Those Sinful Superheroes

Superheroes were kind of a sensitive subject around my house when I was growing up.

My best friend and I loved 'em, and whenever he was over, we'd stuff socks in our shirtsleeves (to make our muscles look bigger) throw some bath towels around our necks and zip around our back yard, fighting for truth, justice and the American way.

My dad hated 'em: When I was about 6 years old, he went through a beautiful religious experience—but one that threw our house in chaos. Superheroes were among the casualties. My dad thought that superheroes, what with their godlike powers, were designed to replace the ultimate hero, Christ, and were thus banned.

Well, sorta. Reading superhero comics or watching Superfriends on television was not allowed. But I could pretend I was a superhero as much as I wanted. To this day, I'm not quite sure why there was this inconsistency, but there it was.

I was reminded of all this when I heard that Westboro Baptist Church—the cultlike Kansas group that regularly pickets soldiers' funerals, churches and, at one point, Focus on the Family—is scheduled to protest at Comic-Con in San Diego today. The story I saw had a member holding a sign saying "God Hates Nerds."

"The destruction of this nation is imminent," reads Westboro's website, "so start calling on Batman and Superman now, see if they can pull you from the mess that you have created with all your silly idolatry."

Now, I've got some pretty strong opinions about Westboro's operation—I cringe that they call themselves a "church," quite frankly—but do they have a point here?

I see where they're coming from, I suppose, but I'd have to disagree. Once I grew up and began examining superheroes for myself, I began to see them as not replacements for Christ, but as echoes of Him. Not perfect echoes, mind you: They often resemble our sinful selves as much as they represent a sinless Savior. But they nevertheless allow us to delve deeply into some Christian themes—redemption, sacrifice, salvation, the nature of good and evil—in ways that feel new and resonant. Little wonder the Christian subculture has long co-opted the superhero trope to tell its own stories, from Bibleman to Larryboy.

My dad, great guy though he is, never quite understood what I saw in superheroes. But he's grown to accept that, perhaps there can be something to see.

When Christians Like Bad Stuff

So, between some reading of Augustine and G.K. Chesterton, I've been perusing a book from another Christian sage: Jonathan Acuff, best known for his blog Stuff Christians Like.

Acuff's book, also called Stuff Christians Like, is a funny, irreverent look at the Christian subculture—one of my favorite reads this summer. And it contains a particularly priceless riff: "Using the Desire to be 'Culturally Relevant' as an Excuse to Watch Family Guy". It talks about what happens when Christianity runs headlong into secular entertainment.

Do I love the Family Guy television cartoon or the new Lil Wayne album? No. But what can I do? Christianity needs to be more relevant. How are we going to change today's generation if we don't understand them? How can I witness to someone about the love of Christ if I can't hang in a conversation about Family Guy?

Seriously, what if I'm in the middle of walking someone through the gospel and they say, "That redeeming blood of Jesus thing you're talking about is interesting, but let me ask you something. Who's your favorite character on Family Guy?" and I can't instantly answer, "Glen Quagmire"? The whole conversation would break down right there. I'd look out of touch … and God would lose his chance to reach one more person. Is that what you want? You want heaven all to yourself? You're so selfish.

Acuff touches, I think, on one of Christianity's biggest rubbing points: Are we using the culture to further the Kingdom? Or is culture using us?

Now, y'all know where Plugged In comes down on shows like Family Guy: We think this stuff affects us on myriad levels—often in ways we don't fully realize or understand. The Fox cartoon makes for poor sermon illustrations.

But I get the desire to use culture to further the Kingdom, too. I mean, that's been a hallmark of Christianity from the very beginning—its ability to take pieces of the secular and to mold them to reflect something better.

Which means there's gotta be a line somewhere, regarding what we can (or should) use, and what we can't (or shouldn't). Or is there? And more to Acuff's point, how often do we draw that line where we want, just 'cause we don't want to give up something we enjoy?

Album of the Moment: Jennifer Knapp Letting Go

From 1998 to 2002, folk-rock singer Jennifer Knapp was one of Christian music's most successful artists. But the rigors of releasing three closely spaced albums (which sold a total of 1 million units), combined with nonstop touring, took their toll. So Knapp announced she would be taking a hiatus.

Eight years later, she's returned with a new album—and the announcement that she's gay and has been in a same-sex relationship since 2002. In several recent interviews, Knapp has talked about trying to reconcile her faith and lesbianism. "Everyone around me made it absolutely clear that this [homosexuality] is not an option for me, to invest in this other person—and for me to choose to do so would be a denial of my faith," she told Christianity Today.

Speaking to Relevant, she said, "I think the overriding thing is we understand people of faith are on a journey and on a walk, and that no matter whether it's our sexuality—gay, straight, premarital, adulterous, whatever form—that we come in contact as human beings with our sexuality and actually funnel that through our faith. … It's constantly the pursuit of my own to consistently be honest about where I'm at."

And so she's Letting Go and serving up an album that addresses the highs and lows of romance as it tries to make sense of others' expectations.

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"Better Off" voices Knapp's fear of rejection: "How can I say/Please believe in me/Don't be leaving me/I won't be thrown away." "Mr. Gray" finds her asking for mercy ("If I show you my hands/Would you watch them bleed/Long enough to prove/They are indeed in need of mercy?"). That song also says, "Only God knows who I am."

"Want for Nothing" promises faithfulness in a relationship ("I will be here waiting for you"). On "Stone to the River," Knapp sings, "I'm trying to keep faith in my fellow man." Hope turns up on "Fallen" ("I say that hidden in the sky is a blazing sun/Wait … here it comes"). "On Love" confronts the tendency to flee when things get difficult ("Hey love, isn't that enough running away?/Stay").

ObjectionableContent

"Inside" launches a profane preemptive strike on those who don't accept Knapp's lifestyle. "I know they'll bury me before they hear the whole story/Even if they do well, I know they won't care to/Chalk it up to one mistake, or God forbid, they give me grace/Well, who in the h‑‑‑ do they think they are?" That song also declares that anyone who judges her is "wrong." Similarly, "Fallen" rejects those who would use that word to describe the singer's choices ("Even though they say we have fallen/Doesn't mean that I won't do it twice/Given every second chance/I choose to be with you tonight").

"Fallen" also positively mentions giving into lust ("If all that's left behind/Are the pieces that they find of the two of us/Borne from a wild, wild lust") "Want for Nothing" includes a subtle reference to physical intimacy ("Let's lay down/I have everything when you're beside"). "Dive In" perhaps deals with lingering vestiges of Jennifer's resistance before fully embracing her new lifestyle ("I'm so tired of standing on the edge of myself/You know I'm longing to dive in, dive in/You know it well, your voice will push me over the edge/ … I may be a fool to some, hero to others/But to you, just a lover").

On the title track, she seems determined to maintain her grip on a damaging relationship: "I'm not letting go/White-knuckled grip still you slip through my hands/Leaving me wanting more/ … Kiss me on the mouth, maybe later you can figure out/What it all means/Holding on to you is a menace to my soul." When asked who the you in this song is, Knapp told Christianity Today, "It can change three or four times while I'm singing it. Some days it's my faith. Some days I'm singing to God, like, You're a menace, man. It's hard to keep my faith. Sometimes it's music, and sometimes it's being on the road. It's a lot of those scenarios."

SummaryAdvisory

Listened to in isolation, Letting Go doesn't deal directly with homosexuality. But Jennifer Knapp's public declaration regarding her same-sex relationship, paired with lines like these leave no doubt about where she's at: "So cling to me and I will be forever/And I will heal/And you will feel much better."

Regarding how longtime Christian fans will respond to this album, Knapp told Christianity Today, "I'm tired of spending hours and hours thinking about what if scenarios—what if nobody wants it, what if everybody is mad, what if I'm a complete disappointment. Now it's, Here it is. I've got to let it go. That's one of the frustrating parts of my Christian walk, the scenario that if I don't get it right, that I've somehow failed God and failed my faith."

Album of the Moment: MercyMe The Generous Mr. Lovewell

Singer Bart Millard never intended to be part of a multiplatinum-selling Christian band. Actually, hailing from a Texas football family, the gridiron was Millard's first choice. But ankle injuries led to choir electives which led to helping out with a youth group worship band which led to standing in for the lead singer which led to … being a part of a multiplatinum-selling Christian band.

By 2001 Bart was fronting a sextet called MercyMe that splashed on the scene with its first album and a hit called "I Can Only Imagine"—a song birthed out of Millard's personal pain over his father's death from cancer. Since then, accolades have been a constant for this consistently gold- and platinum-selling group. Billboard, for instance, named it the No. 1 Christian Songs Artist of the Decade in 2009.

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The retro-sounding electronic rock intro "This Life" sets up the idea that we have more responsibility—to God and to the world around us—than to just get comfortable in life ("Hold your heads up high/This is our moment to rise/We were meant to shine/Not just survive"). And the title track embraces that theme as the title character leads by example ("He wakes up every day the same/Believing he's gonna make a change/Never wonders 'if' but 'when'").

Millard admits life can be tough when "right keeps going wrong," but he looks for God to lead him to "brighter days" on "Move." "Crazy Enough" wonders aloud, with an echo-heavy spy movie vibe, if loving others is really as crazy as it sounds ("Reaching out to the ones who need help/Treating them as you first would treat yourself/Now, that would be insane").

"All of Creation" lends a traditional Christian anthem feel to the song mix as it solidly ties love back to its source: a heavenly Father. And even though the world often says we're not good enough, MercyMe points out that we're "Beautiful" and treasured by a loving God ("You're the one He madly loves/Enough to die/You're beautiful in His eyes").

The easy grooving "Back to You" promises that "I may slip, slide and watch our worlds collide/But I will hit the ground running back to You." The praise chorus "Only You Remain" thanks God for His eternal consistency. And "Free" proclaims that no matter what chains the world imposes, God is our means of freedom.

And there's still more: God calls out to us to be His love to a broken world on "Won't You Be My Love" ("She is not to blame for the journey she is on/Her life is no mistake/Won't you lead her to My cross?"). And "This So Called Love" concludes with this penetrating thought: No matter how much effort we put into loving others, "If all that we do/Is absent of Jesus/Then this so-called love/Is completely in vain."

ObjectionableContent

None.

SummaryAdvisory

In the 1960s, John Lennon and Paul McCartney's song about a myopic "Nowhere Man" challenged a generation to get off their duffs and plug into the world around them. It's easy to see MercyMe's 2010 ditty "The Generous Mr. Lovewell" as that Nowhere Guy's polar opposite contemporary.

Indefatigably cheerful, Mr. Lovewell is a simple soul who changes his world and inspires others with little acts of love and kindness.

Altogether, this sometimes bouncy, sometimes quiet and thoughtful collection presents an extremely listenable recounting of the impact a single person can have on the world if he or she will simply recognize God's pure love and carry it into the minutia of life.

Movie of the Moment: The Sorcerer's Apprentice

A calling can be such a bummer.

Do you think Moses really wanted to talk smack to Pharaoh? That Frodo wanted to cart that goofy ring all the way to Mount Doom? That I wanted to slave over a dim computer screen, typing out brilliant movie reviews only to have them edited for no apparent reason?

No, all of these people would have rather slept in, eaten bacon and worn sweats all day than worked so hard and sacrificed so much.

Dave Stutler knows this. It was 10 years ago when a creepy-looking antique peddler named Balthazar told him he was destined to be a powerful sorcerer. The encounter was an unmitigated disaster. No sooner had he learned his "calling" before another sorcerer—the dastardly and downright evil Horvath—instigated a magical cage match with ol' Balthy, causing Dave to spill something on his pants and flee the building, screaming about fire and death. Who should he see outside? Why, his teacher, and his friends, and this cute girl named Becky. All of them, naturally, assume Dave simply had a nervous breakdown and wet his pants.

Dave's still dealing with that meltdown. Oh, sure, he switched schools (to another state) and got counseling (his episode supposedly being the result of a glucose imbalance). He's managed to find a niche in college—he's the resident physics geek with a yen for Tesla coils—and, when he discovers that Becky's now going to New York University, too, he doesn't immediately tuck his tail and run. In fact, he does her a solid by using his physics powers to get the college radio station back on the air. It's the sort of good deed Dave thinks may turn Becky's (perceived) tolerance to, maybe, possibly, a form of affection. Maybe, possibly, she might even like him. How weird would that be?

But just when Dave looks like he's about to finally recover from his image-shattering brush with fate a decade earlier—Balthazar and Horvath brush up against him again. Balthazar still believes Dave's been chosen to become the magical world's next superstar sorcerer—the sort of wizard not seen since King Arthur's famous magician, Merlin. The sort of wizard who can stop Horvath from destroying the world.

The thing is, he's going to have to work really hard to do it.

Positive Elements

Balthazar likes the fact that Dave is a lousy liar. In fact, he thinks it's part of why Dave's worthy of Merlin's long-vacant mantle. The inference is that, to be truly great, one must be truthful.

Indeed, Balthazar regularly tells Dave that character counts—that to be great, one must be good. Ingenuity, love and strength of purpose are what separate the good guys from the bad ones, he says.

Those aren't just idle concepts to Balthazar. For about 1,300 years he's been pining for his one true love, Veronica—a sorceress who's been locked in a nesting doll with the evil witch Morgana, also called Morgan le Fay. When both women are finally released, Balthazar tries to sacrifice himself to save Veronica. He understands both the beauty of love and the need to fight evil, and he holds these two elements in balance. When Dave winds up giving Horvath an object of great power to save his own true love (Becky), Balthazar—who's spent several lifetimes fighting Horvath and the evil he represents—says he would've done the same thing.

Some might quibble with Balthazar's understanding: Horvath is, after all, playing along with Morgana's plan to enslave humanity with an undead army. And by getting this object—Dave's wizarding ring—he seemed to have the tools to do it. To paraphrase Spock, don't the needs of the many (society) outweigh the needs of the one (Becky)?

Still, the way this story sets things up for Dave, sacrificing Becky to keep the magical ring safe would be a viciously cold-hearted act, even if it was done for (potentially) the greater good. Instead, Dave chooses more hard work: saving Becky while still trying to stop Horvath.

Spiritual Content

As you've gathered by now—even if you somehow missed the film's title—The Sorcerer's Apprentice contains quite a bit of magic. Sorcery, spells, magical rings and the like are rarely pushed off the screen. And, as is common in Disney films, that magic is shown as an amoral force, utilized for both evil and good.

Unlike most Disney films, though, this one offers a bit of an explanation.

Balthazar (the traditional name of one of the Nativity's "wise men" who are sometimes purported to be magicians) tells us that sorcery is, essentially, the channeling of unused brain power. Sorcerers use that usually untapped gray matter to manipulate the molecules and energy around them. The appearance of solidity, Balthazar notes, is an "illusion" itself. And so magical happenings are explained using such words as "electrical energy" and "fusion." The reason Dave was drawn so much to physics, Balthazar says, is because physics and sorcery share so much in common.

Is this then science? Is it magic? "Yes and yes," Balthazar says.

While the film is offering such pseudo-scientific explanations for sorcery, viewers are constantly barraged by traditional magical trappings that would appear to have nothing at all to do with physics—including pentagrams and other arcane symbols, incantations, and magical happenings that even the most tortured twisting of the natural world would be hard-pressed to explain. A witch from Salem makes an appearance. And Morgana's near-resurrection of the dead smacks of full-on necromancy.

There are very tiny hints that other, greater powers are at work. During a magical showdown between Merlin and Morgana (in flashback), Merlin tells her, "We are but servants." Morgana, killing Merlin, says she's "no one's servant."

Sexual Content

Dave and Becky share a kiss. He also ogles her legs and looks up her skirt after falling, literally, at her feet. Dave's roommate encourages him to find a mate—perhaps by spending some time with some drunk co-eds.

A dress or two is low-cut. We see a painting of a scantily clad woman crouching before a man. Balthazar and Veronica kiss.

Violent Content

You'd think that sorcerers, given their lofty understanding of physics and all, would be smarter than your average gadabout. You'd think they, of all people, would understand that magical battles tend to be zero-sum games, and that it might be wise to sit down for coffee sometime and discuss their millennia-old differences—like regular folk have to do.

Yeah, that doesn't happen here. Magicians battle like over-tired toddlers, trying to skewer each other with knives, blast each other with plasma balls or push each other into magical mirrors. It's all quite chaotic, really. Folks get smacked with flying and flaming trash cans; stabbed; electrocuted; chased by wolves (and a dragon and a metallic bull); thrown into walls and ceilings; almost sucked into magical carpets; nearly skewered by needles; practically crushed by dump trucks; and beaten by animated mops. They threaten each other with the glee of a cyberbully. They drive like Tony Stewart would if he were drunk.

For all that mayhem, the body count is surprisingly low. Horvath does the heavy lifting here, dispatching two evil sorcerers (to get their rings) and one innocent driver (by shooting objects through his windshield). The deaths are quick, "clean" and, in one case, offscreen—but he kills with no apparent remorse, and he threatens to kill others, telling someone he'll grind them up "into chunks and feed them to the cat."

Dave also "kills" someone, though his "victim" isn't exactly solid at the time. (It's an evil sorcerer who evades bolts of magic with an indistinct, misty body.) Dave tries to chop up a mop (but the mop keeps dodging). Magical-warfare training sessions are intense.

Crude or Profane Language

Three or four misuses of God's name. One use each of "d‑‑n" and "h‑‑‑."

Drug and Alcohol Content

Dave's roommate tells him he should celebrate his birthday at a party because girls from Princeton University will likely be drunk there. That same roommate shares some wine with his girlfriend. Balthazar, in an effort to cover up the fact that a dragon just turned up in Chinatown, tells a pair of police officers that the bystanders must've been "hitting the sake pretty hard."

Other Negative Elements

One sorcerer materializes from a pillar of cockroaches, another from a pile of black muck. Dave's dog releases both gas and a stream of urine in Dave's laboratory. Dave talks about "peeing." Bolts of plasma hit someone in the crotch.

Conclusion

You've heard that the film industry is hard up for ideas. And it's true. We've recently seen films based on amusement park rides (Pirates of the Caribbean), toys (Transformers), bad Saturday Night Live sketches (MacGruber), one-panel cartoons (Marmaduke) and the dubious appeal of Ashton Kutcher (Killers). Rumor has it that we'll soon be subjected to flicks predicated on Monopoly, Facebook and the Magic 8 Ball. (How will it do? Reply hazy, try again.)

So the idea of Disney taking a classic, 11-minute snippet from the film Fantasia and re-crafting it into a two-hour film is little more than predictable. But while Dave does spend several minutes trying to rein in some delinquent mops and brooms, this new Sorcerer's Apprentice is really a stand-alone piece of work. Mickey, as far as I know, doesn't even make a cameo.

Dave is more responsible than the ubiquitous mouse, giving moviegoers a glimpse of what hard work and sacrifice look like. Still, the film's kinda disturbing and scary near the end. And its inherent occult compulsions aren't altogether dispelled by supposedly scientific underpinnings. So think of it as Twilight meets The Lord of the Rings meets Harry Potter meets … Goofy.

Movie of the Moment: The Twilight Saga: EclipseRomantic love is a paradox, a mixture of joy and pain, gift and curse. Finding a mate is one of the mos

Romantic love is a paradox, a mixture of joy and pain, gift and curse. Finding a mate is one of the most important decisions we make, yet falling in love shreds our intellectual sobriety, turning us into a mass of poet-quoting, passion-addled reflexes. It's hard to think clearly when we first fall in love—a time when a little clear thinking would seem most beneficial.

Bella is in love. We all know this by now. She has a thing for brooding Edward Cullen, a vampire who shimmers in the sun. "He moves, you move," her mother tells her. "Like magnets." She thirsts for him like water, craves him like Turkish delight. She spends every minute she can with him and would sacrifice everything she knows to be with him forever—her friends, her family, her very life.

And because Edward is a vampire and all, it looks as if she'll have to make just such a sacrifice.

Nearly everyone thinks Bella is making the wrong choice—even Edward. He knows better than she does what she'll be giving up. He pleads with her to turn from this path, begs her to find a more reasonable course for her life. To change Bella into a vampire, Edward tells her, "just for the sake of never having to lose you, that's the most selfish thing I'll ever do."

But Jacob, Bella's shape-shifting werewolf friend and Edward's rival for her affections, believes he's her ideal mate. He, after all, lives and breathes. To be with him would mean giving up immortality but keeping her friends, her family and possibly her soul. "I'm going to fight for you until your heart stops beating," he tells her.

Meanwhile, an army of newly minted vampires is gathering strength in Seattle, hoping to put the kibosh on Bella's decision-making … permanently.

Positive Elements

Some might scoff at the idea of conscientious vampires and werewolves, but The Twilight Saga is filled with well-meaning creatures of the night.

Edward loves Bella just as deeply as she does him. But his is a more mature, selfless love. He's positively chivalrous when it comes to courtship, always looking out for Bella's wellbeing and insisting that the two of them not sleep together unless and until she marries him. In this respect, Edward is a study in abstention. He's also willing to let Bella go, if she so chooses.

And speaking of choice, the film repeatedly emphasizes how important our choices are. Specifically, Jacob challenges Bella to grapple with the reality that our choices have consequences.

Jacob, long one of Bella's closest friends, struggles mightily with his feelings for her, even crossing a big line when he kisses her without her permission. Apart from that self-serving mistake, though, he understands that it's Bella's choice to make, and he's still willing to risk his life for her safety—even if it means teaming up with those dastardly Cullen vampires to protect her.

A number of other ancillary vampires and werewolves strive to protect Bella too. Likewise, her parents try to care for her as best they can, albeit in their own, rather ineffective ways.

Spiritual Content

For a film loaded with vampires, werewolves, telepathy and superhuman strength, overt spirituality in Eclipse is limited to a couple of scenes. Bella is the first outsider ever to sit in on a council meeting involving Jacob's Quieute tribe (most of whom are, or will become, werewolves). The clan's leader mentions magic and an ancestor who was a "great spirit warrior." Alice Cullen continues to have visions in which she gets glimpses of enemy activities. And Edward still frets that his eternal soul may be lost, though the subject is rarely discussed. (It's a subject explored with more intensity in the books and the previous two movies.)

Sexual Content

"Doesn't he own a shirt?" Edward asks Bella, referring to Jacob after they see him loitering near his motorcycle while flexing his pecs. Truth is, Jacob does own a shirt. He just doesn't wear it much. One of Jacob's shirtless scenes even takes place in a driving snowstorm. And he's not the only one with this proclivity: Jacob's hot-blooded werewolf packmates also shun shirts much of the time.

If Edward represents a purer, more idealized form of love in Eclipse, then Jacob personifies a more animalistic passion. "Let's face it," Jacob tells Edward as he snuggles next to Bella (again shirtless) in order to keep her from freezing to death, "I am hotter than you." He jokingly suggests that she take off her clothes (so she can warm up faster) and forces a kiss on her—for which he receives a punch in the face. Bella later asks him to kiss her, and he does.

The drawn-out lip-lock that follows leaves Bella momentarily conflicted. But Edward ultimately remains Bella's main squeeze. The two smooch often and, once, engage in some foreplay—complete with the beginning of clothes removal—before Edward puts a stop to it (much to Bella's chagrin).

That's because Edward wants to get married before they have sex, something Bella's not much concerned about. "She wants sex," Eclipse screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg told the Techland blog. "She is absolutely clear about that. … When he says, 'I don't want to have sex until we're married'—and he is trying to protect her virtue—but she's like, 'You're a … dinosaur!'"

Bella's father, meanwhile, believes she's already having sex, and he awkwardly tells her to "take precautions" before Bella informs him that she's a virgin. "I'm liking Edward a little bit more now," he mumbles.

Other couples in the film kiss, too. But the most egregious sexual content is a suggested gang rape. We don't see all of it, but we are asked to watch one of the woman's assailants begin to manhandle her and force a kiss on her. We later hear that they left her in the street for dead.

Violent Content

The main point of action in Eclipse is a mini-war between the Cullens and an army of "newblood" vampires. We see this vampire army in Seattle in the throes of hunger pangs, feeding on practically anything that moves. (Those deaths are blamed on gangs or a particularly horrible serial killer.) Later, when they battle the Cullens, several are killed, and we witness heads and other body parts being cut off and smashed like ceramic vases. The decapitation of one villain (we see her head separated from her body) is particularly intense. Similarly disturbing is the implied death of a young girl shortly after she becomes a vampire. (Broken necks via twisted heads seems to be the preferred method of vampire dispatchment.)

Gigantic werewolves chew on adversaries and are sometimes hurt or killed themselves. One vampire fighting a werewolf tries to pull the wolf's jaws apart, for example. Another werewolf suffers painful broken bones which have to then be rebroken (in his human form) to heal properly.

When Bella smacks Jacob in the jaw, she injurs her own hand. And when Jacob learns that Bella and Edward are getting married, he threatens to kill himself.

Elsewhere, vampires beat each other up during action-packed training sequences and torture each other via telepathy. A woman stabs herself in the gut to attract the attention of blood-mad vampires. Bella later slices open her arm for the same reason, and we see the blood running off her skin in a stream. The character who was raped later gets revenge on her assailants after she becomes a vamp. We see her bursting into the room of one attacker, sporting an obvious intent to feed.

Crude or Profane Language

We hear a "d‑‑n" and a "h‑‑‑." "A‑‑" is said a couple of times. God's name is inappropriately exclaimed at least once.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Bella's dad drinks beer. One scene shows a man who is clearly intoxicated. Later we see him clutching an unmarked bottle of alcohol.

Other Negative Elements

Several people lie or try to keep truths from each other—none with much success. Edward, in particular, has a habit of hiding the truth from Bella (for her own good). While giving a speech, the high school valedictorian for Bella's class embraces the idea that everyone makes mistakes on the path to adulthood, to the point that she glorifies intentionally making bad choices.

Conclusion

Before walking into The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, I expected the audience to consist mostly of girls in the 13-to-18 age range. You know, the demographic that might go to a Justin Bieber concert.

I was wrong.

Granted, there were plenty of young women. But many were in their 30s and 40s. Even 50s. And let me tell you, they were into it: They cheered kisses. They cheered shirtless appearances. They saved their biggest hurrah for Edward's proposal. I don't know whether this was the "Team Edward/Team Jacob" dynamic at work or whether these fans were just absorbed in the story, but they couldn't help applauding every time somebody's lip gloss started rubbing off on somebody else.

In short, these viewers were engrossed in the film's fantasy world—and I'm not talking about the whole vampire-and-werewolf fantasy. I'm talking about the film's fantastical view of love.

Eclipse, like Twilight and New Moon before it, is far more about romance than horror. And almost all romances, by their very nature, idealize both love and the lovers involved. In some ways, that's manifested pretty positively here, and some of these values should be idealized. It's great to see Edward so often taking pains to be careful with Bella's virtue and act like a gentleman, for instance. More folks in the real world should aspire to such chivalry.

But Eclipse takes that romanticism to another level, giving us two male protagonists who are practically godlike: Edward is a knight in shining skin who props his beloved Bella on a pedestal; Jacob is a dark-haired pinup idol, sensitive and vulnerable even as he's virile and strong. They are creatures of pure imagination—preternaturally powerful and kind and desirable and desirous. No wonder teens who are still mulling what true love looks like are attracted to these characters. No wonder grown women—many of them who fell in love, got married and found their relationships weren't wall-to-wall passion and joy forever and ever—find themselves drawn to them too.

In this sense, I suspect that The Twilight Saga, particularly Eclipse, feeds our already unrealistic, sky-high expectations about what romantic relationships should look like. I don't think a lot of teens will walk out wishing to be vampires or werewolves. But many of them (and more than a few adults, it would seem) may painfully pine for the sort of love and attention Bella receives from her supernatural suitors.

The film has some other problems as well. I mourn the fact that Bella is so bent on becoming a vampire. Setting aside, for a minute, the ethics of becoming undead, the fact that she wants to jump into this irreversible decision feels terribly hasty. Bella's own father comes across as practically powerless to influence his daughter's life, yet another reason for sorrow. Eclipse is also darker and more violent than the first two entries in the franchise. The decapitation scenes in particular are jarring. And sex is obviously becoming a bigger and bigger issue for Edward and Bella.

As I left the theater, though, I thought less about those things and more about the American inclination to idealize love. That inclination can sometimes make real love—an undeniably great and wonderful but complex roller coaster—feel a little like a disappointment.

It's telling, perhaps, that Eclipse's supposed love triangle isn't much of a triangle at all. Bella is Edward's girl. She always was, always will be. She chooses a charming, bloodless, idealized man over one of flesh and blood who's arguably more fallible, more real.

And I can't help but wonder how many Twilight fans are being encouraged to shop for love in the very same way.

Agapeans Goes Techie: Agapeans on Facebook

AGAPE has been a dynamic campus ministry and has been trying to ever since it started. Not only it is dynamic in its strategies, planning, and organizing but it has also been dynamic in its approach to modernization and changes. And by that I mean the use of new technology gadgets like cellphones, cameras, i pods, mp3s, mp4s and the like and even the internet. We have crowded Friendster, Yahoo messenger, and now the most popular, Facebook. We even tried to have a FAN PAGE, or a GROUP or links. So if you're an AGAPEAN (by blood or by heart) , check that out in Facebook. So what are you waiting for? Go get yourself an email add and register in Facebook.