Leviticus 17

"Eating Blood Forbidden," proclaims the NIV heading to chapter 17. The use of "eat" here and in verses 10 and 12 is intriguing, and perhaps a little disturbing. We usually say, "drink blood" because blood is a liquid; eat describes solid (or solid-ish) provender. Which is why "eat" is disturbing, because to "eat" blood, it has to be solid, or dried. Drinking liquid blood isn't any better, but still….

For any of you hoping to hear juicy (or sanguinary) stories about me drinking blood, you're in luck! (Be warned: This story may enter "Too Much Information" territory.) As a kid, I used to get bloody noses now and again (sensitive blood vessels, apparently), and a couple of times I did what you're not supposed to do when you have a bloody nose--sniff vigorously. Of course, that had the unpalatable effect of making me swallow some of that blood as it went straight from the back of my nose down my throat, bypassing the mouth.

But enough juvenile anecdotes about me. When we think about beings that drink (or eat, if you insist on using that word) blood, what immediately comes to mind? What do we call the blood-sucking creatures in that literary masterpiece, Twilight, portrayed by Kristen Stewart and that other dude? That's right--we call them mosquitos. Think about it--mosquitos and those things in Twilight are annoying, make irritatingly shrill noises, feature countenances lacking anything resembling the range of human emotions, and prove surprisingly difficult to squash.

Other than mosquitos and their Twilight brethren, we have one of the latest horror fads--vampires. (I'm tempted to say that the characters in Twilight aren't "real" vampires, but that's using the pesky "no true Scotsman" fallacy.) Verse 11 says, "the life of the creature is in the blood," and indeed, the concept of a mythical beast that sucks the life force out of someone fascinates many. Although Bram Stoker's Dracula didn't invent vampires, it certainly helped informally canonize many vampire tropes--chief among them the elegance and seductiveness of the creatures of the night.

However, John Ajvide Lindqvist's masterful novel Let the Right One In, along with the film adaptation and its American remake Let Me In (the latter of which proves as wrenchingly poignant as the Swedish original), refreshingly turns the glamor of vampirism on its head. The trials of the main character, a girl who became a vampire when she was a preteen, encapsulate all the challenges, tragedy, and loneliness of being an immortal who needs to kill others to survive. Why do I mention this? I suppose this tangent went longer that I expected, but I suppose I can contrive a tenuous connection: Let the Right One In/Let Me In, unlike the vast majority of vampire films and literature, shows that drinking blood isn't all it's cracked up to be. Exactly what God was saying all along!