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Post by dizzyjam on Jan 9, 2009 22:29:03 GMT -5
Here's something to chew on:
How can a believer in Christ become a vampire and still go to heaven?
Think about it before you respond. Think on how this could happen and what it would take for God to ensure the success of this. How does the Bible support the concept? Does it even support the concept? Once undead and technically in the same body, how would the spirit and soul be released to be "absent from the body"? And how would salvation work before that being absent from the body? Another point to ponder: If someone is unsaved and becomes a vampire, are they damned forever? Or can they too get saved? These are questions I'm curious to see the answers to from this crowd here.
David
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Post by J Jack on Jan 9, 2009 22:52:18 GMT -5
Could a person who must kill be saved? Or would they be forced to use blood packs or something. I don't see why a vampire would be different, as long as they believed and didn't violate the commandments, I think they would be accepted by God into His kingdom. Why not right?
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Post by dizzyjam on Jan 9, 2009 23:02:30 GMT -5
Of course, what blood would they drink since they are vampires? Would it be human, or animal? Or both? They would have to drink blood since they are vampires. What if the "blood pack" you mentioned had a rare blood that could've helped someone? What then? Would they still be driven by the urge to "create offspring" as it were? If so, how could they really follow the commandments? Of course creating another vampire doesn't really kill the person since they are "undead". These are important things as well to consider.
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Post by mongoose on Jan 10, 2009 0:32:45 GMT -5
We've been here and done this. Read the other thread. Or we can continue it here.
The consensus was that you'd have to determine what the rules were for the vampires of your universe. Anne Rice's, or the original Draculas, or something else? What defines the vampire as a vampire? what characterizes them? This would determine whether or not they could be saved and remain a vampire, or even remain alive.
Most vampire lore, people said, assumes that vampires either are demonic, or else are posessed by demonic spirits. Demonic spirits can not co-exist with the Holy Spirit of God, right? So a vampire could, theoretically, try to turn a Christian but it wouldn't work. Either their bodies would die fully and their spirits would go to God, or they would remain fully human and fully alive and fully Christian. By the same token, if a vampire were to come to conviction of the truth of Jesus Christ, and accept Him, the demon that had kept them "alive" would be cast out, and they would die. Likewise, if a Christian cast the demon out of a vampire, what remained of the human body would die, unless God did something further miraculous to re-introduce the person's soul/spirit into their old body.
All of that assumed that a vampire was a dead human body, re-animated by a demonic spirit, including the blood lust. What if the whole vampirism thing were simply biological? The idea fell flat. Someone mentioned that the zombies in the "Resident Evil" series were kind of like that, but no one said anything further on the subject.
Sue Dent wrote a series about vampires and warewolves who were more or less aware of the truth of Christianity. They couldn't speak of or look at anything holy without bringing great pain upon themselves. Still, they wished to be free of their "curse," and at least one believed that they could be if they pushed themselves far enough toward the holy to exorcise themselves. almost like stopping using heroine, cold turkey, and going through the withdrawl.
But what's this about obeying the commandments? We do this, not to be saved, but because we are saved from the temptation to disobey, and because we wish to honor God. All that is required for salvation is continuous belief and confession. So, theoretically, if a vampire accepted Christ as its Lord and Savior, but still killed a few people, it could still be saved. It would just have to repent before being destroyed.
Sue Dent took a different approach. Her characters believed that as long as a vampire or warewolf avoided turning anyone else, there remained hope that they could break their curse by exposure to the holy. But once they did turn another human they would be damned for good. But the first principle I mentioned applies here: Sue Dent invented the creatures of her books, and they operated according to the rules she made for them. As speculative authors we can craft the vampires of our stories in any way we choose, to follow any rules we choose.
I joined with a fellow role player in the writing of what turned into a short story about two vampires, one who was turned about the same time that Christ was born, and the other only being a few hundred years old in the modern era. Both of us had our PCs praying in a Christian church, and then feeding on human wrong doers who felt no remorse, and wrecking havoc on the collected vampire community. It was great fun, we explored some philosophical ideas we might not have otherwise, and successfully created our own little speculative world with its own rules and species. Why not?
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Post by metalikhan on Jan 10, 2009 1:32:29 GMT -5
I've been exploring that question for a few months in a short story (off and on — it gives me a break from the novel sequel). The MC is a vampire who gave up human blood, feeding on animal blood instead; he yearns for an end to his curse. He hears of a vampire who is a monk in a monastery and goes to see if salvation is possible for him. The crux of the story hinges on whether he will accept salvation via the blood of Christ that appears as stigmata from the hands of an elderly monk (not the vampire one).
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Post by dizzyjam on Jan 10, 2009 9:25:45 GMT -5
Drink the blood of the lamb, eh? That's similar to something I'm thinking of too for a story, but not like what you thought of. The thought is inspired by the line in "The Stand" a song by Saviour Machine. The song has nothing to do with the Stephen King book. The line simply states, "Drink the blood of the lamb, make a stand" over and over at one point in the music. On stage, the singer drinks fake blood from a chalice like container before singing those lines and for the rest of the concert the fake blood is on his mouth and chin as he sings other songs. The imagery was so powerful that the line stayed with me long before I could recite more of the song (a long one at that) by heart. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Better quiet it down before I'm found or I'll be six feet underground.
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Post by dizzyjam on Jan 10, 2009 14:48:18 GMT -5
Mongoose, what if the demon was cast out, but the physical ramifications remained the same? If indeed it was even a demon to begin with.
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Post by mongoose on Jan 10, 2009 17:09:01 GMT -5
Which is exactly why you have to define your "vampire" in some way, at some point in your story. If the only thing animating the body is the demon, then to excorcise the demon is to de-animate the body. If, however, the vampirism, the animation of the body with the blood lust and whatever other characteristics are not the result of a demon, then you don't have that issue. You just have to come up with some other explanation.
Of course, your characters don't have to know their history or physiology. But they'll wonder, if they are sentient, and will speculate and come up with their own legends and mythology. My whole point in the earlier thread, and in the role playing game was that there ought to be vampires without any demonic influence. They were human in every respect except for their near - immortality and agelessness, their need for blood, and their preternatural power. I thought it was a great idea, but apparently most authors would disagree.
That's why I asked, what immortals or uber-powerful people have been/could be Christians? I didn't get many responses then, but maybe someone can come up with some now. At any rate I remembered that many of Ted Dekker's characters are uber-powerful, and I'm pretty happy with them. I've read that his latest young adult novel in the "Lost Books" series deals with vampires in some regard.
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Post by dizzyjam on Jan 10, 2009 19:46:41 GMT -5
What if the demon affected the body only? The person would still be "undead" inside the now changed body being ruled by the demon, yet the spirit and soul stayed under control of what was a human to cause "The Eternal Struggle" to occur. Now, with that in mind and knowing the body has been changed, once the demon is gone from the body and the human is now left to his own changed body, what is the case? That was the question I was asking, now hopefully more spelled out for you. So what then?
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Post by mongoose on Jan 10, 2009 20:41:39 GMT -5
Up to you. you can't look up "vampire" in the dictionary or encyclopedia and see a definition, ("a vampire, when deprived of its demon, is . . .") But think about it. Say a vampire has been undead for a few years. It's been that long since the body has imbibed the nutrients necessary for human life, right? or can a human live with out eating, purely off of a blood transfusion, which is essentially what would be happening. If not, the body, being deprived of what animated it, and not having eaten or drank anything in however long, would be on the verge of death if it wasn't there already.
and if the Holy Spirit of God can't co-exist with a demon, then the Christian couldn't be possessed to begin with (I realize people disagree on that doctrinal point). But for a Christian to be possessed, or turned into a vampire would mean that the Spirit of God was no longer presiding in their soul, right? So you have someone deprived of their blood lust, their fangs, their preternatural senses and strength and speed etc., nearly dead or dead from starvation, dehydration, and whatever exposure or other abuse the demon subjected it to, and without the Spirit of God. What's this newly human vampire going to do? How would it keep from dying on the spot?
I just remembered the TV show ''Moonlight" dealing with this. They had some substance which, when put into the vampire's blood, took away all that made the vampire a vampire. The former vampire was back to being fully human in every way, until the "drug" as it were, wore off a few weeks later. But then, "Moonlight" never proposed what made a vampire a vampire, and maybe they skipped the whole "demon" bit. Basically, they didn't explain what happened before, during or after the transformation in terms of the person's soul or spirit. And I suppose we could do that with our stories. Like I said, the POV Characters might not know what's going on, and what they don't know, we don't have to write.
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Post by dizzyjam on Jan 10, 2009 21:05:19 GMT -5
When you consider how Christ conquered sin and death and all manner of diseases, then I consider the vampire curse to be more of a disease with intense physical manifestations that needs to be purged from the body by the power of Christ. There may be other ways of looking at it, and I can see the demon route, except that if you actually had the person "possessed" then that would have to negate the regeneration with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and that's not Biblical since once we're sealed nothing can pluck us out of His hand. Instead of possession so much, I was thinking about the separation of the body from the soul and spirit where the Holy Spirit would be within the person's spirit saving the soul, but the demon/vampire disease would inhabit the body making the human undead and now a vampire. What do you think of that? Then it's a matter of what must happen to redeem the human once the demon/disease is gone in order to either let that person live or just go to Heaven. What do you think would be a good idea from that point?
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