Passion, Identity and Twilight

I have a confession. I judge anyone over the age of 18 who reads and enjoys Twilight. For those under 18, I judge their parents. It's an unnecessary problem. I'll give you that. But it's still there. I will confess that I've never read any of the books. I have, however, read synopses of them and in context excerpts. From them, I've been able to pull that the story is horribly bland, the characters are of the kind where you hope the guy in the hockey mask learns how to run to save you the next 85 minutes of your life, and the writing is so bad that I feel like the editor should be put in a cage with and handcuffed to a cougar for allowing such a monstrosity to leave his office (And not the cat kind of cougar either; the 43 year old woman who hibernated in a tanning bed for most of the 90's kind. Or as she's known in the wild: the Leathery Death.) To put it simply: I hate these books.

But realistically, why do I even have an opinion on this? Why do I so passionately hate them? I'm obviously not the intended audience for these books and their being horrible has no real effect on my life. I hate Twilight for the same reason that anyone else does; because there are people out there who not only love it, but think that it's good, and it's my job to show them that they're wrong.

I think that's the trick with passion, it has to go both ways. No one really hates anything that someone else doesn't love. If people don't think something is worthy of love, others don't think it's worthy of hate. It's almost as if love validates hate. I really can't think of a subject that people passionately love that doesn't have a group of just as passionate haters who feel it is their job to counterbalance the fan club.

But the thing I'm learning is that our identity is found, not in what we loves, but in our passions. That means that when we love something passionately, we're identifying ourselves with it. You can tell this because the haters don't just hate the object of love, but the lovers themselves. But, if passion is a two-sided coin, then that means that the haters are identified with the object of their hate as well. For instance, if I think about abortion, before I picture any type of advocate, I can't get out of my head a picture of a group of activists protesting a clinic. They are identified with what they hate.

This leads me to wonder, am I known more for what I passionately love or what I passionately hate? The beauty of grace is that my identity is found in Christ no matter what I do, but what does the evidence of my life say? Nothing that I do can take away who I am, but if 1 Corinthians 4:20 is true, then I shouldn't have to tell people where my passion lies. It should be obvious.

PS: Kelly, you're the exception. I don't judge you no matter what you read.