never. Thank you for opening up your life with us.” - S

“I just listened to the first session and am so grateful. I needed to hear it, and so many of the questions I’d been crying out to God were answered.” - J

“As one of the ladies mentioned in her question at the end of the session, sometimes it is nearly impossible to find godly, older women who are “qualified” to give you the Scriptural counsel and encouragement you need as you struggle through the daily issues of raising young ones. Your willingness to be used by God to teach us younger wives and mothers around the globe how to love our husbands and children the way God wants us to is a blessing that I am already treasuring. Thank you, thank you, thank you…” - S

We have decided to make the Q&A time from that session available for free download. Listen to it here.

If you haven’t already registered, we’d love to have you join us for the remaining eight sessions, plus you’ll get full mp3s of any sessions you missed. Go here to sign up!

Our father’s online mentoring series has been so well received that, by popular request, it will immediately be followed by a series by our mother, “Evenings with Victoria Botkin,” every Monday evening for 9 weeks. We are very excited that our mother is doing this, and encourage as many of you as possible to listen to her insights drawn from 30 years of applying Scripture to her marriage and family.

Go here for more information. You can also become a fan on Facebook, and invite your friends to to seize this opportunity.

“Victoria is my beloved friend, my trusted mentor, and my wise counselor! Every young woman and mother would be wise to set aside the time to hear godly instruction from this precious woman of God. I treasure every conversation with her. . .and so should you. . .”

Beall Phillips, wife to Doug Phillips

“I recommend everyone to sit under Victoria Botkin’s instruction. She is real, practical, biblical and refreshingly frank. It was easier for me to have my daughter Kelly so far away from me during her first year of marriage because Victoria was there and she understood her role in Kelly’s life as an older woman. The same kind of life giving counsel Kelly received at that time, you will receive during these sessions.”

Deborah Brown, wife to Scott Brown

“Victoria is not just wise and kind — she is fun! Her gentle sense of humor always comes in at just the right moment to remind us not to take ourselves too seriously even as we focus on the important work at hand. I know that listening to Victoria teach online is going to be a marvelous experience. You won’t get to enjoy her delicious bread, but the savory goodness of her words and the kindness of her voice will surely bring a smile to your face and encourage your heart. I look forward to these sessions as a way to renew my own vision and learn new ways to bless my family. What a delight!”

Jennie Chancey, wife to Matt Chancey

When we were in our mid teens, we befriended several high school and college girls of diverse backgrounds – some from Christian families, most not. As we got to know them better, it became more than just our friendship they sought: they couldn’t stay away from our home.

At our home, they were able to be part of something they did not have. Some of them had never even seen it before. We had an intact, happy family. We had an involved, loving father who protected and provided for us. We had a mother who was an example of godliness and femininity. We had a family that worked together toward an important goal that involved us. While our friends struggled to know where they were going, who they were supposed to be, and where they fit into an egalitarian, dog-eat-dog society, we were discovering a world of stimulation, fruitfulness and purpose within God’s family economy. These girls felt the difference.

One of them, a previous valedictorian, U.N. honors student, and R.A., told us after one of her meals at our family farm, “I would learn more if I lived with your family and dug holes in the ground all day than I learn at university.”

We realized God had given us something most girls did not have – something we did nothing to deserve.

We also realized that happy families don’t happen by accident, and that ours was built from scratch by two people who started out like these college kids, but were willing to pick up the pieces of a broken model and build a different kind of family on biblical principles. We knew that it was possible to build God’s order out of today’s disorder because we had seen it done – through faith that His ways are perfect. “He is the Rock, His work is perfect: for all His ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is He.” (Deut. 32:4)

It was girls like these whom we wanted to help when we started writing our book, by showing them there was hope – even in tough situations, even in dysfunctional families, even in a broken society. There are answers. There is a better way. There is so much more.

We knew our message wouldn’t be an easy fix for their problems, however. When a girl embraces biblical principles, her problems don’t automatically disappear. In fact, when biblical principles come head to head with the ugly reality of a society ravaged by feminism and socialism, it can mean war. It can bring, not peace, but a sword (Matt. 10:34).

Many girls are left with nothing to do but try to hold their families together, and are confused about how the “visionary daughters” vision applies to them. We often get emails from girls with abusive fathers, girls with fathers who leave, girls with hateful mothers, girls who have been orphaned, and almost every other painful situation, asking, “What about me? How do you practice biblical principles in a compromised world? In compromised situations?”

Making the Most of 2010

What we would like to do in this post is offer hope and encouragement to girls in difficult situations. As much as we would like to be able to offer specific suggestions, we recognize that every situation is different, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution for all girls. This is why in the past we have mainly focused on casting a vision for the ideal, recognizing that every girl’s journey to the ideal will look different. Whether the ideal is attainable soon or only years into the future, it is a goal we all should have always before us. As we stated in our book, girls should have hope for something better than mere survival.

Scripture, wisdom, resourcefulness, wise counsel, motivation, and faith are not out of any girl’s reach, and they are the key to bringing the best out of our circumstances. The truth is that no girls start out with perfect situations. Even the ones who seem to have “ideal” circumstances have had to work for them. In our experience, these girls are the ones who:

• Stop focusing on themselves
• Look to the big picture
• Stay focused on the goal
• View their situation as an opportunity, not an excuse
• Are grateful for what the Lord has given them
• Embrace hardship, trials and hard work

But there is more than that. To make the most of a challenging situation, you must master the three big temptations crouching at your door.

1. Don’t Become Bitter and Compromise

The temptation is to believe “God has failed me, so I guess that clears me of any obligation to Him.” Sometimes it manifests itself as “I did everything right and God didn’t come through so obviously it doesn’t work”; sometimes as “God clearly hasn’t given me what I need to be able to do everything right.” But God is not an equal with Whom we can make deals and haggle over moral standards.

There is also the false presupposition that circumstances have anything to do with personal righteousness (or that circumstances themselves impute righteousness). Because God is the One who gives circumstances, there is no “more holy” circumstance (e.g. having an intact family, though a blessing, does not make you a better person than the girl whose parents are divorced.) We may not be responsible for our circumstances, but we are responsible for how we use them, and we are responsible for our attitudes. We all have to do right with what God has given us.

But we may need to reevaluate our idea of “doing what’s right,” when it comes to moral dilemmas and quandaries, remembering that our standard is Sola Scriptura – not what popular speakers teach, not what our friends are doing ,and not what makes us “feel feminine.” Girls can make things frustrating for themselves when they set up a bunch of external measurements of “rightness” that have nothing to do with biblical principles.

There are principles in Scripture that suggest that we should be distinctively feminine, honoring parents and authorities, trying to serve God within a home-and-family context, preparing for wifehood and motherhood, praying for a God-honoring marriage and a godly husband with whom to build a better future for your daughters, building up men, and seeking after a useful education. Simply living with your biological parents or doing homemakey things, however, doth not a biblical daughter make. You can discourage your family, dishonor your parents, serve no one but yourself, run men down, waste time, neglect the needy, cultivate personal uselessness, and prepare yourself for a wretched marriage, while living self-righteously at home baking muffins in a feminine apron you made all by yourself.

People compromise when they decide that being principled is not going to work; they will have to “be practical.” In other words, when they lose faith. We need to stay strong in the faith that His precepts/instructions/directions are right, and that He “preserveth the faithful.” (Psalm 31:23)

“But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him, and His righteousness unto children’s children; to such as keep His covenant, and to those that remember His commandments to do them. (Psalm 103:17,18)

2. Don’t Judge Others and Assume that They are Judging You

Girls have a tendency to size one another up. When confronted with a girl who makes us feel our own inadequacies, either by her own merits or by her perceived advantages, the temptation is to seethe with resentment, and to cultivate scorn by filling our minds with imagined deficiencies. It’s an easy way to justify our shortcomings, nurse our egos, and absolve ourselves of any need to try harder.

Worse, girls can tend to size up one another’s parents, siblings, homes, bank accounts, opportunities and lifestyles. This is good fuel for discontentment and excuse-making. When we measure, say, our fathers, against what we imagine other girls have, they’re always going to come up short. Comparisons are often based on presumptions, which are usually wrong. Girls in what may look like the “ideal” situation still deal with the effects of the fall and a broken society in a big way – we may just not know what those ways are because they don’t complain about it. Nobody actually has the ideal situation, but it’s easy to assume things when you don’t know the details, and that makes it easier to dismiss an example that would have been good to follow.

The biggest fault we often want to level at those “privileged” girls is that they’re hoity-toity snoots looking down on us for not being them – for (gasp) JUDGING US.

There may truly be girls who lack understanding and compassion towards girls in situations they don’t understand, but they’re not the ones whose opinion you should care about. Ultimately, God is the only One we should be trying to please, and whose displeasure we should fear. He will not judge us for the situations He gave us (though He well may be angry with the way some of us are responding). If you have been given a challenging situation, and are using it in faith, perseverance and integrity, you will be pleasing to God, and have the respect of His saints.

3. Don’t Break the 10th Commandment

The 10th commandment is one of the most interesting – and under-rated – of the commandments.

“Thou shalt not covet they neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s.” (Exodus 20:17)

We may fail to take it seriously because it doesn’t seem that bad, next to murdering or stealing, or it may be because we think we’re doing fine on this one (we’ve never really wanted our neighbors’ livestock.) But try replacing “your neighbor’s ox” with “your neighbor’s perfect hair,” “your neighbor’s designer clothes,” “your neighbor’s visionary father,” “your neighbor’s like-minded friends,” “your neighbor’s perfect, non-aggravating family,” “your neighbor’s engagement ring,” or anything else you resented another girl’s having that you didn’t.

Coveting is, in fact, a sin which God often lists alongside murder, adultery, blasphemy, sodomy, idolatry and more (Mark 7:22, Rom. 1:29, 1 Cor. 5:10,11, 1 Cor. 6:10, Eph. 5:3,5, Col. 3:5, 2 Tim. 3:2, 2 Pet. 2:14). The Bible even mentions entire nations being judged for covetousness (Jer. 6:13, Jer. 8:10, Jer. 51:13) – presumably because it’s one of those sins that can become part of the national consciousness.

In our nation today, it’s PC to covet. Our society encourages us to venerate fairness, to want to see everything leveled so that nobody has what other people don’t have. This may be why we don’t take it very seriously as a sin. However, in his economic treatise Eat the Rich, P.J. O’Rourke writes, “A liking for fairness is not that noble a sentiment. Fairness doesn’t rank with charity, love, duty, or self-sacrifice. And there’s always a tinge of self-seeking in making sure that things are fair.” (Further, he tells his daughter, “You had better pray to God that things don’t start getting fair for you.”) A fixation with making sure everything is fair is not just petty – it can be deadly. It was the chief idolatry that created the bloodiest century in history.

Here’s the other lesson the 10th commandment teaches. The tenth commandment is not about squelching desires and aspirations for a better life. It’s not telling us that it’s wrong to desire houses, livestock, wives, husbands, beauty, success, skills, gifts, or any of the other things that the Bible tells us are good things. It’s not advocating Gnostic or self-righteous pietism (“I’m too spiritual to desire such paltry things”). The message of the 10th commandment is this: Don’t begrudge others the fruits of God’s blessing and their hard work – get out there and work towards those for yourself.

Coveting can consume our thoughts and eventually our life. If we give in to it, it will:

• Kill our gratitude
• Kill our incentive to work for what we desire
• Kill our ability to rejoice in other people’s good
• Kill our love for God, who clearly is ‘not fair’

“Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.” (James 4:2,3)

Conclusion

In the same way that God designed all of creation in its undeniable perfection and beauty, He handcrafted each girl’s situation with exquisite precision. He chose the exact parents, position, and opportunities that would best fulfill His purposes for her life and bring Him glory.

This does not mean that there won’t be trials and tests, not even for the seemingly “more fortunate.” We are all tested. “The LORD is in His holy temple, the LORD’S throne is in heaven: His eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men. The LORD trieth the righteous…” (Psalm 11:4,5) The very trials He gives us are signs of His love for us in the advantages they ultimately produce.

After all, we’re not the only girls struggling. All over the world girls are being thrown out (and worse), wives are being abandoned, widows are being neglected, and another generation of daughters is being raised by women who married in desperation to escape an unhappy situation – perpetuating the cycle. Those who have had more personal experience with these kinds of problems will know better how to help. They will know better how to raise their sons to be responsible leaders and protectors. They will know better how to raise their daughters to be strong and full of faith. As girls face their situations by re-hauling their attitudes and actions, in faith, they prepare themselves to be warriors in the work of re-hauling a broken nation.

It’s because it’s so hard to live out biblical principles in a crooked and perverse generation that we have to persevere and “make it work.” The future of our children and other young women to come may depend on it.

We can’t promise anything – but God does promise some things to girls in difficult situations. In His loving mercy, He promises that He will be “a Father to the fatherless, and a Judge of the widows” (Psalm 68:5). He promises that He makes “all things work together for good to them that love God, and to them who are the are called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28). He promises that if we “seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness… all these things shall be added unto you.” (Matt. 6:33). And He promises that if we “do not be weary in well doing,” “in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” (Gal. 6:9)

From the Generations website:

What our Daughters Need to Know About Young Men
Interview: Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin

In a Eros-filled society, people hardly know how to relate to each other, and the problem is particularly difficult for our unmarried young men and women. The Botkin sisters join us again on this edition of Generations to talk about “The things our father taught us about young men.” Too many young men and women avoid each other or create odd romantic ideas about the opposite gender. This helpful interview will strengthen the guy-girl (read brother-sister) relationships in your church community. We would recommend this as an excellent teaching tool for families and churches, where young men and women, boys and girls interact.

You can listen to the show HERE.

For Christmas 2009, I asked for the new DVD Homeschool Dropouts: Why The Second Generation is now Headed for a Spiritual Wasteland. And I got it! I was so excited to receive this DVD and I watched it that day. I was shocked, convicted, humbled, pricked, challenged, filled with despair, brought to tears, filled with hope, and awakened to a growing movement: Homeschool dropouts.

Why write a review of this product?

First off, I want to say that this DVD will anger and possibly cause division among those who view it. Certainly one of the purposes behind this project was to call the second generation of home educators to a renewed sense of duty and fulfillment. This film is not for the faint hearted.

I believe that this is a much-needed message that is not being widely circulated among the homeschool movement. As I have been a part of this movement for nearly two decades, I have seen major changes in the way people are “doing homeschool” and some of these changes are frankly, frightening!

The time to act is now, the time to keep silent has passed. The Botkin siblings do a gracious job of communicating hard truths to my generation (the second generation) of homeschoolers. A message long overdue.

Our father’s first online mentoring session was a wonderful success, and men tuned in from at least five different countries to listen in. The subject of this session was “Defending the Faith by Loving Your Wife.”

Dad doing one of the things he does best: answering questions from Scripture. Here he tackles, “How do you shepherd and lead your wife without being a tyrant?”

Behind the scenes: Handling the technical details.

By popular request, the first session is now available as a free mp3 download here.

It’s not too late to sign up to hear the eight remaining sessions! Mp3s of all the sessions will be made available to those who sign up, as well as the powerpoint slides.

In the next session, our father will answer the remaining questions from the last session at the top of the hour. Sign up here to tune in!

A sampling of future topics:

* How to defend the faith: Love your wife
* What every man needs to know before he dies
* How family worship changes the world
* How to think like a man in an adolescent culture
* How to fight like a man in a defeated culture
* How you and your sons can be involved in local church leadership
* How to take command in your home
* Understanding the Quadrivocational mission
* Why long term planning is essential to a fruitful legacy

What men are saying:

“Fathers need to be convinced that they are not living up to their duties for Christ. I think Geoffrey Botkin has a unique gift of being able to show men this.”

“I really enjoyed this morning’s sessions and look forward to the next eight Saturdays!”

“Even one session made it worth it.”

“The material was practical, pointed and delivered with grace. I’m looking forward to the next session.”

Our father started teaching us about boys when we were still in our highchairs. Understanding that girls are practically born with an awareness of boys, romance and marriage, our parents figured they couldn’t start too early, teaching us the right perspectives before we eagerly absorbed all of the wrong ones. This message is a collection of the most helpful things our father ever taught us about romance, friendships, flirting, shyness, cyber-relationships, emotional purity, romance novels, and how boys’ minds really work.

Why is it hard for girls to find the balance between flirting and shunning? How can girls keep their hearts pure? What responsibilities do they have toward young men? Is it possible to be “just friends”? Hear practical advice on navigating the tricky waters of relationships with boys, and how these relationships, properly conducted, can be edifying and strengthening.

Buy the CD or MP3 today, and save 30% until January 1st.

A Horror Story About a Horror Story

Once upon a dark and stormy year, tens of millions of women and girls, of all ages, all nations, all religions, fell under the spell of one 17-year-old boy…

who was not even human…

and was not even real.

This imaginary man-god from the underworld became the new standard by which millions of real husbands, boyfriends and suitors were weighed in the balance and found wanting. To millions of women, reality began to pale in comparison to his dark and fantastical world – the only world where they could be with Their Edward.

“i dont really understand why but it makes me so sad when i think of edward, almost like i know he will never exsits expect in fictionly stories. i wish i would already find him and be eternaly happy just holding his hand :/”[1]

Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight may be fiction, but this story is real. Edward Cullen is no more than an idea, but ideas have consequences, and Edward-obsession is creeping into real history.

This week Twilight proved its mighty cultural force when the second film in the series, New Moon, broke all-time opening-day box office records, beating out Titanic and Dark Knight. [2] Since the release of the first Twilight book in 2005, 85 million subsequent books in the series have been sold. Twilight’s cultural conquest is phenomenal. But how did this averagely-written, clichéd storyline capture so many hearts, minds and imaginations (not to mention over one billion dollars in book, DVD and ticket sales)?

“I am obsessed, it seems to have taken over my life, everytime I think about putting the books up for good and reading something new, I nearly have an anxiety attack!”

We have a few theories. Though Stephanie Meyer is not a brilliant author, she knows how to make an illicit romance with a vampire look like a clean, pro-abstinence story of unconditional love and good vs. evil (and convince even Christians.) [3]

We believe her greatest genius, though, is her keen intuition into the sin nature and fleshly desires of women. Being, ourselves, young women in her target demographic, we know Twilight presents a very attractive alternate universe to tempt any girl’s flesh: a self-centered, autonomous life, a self-gratifying romance, and no real-world responsibilities or consequences. Best of all, the perfection of the hero has no human limitations. Move over, Mr. Darcy – with your every earthly quality, you’re still only human. Mr. Cullen is superhumanly handsome, brilliant, strong, rich, romantic, and most of all, superhumanly capable of unconditional love. He even has the “bad-boy” appeal of being a blood-lusting creature of the underworld, but with the impeccable Victorian manners and sensitive feminine feelings of the “good boy.” Half-demon, half-angel; there’s something for everyone in Edward Cullen.

Of course, intrinsic to Edward’s irresistible allure is the sheer, titillating “forbidden” factor. Twilight’s now-iconic cover art portrays the hands of a young girl holding an apple, an allusion to Eve’s contemplating the forbidden fruit – a metaphor for Bella’s temptation for an unthinkable relationship with a vampire. The message of the cover is perfectly apropos; the choice presented, however, is before more than just Bella, Twilight’s protagonist. Will we fall into our own love affair with Edward Cullen? Will we succumb to the charms of fantasy men in fantasy worlds?

Emotional Pornography

“He grinned his crooked smile at me, stopping my breath and my heart. I couldn’t imagine how an angel could be any more glorious. There was nothing about him that could be improved upon.” (Bella Swan, Twilight, Chapter 12, p.241)

For this discussion, we would like to set aside the dark paranormal element of Twilight, though that is a concern on its own. We believe what ultimately draws women into this series and other romance novels in millions-strong droves is the same thing that lures men into an estimated $3-4 billion-a-year pornography industry.

Journalist Alisa Harris explains: “It’s called emotional porn. When men glut their physical lust with pictures of airbrushed girls pumped full of silicone, they become dissatisfied with real women’s bodies. When women plug their emotional caverns with chick flicks and chick lit, they become dissatisfied with the real men they know because they can’t measure up to the guys from The Notebook or Pride and Prejudice or Walk to Remember.” (Alisa Harris, “Beating Darcy Down”, Kritik Magazine)

Pornography is not simply about pictures. At its core, pornography starts with:

1. A desire to use people as self-gratification machines
2. A preference for man-made reality and man-made people over the real thing.

These hold as much temptation for women as for men, though romance novels often feed their fire better than pictures. (It has been found, however, that pictures of Robert Pattinson don’t put a damper on anything.) [4]

R.J. Rushdoony asks, “Why should an unreal female be exciting, and a far better and real woman not be so? The key is the essence of imagination: the fantasy woman is totally the creation and creature of man, whereas the real woman is God’s creation and creature. It is essential to imagination to create a man-made world and a man-ordained decree of predestination. It is the essence of sin to demand such a world.” [5]

Why should Edward, Mr. Darcy and other romantic heroes be more interesting than “far better and real” men? Because these men are the creations of women, tailor-made just the way we want them… rather than the way God made them.

Why Can’t a Man… Be More Like a Woman?

“A normal guy would wait for you to make him breakfast. Edward Cullen would make you breakfast everyday.” (Normal Guy Vs. Edward Cullen)

The problem with real guys, it often seems, is that they aren’t enough like, well… girls. The airbrushed, artificially enhanced heroes of romantic fiction have usually undergone some gender-blurring to make them more romantically satisfying: more beautiful, more delicately-featured, more sensitive, more domestic, better behaved, more in tune with our feelings. In short, more like us. Ultimately, they must also take on a different role, because real men are not all about what we wish they were all about (us).

In God’s world, the woman was created for the man; in the wonderful world of romance novels, the man is usually created as an accessory to the woman. God created men to have a dominion-focus, not a woman-focus, and the woman was to be his helper in his mission. [6] In romance-novel-land, however, the heroine is the center of the hero’s universe and his reason for living. As Edward tells Bella in Twilight, “You are my life now.” [7]

Better than Life

But there is something more that makes the real and living pine for the non-existent and undead.

“I am sad that [the books] are over. For me that means no more escape from real life. I need a good read to fill that void where reality meets fantasy.”

Though some may profess immunity to teen-vampire-horror-romance, everyone tainted by sin faces this temptation to escape to another world. A different “reality,” where what is impossible in real life is possible in our minds – where we can indulge in desires we would never fulfill in the real world. It’s about more than going batty for vampires. It’s about a chance to take a “time off” from law and consequences.

R.J. Rushdoony points out, “Because ours is an age with a will to fiction, the role of imagination is extremely important. Men who will not be governed by God’s word will not be governed by reality, because reality is not of their making. God having created all things, reality reflects the mind of God, not man. Hence, it is the essence of sin to resort to imagination to escape God’s law world.”[8]

We who feel “the urge to escape sometimes” should ask ourselves why a world apart from God’s character, God’s laws, and God’s created order would be a world a Christian would desire to live in? [9] What would make us want to run, like Jonah, from God and His presence? “Escapism is only medicine to one who views the reality of God and His creation as a disease.” [10] The answer for those in need of “escape” from life’s hardships is running to God – not away from Him.

Here is the ultimate question for those of us who delight in being titillated by unbiblical violence, unbiblical death, unbiblical spiritualism, and unbiblical romance – even when it’s “just pretend”: Are we are of the spirit, or still of the flesh?

“For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” (Romans 8:5-9)

To Be As Goddesses

Stephanie Meyers certainly hit the jackpot, we believe, because she knows what it is that women really want in their fantasies: a god to worship them as a goddess.

And really, the desire to be “as gods” – the temptation Eve succumbed to – is the lure tempting every girl to create her own world and her own men, and define what is good and evil for herself. As we pointed out at the beginning, the choice before each of us is the choice Meyers wrote in for Bella: to eat of the forbidden fruit, or not? Our prayer is that the daughters of our generation will flee temptation, and make the better choice.

We realize this article has taken a hard line, and we certainly didn’t want to spoil anyone’s fun, but we don’t really have to: Twilight will spoil its own fun.

“When I finished [the last book in the series] I felt like my world would collapse. I had been living in Forks for so long that I didn’t want to go back to my boring not-at-all-interesting life! …Then reality hit me and I realized I’m not Bella and my husband is not Edward. That was hard for me to swallow.”

The reality that will eventually hit Twi-hards is that this infatuation is its own punishment. No amount of ticket sales, Twilight addiction “fixes,” and I-Want-to-Marry-Edward-Cullen fansites will change the fact that Edward Cullen is still not human, and still not real. Mercifully, we have a God Who is.

———
Footnotes:

1. All fan quotes are from various online Twilight discussion groups

2. According to Deadline.com, “NEW MOON opened with a phenomenal performance of a gargantuan $140.7 million first weekend in North America and, $118.1M from 25 international markets from Wednesday through Sunday, and a worldwide 5-day total of $258.8M. …With the audience exactly split under and over age 21, exit polling showed that 80% were female.” Read the entire report here: http://www.deadline.com/hollywood/phenomenal-breaking-records-new-moon-doing-dark-knight-midnight-numbers/

3. Twilight does present some heavy themes like good vs. evil, light vs. darkness, heaven vs. hell, but without any moral clarity. What is good and what is evil, and by what standard? In Twilight’s ethical system, carrying on a secret relationship with a killer is good, while going against one’s heart is bad, etc.

4.Bella’s own “love” for Edward is hardly pure (or selfless, or rational); it seems based on the emotional and physical feelings she gets when she looks at him. Bella responds to Edward’s “pale, glorious face,” “voice…like melting honey,” “hypnotic eyes,” etc., like a stimulus-response mechanism, with estrogen for brains. Girls learn to salivate along with her, like Pavlovian dogs, at every mention of the world “gorgeous.”

5. R.J. Rushdoony, Systematic Theology Volume I, pp. 474, 475

6. Genesis 2:18-20, 1 Corinthians 11:8-12

7. Twilight, Chapter 15, p.314

8. R.J. Rushdoony, Systematic Theology Volume I, Rushdoony, pp. 474,

9. Read Doug Phillips’s excellent article on this subject: “Harry Potter and the Lavender Brigade: Is it Scripturally moral to present immoral behavior in fantasy stories?”

10. We borrowed this astute observation from our brother Benjamin. Keep an eye on his blog (www.BenBotkin.com) for his future writings on this subject.

Movieguide has just posted their recent review of the DVD Return of the Daughters on their website. The DVD received ratings of +4 and 4 stars for content and quality, the highest possible. From the review:

Appealing yet controversial, this manifesto of Christian daughterhood is beautifully produced and sure to provoke families into examining the scriptural and cultural foundations of their ambitions for their daughters.

Read the full review here: http://www.movieguide.org/dvd-releases/8/10035/the-return-of-the-daughters.