I found this novel by searching for “Christian
Thriller” in the Young Adult listings of our local library. It didn’t have that yellow “Christian”
sticker on it, so I was excited to hope that somebody was actually working in a
Christian worldview in this important genre, while likely getting more young
readers by not being “pigeonholed.” What
a thoroughgoing disappointment.
There is some attempt to present evil as actual and
supernatural: the vampires are presented
as some kind of more-than-biological scourge, and as irredeemably bad and
dangerous—no sparkles here. There is
even a suggestion that they may have actually been spawned by a group of
Satanists (having a lark at a sci-fi convention, the rumor goes, and
inadvertently unleashing this horrifying evil into the world). And there is a vague notion that BELIEF is
protective against them: the Amish
community is at first protected against them because the whole community is
essentially a church, therefore “hallowed ground.”
But the author is quite thorough in showing us that
actual FAITH has nothing to do with anything.
Mere belief in ANYthing will suffice:
a coven of witches that meet in a New Jersey strip mall is equally
“hallowed;” a Himmelsbrief (written prayer) that our heroine carries with her
protects her from attack, not because she believes it, but because the old man
who wrote it for her does; even the tattoos of symbols related to ancient
Egyptian gods with which the young outsider has marred his body are protective
against attack, although he does not believe in these gods—the symbols are just
“personally meaningful” to him in some vague, unspecified way. Thus faith is reduced to the level of
superstition (it would seem that even a lucky rabbit’s foot, if you in any way
“believed” in it, would protect you against this evil).
As (predictably and boringly) usual, the
representatives of an actual faith—the Amish religious community our young
heroine finds herself growing up in—are presented as oppressive, irrational,
and even dangerous. They are cruel and
unfeeling to the wounded outsider (leaving him outside their fence to die), and
dismissive and nasty to anyone who questions anything they say—in other words,
distinctly un-Christ-like. Finally, they
are shown to be deeply foolish (if their orders were followed, more lives would
have been lost during the course of the story), and terrifyingly corrupting
(when the young man who has been our heroine’s best friend all her life officially
becomes a full-fledged member of the church, he suddenly becomes an abusive,
unfaithful rapist).
The typical (destructive, anti-Christ) Young Adult
Fiction formula is (again predictably, and sadly) clearly in evidence
here: in order to become the woman she
is meant to be, our heroine must
1) reject the beliefs
and values of her (ineffectual) parents and the (oppressive, wrong) faith
community,
2) give herself
sexually to the young outsider she’s only just met (of course)—
a) with not a thought regarding the dangers of
possible pregnancy and/or sexually transmitted diseases in this
post-apocalyptic environment (forget about the heartbreaking spiritual
degradation involved); and
b) with the obligatory gross error that “love”
equals the feeling of infatuation—she “never felt like this before,” therefore this
must be real love, which therefore justifies anything; and finally
3) leave the
community (again, as predictably usual)—out into an enormously dangerous world
full of apparently real evil, with no substantive defense other than “stay in
the sunlight” (never mind the obvious flaw of, you know, that whole
regularly-occurring night thing).
If only Bickle could have used her otherwise
interesting germ of an idea to present a strong case for real faith, real hope,
and staying in the real Light.
Cross this one off the list.
If you know of any authors working in the “Young Adult”
genre from an actual Christian worldview (whether the work is labeled
“Christian” or—especially—if not), please do suggest them!
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