In theory: Rev. Beverly Craig

In HBO’s new series "True Blood," vampires have "come out of the coffin," that is, they have revealed themselves to society after thousands of years in seclusion. Now, in the spirit of today’s Halloween celebrations, if we were living in the world of "True Blood," would you accept a vampire into your congregation?

 Even though no man is an island, vampires live self-serving lives.

Should vampires wake up and join our spiritual community enmasse, several teachings from the Ten Commandments as given to Moses come to mind. These Ten Commandmenets were given to Moses by God for the purpose of guiding and directing his people into a more spiritual way of life. Living a self-serving life violates the First Commandment: Thou shall have no other gods before me. By focusing on their own longevity, they do not consider spirituality as an important aspect of life. God is non-existent to them.

In order to prolong a vampire’s life, he/she must drink the blood of a human. This violates the Sixth Commandment: Thou shall not kill (or cause distress) to another human being; and the Eighth Commandment which instructs: Do not steal. In this case, taking another’s blood is stealing.

Lastly, they violate the Tenth Commandment: Not to covet anything anyone else has. They want as much blood as they can possibly beg, borrow or steal.

These guys are in trouble — and we can help them! It’s a given they must have blood to survive. Thanks to medical science, we now have synthetic blood that is effective in sustaining life. Our spiritual community would kindly arrange for regular transfusions of the synthetic blood for these vampires, and pour so much love out to them that their desire to break any of the Ten Commandments in order to survive would dwindle to nothing. Then, the REAL work would begin — teaching them of God’s Love for his creation.

Those vampires would have a whole new life before them as we teach them about love and service to humankind.

. BEVERLY CRAIG is pastor of La Crescenta Center for Spiritual Living. Reach her at (818) 249-1045.