“The world is a vampire.” I’ll never forget the first time I heard Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins sing that line as they took the stage in Chicago; I was in my bedroom well after midnight, wide awake and quiet as a mouse, doing all that I could not to wake my parents, eagerly anticipating one of the greatest bands of all time to take the stage and unveil their follow-up to Siamese Dream. I tuned in to 99.7 FM, 99X, our alternative radio station in Atlanta. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was about to be released into the wild, and my 15-year-old (and honestly 46-year-old) heart could hardly stand it. I turned the volume on my stereo down as low as possible for fear of getting caught and grounded until the end of time. You can probably imagine the rest of the story, including fashion, choices, attitudes, values, and my overall demeanor toward everything in the world. It was 1995, and I had more angst, uncertainty, and frustration inside me than I could contain. I didn’t know what post-modernity was; I didn’t know how existentialism felt; I didn’t consider whether or not truth was relative. All I knew was that I didn’t care about algebra. I still don’t. I lived on Barq’s root beer, Thrasher Magazine, and the thrill of not getting caught. That’s who I was, where I was, and how I was. Everything smelled like teen spirit.
My family was sound asleep, and I sat on the edge of my bed next to my Siamese cat, Maggie, jittery like a little boy on Christmas Eve, eagerly waiting for Billy, James, D’Arcy, and Jimmy to take the stage. I was locked and loaded with blank tapes, ready to press “Play” and “Record” at the same time and capture what I knew would be part of my life forever. That night, I heard the crowd, the band, the lyrics, imagining what it was like to be there in person; I was utterly lost in the experience; the intensity of the music, enjoyed in the quiet in the middle of the night next to Maggie; I’ll never ever forget it.
Well, here we are, thirty-one years later, in October. School is fully in swing; 90s fashion has never been more alive; the fall has arrived, the larches are yellow, the grey expands as far as the East is from the West, and the high schoolers are listening to Basement, Citizen, and Title Fight. It could be worse. But Billy was right. The world is a vampire.
At fifteen, I understood those words to mean something like: the world is here to take whatever it can from you. It will feed on you, live off of you, and then move on to its next victim. You, the consumer, exist to be consumed. And you know, Billy was right. Thirty-one years later, I’ve found that the world is still a vampire. It’s easy to doomscroll on your phone and watch reel after reel of injustice all over the world. And as you do, a nihilistic resignation settles into your spirit, dragging you down to the dregs, and soon, you feel the weight of what Nietzsche said about the abyss gazing back into you.
Pause.
Exhale.
I know what you’re thinking. “Thanks, Pastor, for this ever so uplifting slog of an email. How might I lift my eyes to the hills, count it all joy, or say with the psalmist, ‘This is the day the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it’?” “And besides, who is right? Billy or the psalmist?” “Is the world a vampire or not?” And the answer is that both Billy and the psalmist are telling the truth. The world is a vampire, but that’s not the end of the story. 2,000 years ago, Jesus Christ, the Author of life, shed his blood on Calvary and triumphed over the grave! The Light of the world, the hope of glory, the vampire-conqueror now reigns and rules, and as he does, he pours out his wisdom on his people, guiding us in our daily lives, enabling us to suffer without giving in to despair, to give more, to serve more, to repent more, to change more, knowing that the world will not always be a vampire; it will be made new. So in the meantime, we agree with Billy, but by faith, we sing with the psalmist.