← Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey
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- [00:01]
A
5:00Am I'm up with a crisp Celsius energy drink running 12 miles today. Grab a green juice, quick change and head to work. Meetings, workshops. One more Celsius. No slowing down. Working late, but obviously still meeting the girls for a little dancing. Celsius Live Fit. Go grab a cold refreshing Celsius at your local retailer or locate now@celsius.com.
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B
The new movie Wuthering Heights was just released and what does this adaptation, as well as the marketing campaign surround surrounding it, tell us about our society's obsession with sadomasochistic love stories? And why does this matter? How is it impacting young girls in our country? And what's the answer to this? Biblically? We've got all of this and more on today's episode of Relatable. Also, a couple things. Thank you to those of you who bought early bird tickets. Incredible. Praise God. We sold 3,000 tickets that first day. This is going to be, by the grace of God, an incredible event. I really encourage you. If you don't have your tickets, go go to share the arrows.com get your tickets today. This is our no Fluff Christian Women's Conference. Also tomorrow I am moderating the Attorney General Primary Republican primary debate Blaze TV YouTube Blaze TV X 8pm Eastern Time but we got 7pm Central Time. We should put that up there since we're in Texas. This is so important not only if you live in Texas, but also the entire country. Texas leads the way for legal battles for conservatives in this country. So excited to moderate this. So make sure you tune in. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good ranchers. Go to good ranchers.com use code ally at checkout. That's good ranchers.com code ally. Hey guys. Welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. Hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine's weekend celebrating what love really, really means according to the God who is love. And we've got really good news on this Monday. God's eternal plan of redemption is going off without a hitch. So whether or not you had a good weekend, no matter what circumstance you're going through, no matter what your mood is this morning, no matter how you slept last night, no matter what thing you are worried about happening or not happening tomorrow, God's eternal plan of redemption is going off without a hitch. No matter how long you've been waiting, no matter how worried you are, you, he is in control of all of it. He's not waiting there wondering what's going to happen next. He already knows and he has chosen you before the foundations of the world in love. That's what we read in Ephesians 1. That is the best news ever. If we never get anything else that we want in life, that truth would be enough to point to God's grace, to point to his goodness. That he loved us so much that he sent a way for us to be reconciled to him, to pay for our sins. And to be liberated from sin here on earth, but then spent forever and ever with Him. That is really good news. So whatever disappointments we feel here in this life, and maybe even more than that, maybe it's heartbreak or betrayal or whatever it is, we always have an underlying joy and hope. Knowing that that is our future. There's a lot of chaos and a lot of tragedy going on in the world every day. It feels like we are constantly faced with just the depths of human depravity, demonic activity, demonic possession. That might not look exact like it did in Jesus's time, But nevertheless, Ephesians 2 is true today. That the prince of the power of the air is at work among the sons of disobedience. And we are faced with that on an everyday basis. When we look at things like the Epstein files. I mean, some of it just makes you want to turn your phone off, throw it into the ocean, Never look at what's going on in the news again. Because we are just not made to be constantly fed the reality of evil that is being perpetrated against the most vulnerable people. And it's really easy to lose hope. It's really easy to just be dejected. It's really easy to just bury our head in the sand and say, I'm just not going to think about it. I'm not going to look at it. And sometimes you do need to just not look at it. Sometimes you do just not need to dwell on the negative. However, I do want to caution you against being completely cynical and losing hope. Because I don't know exactly what justice for all of Epstein's victims and all the victims of injustice looks like here on Earth. We pray for that. We work toward that. We advocate for that. What I do know is that Psalm 37 is true. That one day all injustice will be done away with. One day there will be no more reason for sadness. One day there will be no more reason for cynicism, disappointment, dejection. One day we won't have young fathers like James Van Der Beek dying from cancer. There will be no more death. There will be no more cancer. There will be no more injustice or oppression or Abuse because Jesus is coming back and he will rule in perfect peace forever and ever. So I just want to encourage you. I hear these horrible stories of people dying before it seems like in our mind, what their time should be. They don't get to live a long life, whether it's Charlie Kirk or James Vanderbeek or a number of other people you know in your life. And I just want to urge you that today, if you feel conviction, if you feel that prompting either to become a Christian, to repent of your sin and to be saved by grace through faith in Jesus. Like if you're prompted to learn more about who this Jesus is, if you're prompted to read the Bible, if you're prompted to go to a Bible believing, Bible preaching church, if you're prompted, even as a Christian, to repent of your sin, to bring darkness into light, to come out of hiding, to put your faith in action, whatever that may be, don't resist it. Don't think that you have all the time in the world to do what you know you need to do. God has given you this moment and I don't want us to be deluded by Satan into thinking that you'll have all of the chances in the world to do the right thing or to know the God who loves you. So that's the message I have for you this morning. Just to start out this episode as we do talk about some of the darkness going on in the world, that that is our obligation as human beings. That is also our hope as Christ Christians, the hope that we have in Christ and the joy that we can find in his salvation. Now, unfortunately, we do live in this fallen world and Christians are called to be salt. We're called to give, be a preservative of all things good. We are called to give flavor in the world. But we are also called to be light. And in order to be light, we have to sometimes walk into dark spaces and we have to talk about dark subjects. And I am fascinated. Maybe fascinated is too positive. I am interested in, in a very concerned way about the particular darkness that is targeting young women. That's leading women into unhealthy relationships, unhealthy choices, leading them into bad personal decisions, bad political decisions that lead them into a life of unhappiness where they are pursuing fleeting pleasures, whether it's through relationships or through their careers or through their pets or through politics, rather than one following Christ, but also pursuing lasting things like marriage and children. And I have long been interested in how our entertainment and the messages that we see from romance novels, from TV shows, and how movies are playing into that. And one example of this is a movie that I've seen advertised so much recently. It came out over the weekend and it's Wuthering Heights. And it's based on the book by Emily Bronte that was written in 1847. It tells the story of two tortured lovers, Catherine and Heathcliff. There have been adaptations of this over the years. This time it's a movie starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. I've seen all kinds of marketing for this that has been really effective because I thought, okay, I might want to go see this. It's based on a classic novel. I like Margot Robbie. I don't know anything about this Jacob guy, but it, it looks like a good romance and I'm a sucker for a good romance movie. But then I started seeing the trailers and I was like, oh, I feel like this is more like 50 shades of gray set in the 19th century. And maybe not. Here's that one.
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C
Do you want me to stop?
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B
No. So there is this like deep obsession in this storyline. And that is true of the book. It is just hyper sexualized, it seems like in the movie. So if you don't know about the story, it begins at the isolated Wuthering Heights farm where young Catherine Earnshaw and the orphaned Heathcliff formed this deep, intense bond under her abusive father's roof. Heathcliff doesn't have a last name because he grew up as an orphan and has unknown parents. And that highlights this kind of class gap and this tension between him and Catherine. Kind of like we see in the Titanic. And that's a major theme of the book and film. And that's like a common trope in a lot of books and can be really interesting and add attention there. And then as adults, their unspoken passion clashes with class barriers. Catherine marries the wealthy, refined Edgar Linton for Social Security and stability, driving the devastated Heathcliff away. And then years later, Heathcliff returns, mysteriously rich and more attractive and transformed. And that reignites their fiery, now completely forbidden connection. Not only forbidden because of the class disparity that once existed, but also because she is married. And then she also gets pregnant. And this leads to explicit, explicit torrid affairs. And Heathcliff enacts revenge. There's a lot of jealousy going on here. There's a lot of like, you know, different people. Obviously Catherine's husband and then another woman who is all kind of being. They're all kind of being used as pawns in this very sadistic, masochistic like torture, revenge thing going on. Heathcliff manipulates and marries Edgar's smitten repressed sister Isabella in a scheme to hurt Catherine and to punish those who separated them. And then in the end, Heathcliff reduces the heirs of his enemies to lowly powerless, to a lowly powerless state that he once endured. And he controls all of their estates and their education and their social standing and their freedom and their daily lives. And then Catherine's brother dies. Heathcliff becomes the guardian of his son and keeps him uneducated and illiterate by denying him schooling and books, turning him into an ignorant servant. It's all very sad. And then he schemes to have Catherine's daughter to marry his son, imprisoning her until she agrees to the marriage. And so it's dark. It really was dark in the 1800s, but it's even darker in the version that we read today. And we'll get into more of how this theme seems to be played out in this movie and the unhealthy effect that I think it has on the minds of women and also how the actors are portraying their relationship with one another in real life that I also think is an unhealthy symbol of what love should be. Let me pause and tell you about our first sponsor for the day. It's Adele Natural Cosmetics. Adele Natural Cosmetics is a Christian founded family owned company that creates clean cosmetic items as well as skin care products. I use their essential cleanser every day. I love their essential moisturizing spray. It also works great as an air freshener. Everything is scented through essential oils which are completely natural, no endocrine disrupting synthetic fragrances in any of their items. Plus, if you're looking for products that really moisturize your skin, it's not just their skin care line but also their cosmetic products that work so well for that. It's lightweight, it's nourishing your skin rather than weighing down your skin when you're wearing it. Plus, this is an unapologetically pro life, Christian America loving company that you want to support. Go to Adele Natural Cosmetics.com use promo code ALI at checkout for 25% off your first time purchase. That's Adele Natural Cosmetics.com code ALI. So the film is being promoted as inspired by the greatest love story of all time. Now just remember all of that and I probably gave you too much detail but just about what the storyline is is that really love the greatest love story of all time. And it also carries this tagline which I think is important to the theme that we're talking about drive me mad. This idea that the greatest love story of all time has to do with insanity and jealousy and bitterness and cruelty and torture and revenge. And also these very, very hyper sexual and it seems easy, even edging on violent sexual affairs that these two lovers are having even during pregnancy. That is what is being marketed as the greatest love story ever told. Now the marketing for this is brilliant. If you like this kind of love story, it makes you want to watch it because these actors and Margot Robbie is very good at this. She does this, I think, with all of the films she's in. She basically portrays the character in one way or another in her real life. Now I don't she's fully trying to act like she is Catherine. But she plays upon this obsession with her co star Jacob. And we can pull up this Vogue magazine cover. They. If you didn't know any better, you might think that maybe they really are in love. At least there's a sexual component to their relationship. It seems it's a very sexual picture. And not only that, but they look like they are playing a modern version of their roles. She looks a little bit ashamed, a little bit guilty, but she can't help herself. He is looking at her with longing. And I just want to remind you, as we're talking about all of this, that Margot Robbie is married, she has a child. There are a lot of interviews that go around that talk about the film and they're talking about not only the characters they play, but the real relationship they have with each other. So there is this Valentine's Day interview where Margot Robbie says to Jacob, my next question for you. We were shooting on Valentine's Day, so not a Valentine's Day interview, but they were talking about Valentine's Day in this interview, I guess maybe last Valentine's Day. And she says, you made my day. And as Heathcliff filled my room with roses and it was so cute. What did I do for you? So they're saying as Heathcliff, but this is real life. And Jacob says, I don't think you did anything. The thing is, I thought you would. I mean, they're playing their charact characters. You definitely beat me. Yours was so epic. I remember thinking on Valentine's Day, oh, he's probably a very good boyfriend. Because there's a lot of thoughtfulness in this. You did a lot of very thoughtful things. It wasn't just the gesture of the roses. It was the thing written from Heathcliff. And that little tombstone thing. I was like, ah, Crafts. Love that. It was crafty. It was meaningful, it was dramatic. Okay, so if you didn't know any better, you would think maybe you're taking the method acting a little bit too far because it's infiltrating your real life. And you can say that it's just his characters, but at the end of the day, this is happening off set, off camera, and you really are married to someone. And he says, I really didn't like shooting. This is another interview when Margot wasn't there. I hated shooting when you weren't there. The two describe missing each other when shooting scenes with other actors. And Margot Robbie says, love them, the other actors more than anything. But I was like, he's mine. And she actually admits that she felt very codependent on this man when she was on set two.
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D
I start. I found myself starting to look around to see where I was like, well, he's obviously going to be somewhere close by. Where is he right now? Because he's not in a corner of a room watching me right now. And then I was. He wasn't. And I was really unnerved and unmoored, and I. And I felt like, quite lost. Like. Like a kid without their, like, blanket or something.
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B
And then she also described this other romantic gesture that she received from Jacob. Sat 3.
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D
Do you know how that happened, though? Is we went to rehearse it, and they rehearsed it with the rain machines on because we're checking if the rain machine level was right. And I. I was going like that because the rain had started. And of course, when you. Looking at. When you're acting with Jacob, you're, like.
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B
Looking up like this.
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D
So I went. I went like that. And he just automatically went to cover my face because he's a gentleman. And it's just like that's. That's second nature to him. He just automatically went like that. And honestly, both Emerald and I just went, okay, stop. And he was not aware that he had done anything chivalrous or romantic at all. And we were just like. That was one of the most romantic things I ever experienced and seen. So do that for the whole scene. And then we made that the scene.
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B
I think it's strange how you can kind of push the boundaries of what is acceptable in a relationship between a man and a woman, not just on screen. I still think there's something morally wrong with that, obviously, but when you're not even filming it, it's justified because it's all under the umbrella of, well, this is just my job. And then, of course, Jacob says that his obsession Was mutual. Margot's obsessed with him, he's obsessed with her. Sup for?
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C
We have a mutual obsession. I think the thing is, if you, regardless of plot or screenplay, if you have the opportunity to share a film set with Margot Robbie, you're gonna make sure you're within 5 to 10 meters at all times. Watching how she drinks tea, how she eats her food, how she does it, when is it gonna slip? When is the thing gonna come undone? And it never comes undone. She's just like an elite actor and she's producing the movie.
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B
Okay. So I think this is probably all genuine. They probably feel this way about each other, which you could argue is troubling in itself. It is also part of marketing what draws women in. It's what draws the audience in that I want to see. Wow. If it is this tense, if there's this much sexual tension and this much romance and this much obsession when they're out of character, when they're not in their costume, when they're off screen, how much more exciting is it going to be to see all of that released and manifested on camera? So this is all kind of part of a marketing scheme, but it builds this idea in women's minds that this is the greatest love story ever told. This is what love and romance should look like. And if you think that I'm exaggerating the effect that movies have on women, then you should talk to your friends who read the Colleen Hoover books, who are obsessed still with the Twilight series, who are constantly just consuming even things like the Notebook. I love the Notebook. It's terrible, but I remember loving the Notebook when I first saw it and thinking that that was a love story. That's actually another example. Totally immoral, totally unethical. Not at all a healthy idea of what love and romance and marriage and pursuit should look like. But it really does affect the mind of people, married or unmarried, and setting our standards for what romance and love should actually look like. And a lot of this is, I believe, the intention of the writer director, Emerald Fennell, who is behind Wuthering Heights. This is her third feature as a writer director. She also wrote the queer themed psychological thriller. I hate that term, queer themed, whatever that means. LGBTQ affirming. Saltburn. And I did not know what Saltburn was about. I watched it for maybe five minutes and I was like, what did I get myself into? I don't know. I guess a commercial made me think it would be interesting. And I like, like dramatic movies and shows. But I started watching that. I was like, this is too dark. And I think it's weird because I can't really tell what's going on between these two men off. And I never watch it. And I only put it together yesterday that Jacob was also in that and that he is in this. And Fennell seems to have this desire to queer fy or sexualize or make darker storylines. She said this. I don't know what this means. She said, what I have attempted to do is adapt my own experience of reading it for the first time. It is an adaptation of a feeling. My first disemboweling by the baby God. Now this is where I wish that I had Bri on the show. This would be an example of something that Bri and I would have discussed together. And see Bri had a little more insight into the art hearts. And she would probably be able to tell me exactly what Fennell meant when she said disemboweling by the baby God. Honestly, I could see that as a Taylor Swift lyric. I feel like it's all in the same vein. Bri would probably be able to tell me what that means. By the way, we're gonna have Brion for a segment. I know a lot of you guys miss our back and forth. We still chat very consistently. And one day she's gonna come on because. Because someone reminded me this is just an aside that I haven't rated the outfits of people at the award shows. That's very important. I know that some of y' all hated that, but a lot of you liked that. So I'm gonna have her back on. Maybe to just dissect what this strange quote means, but also to rate people's weird outfits at the Grammys and the Met and all of that. Fanel described her goal as recreating the primal and sexual emotional response that she had as a teenager. Tmi. Tmi. She noted that some of the more risque elements she added came from what she mistakenly thought was in the book as a 14 year old filling in gaps from her youthful imagination. Maybe why a 14 year old shouldn't be reading something like this. But also just goes to show that actually people do fill in the gaps in their minds and she is actually trying to imprint something on women's brains about sexuality and also about. About sex. We'll get into more of that in a second. Let me pause. Tell you about our next sponsor for the day that is preborn. Very thankful for the light that is preborn in this very dark world. They are loving women and showing what true love Christ like love really looks like to women in crisis who are walking into pregnancy centers, who have been told by the abortion lobby and Planned Parenthood that their baby's just a clump of cells, that their life will be over if they have this child. They are so often been manipulated into having an abortion. But as you know, pregnancy centers across the country are telling women the exact opposite. They're telling them the truth. They're saying, no, no, your life is not over. This might be difficult, but you're not alone. This is a blessing. This baby is a baby, your baby. And he or she is worthy of life. And so preborn equips these pregnancy centers with all of the equipment, the tools they need to serve these women, to help them make that life affirming choice. So partner with them. Whatever you can donate helps save a baby's Life. Go to preborn.com alli that's preborn.com ally. Okay, so Fennell said that she has been deeply obsessed with this novel for years. She described the adaptation process as, quote, an act of extreme masochism to try and make a film of something that means this much to you. So masochism in maybe a different way than it's portrayed in the movie, but it seems in fitting with the theme. Fennell is not the only director to kind of take these bold liberties with classic literature. We've got, for example, C.S. lewis's the Chronicles of Narnia. There has been some talk about Greta Gerwig, who is the director apparently of the new Chronicles of Narnia movie she directed Barbie, that she might make Aslan a woman or have a woman's voice like Meryl Streep. We don't know if that's true. And then the film's editor, Andrew Wisblom said in an interview that he's actually not even going to refer back to that material because we're doing. They're doing their own rendition of it, which is very unfortunate. It's one thing to make an already dark novel like Wuthering Heights traits even darker and more sexualized. It's another thing to take such a beautiful novel that paints such a beautiful picture of Jesus's victory over evil like the brilliant C.S. lewis did in the Chronicles of Narnia, and make it something woke and dumb and gay. My goodness. So that, that's just an aside. I'm not looking forward to that. Hopefully that's not going to be sexualized. I mean, that's not really in keeping with the theme that we're talking about right now. I hope it's not going to paint this dark picture of romance. We know that we've officially gone off the rails. If Aslan and the White Witch are getting together, we've got problems. Hopefully that's not going to happen. But this is just a theme of kind of taking classic literature that really could be made into something beautiful and lasting and actually worthy of our admiration and turning it into something that I think is just like a really cheap imitation. Now these outlets have something to say about Wuthering Heights. The Independent says it uses the guise of interpretation to gut one of the most impassioned, emotionally violent novels ever, ever written. It's an astonishingly hollow work. Not high praise. The BBC says finale channels something essential in the book. The corrosive behavior that can result from thwarted desire, jealousy, anger, vengeance, or as natural to Kathy and Heathcliff as their endless passion for each other. Empire says while the film doesn't need a denser narrative, it could benefit from feeling more grounded, especially when Kathy and Heathcliff fight and fornicate like teenagers ricocheting between lust and loathing. Blah. But apparently that is what. That's what the film is. So this seems to be a theme in which dark romance is targeting women and trying to shape what they think about love. If you look back, this is not new, by the way. Obviously, Wuthering Heights was written in the 1800s. But if you look back to the Twilight Saga, I was one of the first consumers of the Twilight Saga. Okay, I actually didn't know anything about it. I was in high school. School. I frequented Barnes and Noble very often. My friends and I were always looking for good books to read together. And I came across this book with a little. It was a black book with a little red apple on it that I was like, ooh, that looks really good. And I read it and of course, I was obsessed because that is the nature of these books. They're very, I would say, superficially written. They're very easy to read. They draw you in, and they really play upon the hormones and the immature mind of a teenage girl to just suck you into it. No pun intended, since we're talking about a vampire, a vampire series. But the possessiveness and the jealousy and the even, like, violence that is normalized in Twilight and, like, the intense sexual tension, also the weird idea of imprinting upon, like, a baby. There's a lot of very dark and disturbing themes in something like Twilight. Also, there are other books that. That celebrate the kind of like, dark romantic themes, like great and terrible beauty that were very prominent and popular when I was a high schooler and I just wonder how much this has had an effect on young women. Is this part of the reason why women tolerate staying in abusive relationships? They end up settling for the guy that is aggressive or they end up trying to go for the guy that is possessive of them and all of their time and cuts out their friends and. And you hear these terrible stories of these women who were abused sometimes to death or abused in the hospital. And there were always signs before it. Now, I'm not saying that's the only factor, these romance novels and movies, but I do think that's part of it. That while we are simultaneously saying, women don't settle, you deserve better, this is what a healthy relationship looks like and you should never sit around and be abused emotionally or physically by a man. We are also feeding them this stuff and saying, well, it's fine, you can separate that from reality, but clearly most people can't. You actually can't celebrate or separate many people what they are being entertained by and like their guiding philosophy in life. Especially when you see the actors like Margot Robbie and Jacob kind of conflating their characters with reality, it becomes very confusing and very convincing for a lot of people. Bridgerton. I've never seen Bridgerton. I think I should start a club of. I will be the president of the I've never seen Bridgerton Club and I never want to see Bridgerton Club because it's weird. And I've seen the commercials for it I don't like. If you're going to have a period piece, then make it actually seem like a period piece. Not a New York City pride parade in 2026. But it's the same kind of thing. It highlights obsessiveness, intense jealousy, the push pull dynamics, which is really fun to watch. However, again, glamorizing this kind of volatility that really is not healthy in a real life relationship. There was that Netflix series you another one that I tried to launch and I was like, why did I even. I don't know. Very dark, very scary. It's this guy who he becomes obsessed with these different women and then he ends up up stalking them. And he has like a fixation on them. He manipulates them, he ends up abusing them, he ends up getting married to and impregnating one of them. There's all kinds of infidelity and stuff, but how it is written, it makes you want them to be together. It's really strange. And it makes you almost like him and almost root for him, even though he is Literally a serial killer. Of course we've got things like 50 shades of gray. But then we also have the same theme in music. When you look at someone like Taylor Swift and I know people are going to be like, you're just a Taylor Swift hater. No, you know what? I. I also rolled down the windows to my Volvo when I was 16 years old and blasted the Fearless album. Okay, I am not so different than you. It's just that I feel it like I have grown up and Taylor Swift has not, you know, and I just don't relate to a lot of the themes and the dark themes in her in her albums. Like, for example, if we look at Blank Space 2014 and we look at some of her other albums, here's a line. I get drunk on jealousy but you'll come back each time you leave because darling, I'm a nightmare dressed like a daydream it's just really silly. But there's lots of different themes like that. Always talking about jealousy and obsessiveness. I knew you'd linger like a tattoo kiss I knew you'd haunt all of my what ifs. And I'm not saying all of that is wrong. Obviously when you first fall in love with someone, a lot of us have experienced that, like can't eat, can't sleep, obsession. Just love them so much. But this type of overly emotional, glorifying jealousy I actually think is really dangerous for women to imbibe. Billie Eilish, same thing. One of her songs, I didn't change my Number, you're obsessed. Don't take it out on me. I'm out of sympathy for you. Actually, a lot of her songs have these very disturbing themes of obsession. She's talking about both men and women. And then of course we've got Sabrina Carpenter and it's like a funny kind of lighthearted song. If you watch the, if you watch the music video, which I'm not recommending, but it does make light of something that is really very dangerous. She's talking about dating this guy that she knows is terrible. Like he's a bad person. He like just got out of jail or whatever and she knows that he is going to hurt her. And she sings. I know I have good judgment. I know I have good taste. She's being tongue in cheek there. It's funny and it's ironic that only I feel this way. I promise them that you're different, but just don't. I heard that you're an actor, so act like a stand up guy, whatever. Devil's Inside you don't let him out tonight. And it's this whole story of a woman settling for a guy that she knows is really bad in general and really bad for her. So we see this Olivia Rodrigo. So many of the stars, the movies, the books, the songs that are targeting young women are encouraging this very unhealthy mentality about themselves and also about the man that they're supposed to pursue. And I just wonder if these unrealistic expectations of what romance should look like are actually keeping women single for longer than they would be. Maybe if they were looking for enduring qualities like, of course, as Christians, Christ likeness, but also just diligence and faithfulness and a quiet confidence and being a good friend. Maybe if they were looking for those things rather than the like, will he, won't he Obsessive things that we read in Colleen Hoover novels, like maybe women would have eyes for a healthier relationship sooner. It's not great if women are only realizing that their expectations have failed them when they're 40 years old. Now, for some people, that's just God's plan for you to meet the person that you're supposed to marry when you're 40. But when this is the cause, that's a really big problem. Also think that it probably has to do with this tick tock theme of these young women. We're talking teenage girls. Girls. We've talked about this before on this show, this unfortunate trend of kink talk where you've got these young women who are pretending like they like to be choked and they like to be violated and they like to be treated as objects like these pornographic objects. I think that all of this media pressure and this narrative from entertainment that this is what love looks like has really messed with women's heads and is leading them in really, really dangerous places. We've got more on that in a. Let me pause tell you about our next sponsor for the day, and that is EveryLife. 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There was this 2014 study in the Journal of Women's Health found that found that women who read fifty Shades of Gray. So most of you are probably familiar. I mentioned it briefly earlier, but it's just the sadomasochistic BDSM glorifying book that turned into a movie. And women love, loved, yuck. They were more likely to experience stalking, coercion, physical abuse in real life. Now think about that for a second. So women who were watching this or reading this were more likely to be stalked. Now the men were not stalking them and violating them because they Knew they read 50 Shades of Gray. Obviously it created in them a tolerance for that kind of behavior and just an immunity to the red flags and the warning signs that then led to that. I'm not trying to victim shame here. I'm not saying that it's all women's fault that they were violated in that way. I'm saying that this chips away at our conscience and this chips away at our discernment when we see these glorified depictions of violence. The study says problematic depictions of violence against women in popular culture such as in film, novels, music or pornography, create a broader social narrative that normalizes these risks and behaviors in women's lives. Our studies showed strong correlations between health risks in women's lives, including violence, victimization and consumption of 50 Shades, a fiction series that portrays violence against women. In the journal gender issues, a 2021 study shows media violence against women increases acceptance of domestic violence attitudes with women often depicted as victims or objects reinforcing patriarchal norms. The study says results indicate a significant positive relationship between exposure to pleasurable television violence and self reported intimate partner abuse. Endorsement of domestic violence beliefs and victimization experience were found to be the strongest predictors of intimate partner violence perpetration. A 2025 study published in the journal Social Sciences shows showed, quote, the culture of romance is a significant associated factor to adolescent gender violence due to entrenched traditional stereotypes and media influences that make control or jealousy or dependence appear as proof of love. Now listen to that what I just said and think back to what Margot Robbie was saying at the beginning about being codependent on her star, not even just her character, but in real life. And think about the effect that they that has on young women. In this study, they found that 26.6% that is very significant, said that boys should control who their girlfriends associate with. So, like, really break down that boys. Okay, so we're talking about minors should control. Okay? Not just like, hey, I don't think that that's a very good friend to you. She's pretty mean. Should control who their girlfriends, not their wives. Obviously we're talking about minors should associate with. And I'm not saying that husbands should be quote unquote controlling. I'm just saying, like, think about who we're talking about here. We are talking about teenagers and a fourth of them, over a fourth of them saying that it's okay for boyfriends to be controlling. I absolutely think that that is glorified to our young girls today. There are also some mental health blogs that write about this topic. Framing harm, how media shapes our understanding of domestic and sexual violence. Romanticizing abuse, the dangerous normalization of toxic relationships. So this is absolutely a problem. And I just want parents. My girls are young, but I just want parents of preteens and teens to be extremely careful about the sources of romance that your children are seeing. You know, my parents were very restrictive about the things that I could watch. They probably could have been even more restrictive at the time I thought they were so strict and the most ridiculous parents ever because they were actually much stricter than a lot of my friends parents. But looking back at some of the things that like I was watching and especially the things I was reading, I'm like, oh, well, that's where I got that lie about romance or love. And I'm so thankful that I found such a wonderful husband after college and that I've been married for 10 years. I'm so grateful for that. But not having those unrealistic and unhealthy depictions of love fed to me at my most vulnerable and hormonal time as a teenager would have set me up much better for dating and relationships and all of that before I met my husband. I think that a lot of parents, maybe my parents thought this, that if they're not. We didn't really have social media. Like we had Facebook. I don't think we even had a Facebook app on our phone. I didn't have a smartphone until I was, I don't know, 16 or probably 17 actually. And so like, scrolling at night wasn't a thing. Thank you Lord, that I was born before I could be A teenager with Snapchat or TikTok, I think my parents probably thought, well, she's reading. And so that's healthy. But all of these very dark and truly monstrous romance books that I was reading were actually very sexual, very trashy, and not healthy. Not expanding, not only my mind, not expanding my virtue. And I think that we as parents just have to be a lot more cautious of that. Even those of us who are parents of little ones and thinking about the shows that our child is watching, obviously it's not going to be romantic. But asking the question, not just is this not bad for them, or is this not as bad as something else? Or at least they're not on an iPad, or at least they're not watching this, but is this expanding their mind and expanding their virtue? Will after this, they have a better idea of what is good, right and true? Or will they have a more distorted idea of what is good, right and true? Will they better understand the God who created them and the world of right and wrong? Will they have a better understanding of who they are, their identity, or will it be worse? Or maybe you could argue that it's neutral. But time is a very finite commodity, and what we fill our mind with is going to shape us in some way. As always, though, the Bible gives us clarity. What should love actually look like? I'm not just talking about the agape love that God has for his people, that unconditional love, but even Eros love, love, erotic love, romantic love, these different types of love that in the right context are really healthy, but in the wrong context are really detrimental. What we know about the Bible is that not everything is prescriptive. Some things are descriptive. When I got into an argument with someone in Jubilee, they were trying to tell me, well, biblical marriage is not just between one man and one woman. Look at Solomon. He had all of his wives, even David. They had multiple wives. That is descriptive, not prescriptive. What did I. I said then, and I will say it again. Mo wives, mo problems. Mo women, mo problems. Whether you're talking about Jacob or you're talking about Solomon. And so actually, the Bible, God is so gracious that he was like, look at how my people messed up over and over again. Look at how mo wives, where that. Where that gets you, gets you in a lot of trouble. Surrogacy gets you in a lot of trouble. Concubines get you in a lot of trouble. This unhealthy jealousy obsession actually gets you in a lot of trouble. And God has a better way for us. So let's learn some lessons from that in just a second. Let me pause, tell you about our next sponsor for the day and that is Shopify. Shopify makes e commerce so easy. So that big or small business idea that you have, those products you make, you want to make money on them. That is part of what being a business owner is, is profiting from the hard work that you put into the product that people are benefiting from. You don't have all of the hours and all of the efforts, expertise in the world to code and create your own e commerce site. So just rely on Shopify. They make it so easy. That's why millions of businesses rely on Shopify to sell their products and to make money to build their business. It's actually what we use to sell our merchandise. And you guys know, if you've bought merchandise at my Blaze Media merch shop, then you know how easy it is, how efficient it is. They help you with product descriptions, all kinds of things. And the great thing is right now you can have have a $1 per month trial. So just pay $1 a month in your Shopify subscription when you go to shopify.com ally use my link to get that discount. Turn your business idea into with Shopify on your side, that's shopify.com. Okay, so let's look at a few clear examples of what the wrong kind of love or a perverted kind of love, an ungodly kind of love, like what that can actually lead to. I think of Samson and Delilah. Samson had this obsessive passion for Delilah that overrode his God given calling, that made him vulnerable to manipulation. He keeps returning to her despite obvious lies, like she's bad person and she's leading him in the bad direction. We probably, like you can probably think of friends or guys that you know who keep going back to the wrong girl because of this obsessive desire. Although he might know that she is bad for him. So this is driven by his lust, by his like obsession for her rather than discernment. And here is like the key segment of the passage in Judges that describes his downfall after this. He loved a woman in the valley of, in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. And the lords of the Philistines came up to her and said to her, seduce him and see where his great strength lies and by what means we may overpower him, that we may bind him to humble him. And we will each give you 1100 pieces of silver. Remember, Samson was really strong. They were scared of him. They didn't like him. And so they used a woman, a honey pot, to basically say, okay, you can basically convince him to be entrapped. And then we can see what is actually making him so strong so we can try to take him over. And then we look at judges 16, and she said to him, delilah, how can you say I love you when your heart is not with me? You have mocked me these three times, and you have told me where your great strength lies. You have not told me where your great strength lies. And when she pressed him hard with her words day after day after and urged him, his soul was vexed to death. And he told her all of his heart and said to her, a razor has never come upon my head, nor have I been a Nazarite, for I have been a Nazarite to God from my mother's womb. If my head is shaved, then my strength will leave me. And then, of course, she betrays him, and he is weakened. So his intense desire actually blinded him to her manipulations. And the same is a cautionary tale of prioritizing unchecked passion over God's wisdom, leading straight to betrayal, loss of strength, and then eventually death. And it also just goes to show, like, the power of a manipulative woman using her body and her sexuality to SAP the strength of a man and to betray him. And so this kind of undiscerning obsession led to his downfall. And then, of course, we know the very tragic story of David and Bathsheba. David lusted after Bathsheba after seeing her take a bath on a roof. And he was like, yeah, I want her and I want her husband to die. So I'm not going to kill him myself. I'm going to be very crafty, and I am going to send Uriah to the front lines knowing that he is going to die. And then after that, that he, of course, got Bathsheba and she became his wife. And so this ungodly love outside of the parameters that God had placed for desire and marriage, it led to murder. It led to lifelong grief, really, from David, you can see throughout the Psalms, him still just heartbroken over his sin. There's a lot of lessons to be learned from that, that God is a God of redemption. God still calls David a man after his own heart. There was so much abundant grace and mercy for David. But still we see yet another cautionary tale that the wrong kind of love and desire can lead you in a very bad and murderous direction. And then, of course, we had Solomon. Solomon, the wisest person in the world. He had so many foreign wives. And his foreign wives turned his heart away from God. We read in 1st Kings 11:1 through 8. Now, King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh, Moabite, Ammonite, Ammonite, Edomite city, Sidonian, the Hittite women. This sounds like a bad bunny song. But in biblical times, from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the people of Israel, you shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you. For surely they will turn away your heart after their God. So God, who created us and who created our hearts and created romance, and who is love himself, first John 4. 8. He knows the nature of it. He knows the nature of emotion. He knows the nature of lust. He knows that when you are sexually one with a person that you can be led into idolatry. I actually think I've never really thought about this before, but when you see the list of different sins in the New Testament, that when people are in an unrepentant state, committing things like sexual immorality and slander and reviling, these things are always listed with idolatry too. And I've wondered, like, why are those things always together? But I do think that it happens so often that sexual immorality leads to idolatry. You could even say that sexual immorality is idolatry. You are idolizing the object of your lust. You are elevating it to a place above God, but you're also idolizing yourself. You're saying, I know better. My desire is more important. And God is so gracious that in his Word he shows us over and over again. Okay, if you do that, things will not go well for you. And I want things to go well for you. I created marriage for this love to be a safe place, to be fully exercised. And when you go outside of that, you're going to have problems. But Solomon clung to these wives in love. He had 700 wives. Can you imagine 700 women asking you when you're going to be home from work? Who were princesses and 300 concubines? And his wives turned away his heart. For when Solomon was old. And this is 1st Kings 11:1 through 8. When Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods. And his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David, his father. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians. And after. This is really a lot for me to pronounce after Milcom, the abomination of the ammonites so Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and did not wholly follow the Lord. Lord as David his father had done. Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, and for Molech, the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem. And so he did for all of his foreign wives who made offerings and sacrificed to their God. Sexual immorality can lead to idolatry. It might not look like paganism today, but it might lead to justification of violence, justification of unhealthy relationships, an unhealthy and untrue view of yourself, and of course, missing out on what real true biblical love looks like. So let's take a look at that in just a second. But let me pause tell you about our last sponsor for the day. That is my Patriot Supply. So I don't know if you were part of the southern part of the United States that got hit with Icemageddon just a few weeks ago. So it's always so tragic when people are unprepared. They just don't have everything they need in order to survive. Because in the south you don't have the resources. The roadways aren't open, you can't get to the grocery store. You don't want to put your family in the position of being desperate. In moments like that, you want to be prepared. That's why my Patriot Supply exists. You get their supply kit of food that lasts 25 to 30 years in room temperature storage and you're good to go. Like if it becomes an emergency situation, you've got a food supply for your family to survive 2000-calorie a day meals. They also have the Grid Dr. 3300 solar generator. And that of course is unlike a gas generator because it's silent and it's safe to use indoors and it's completely off grid grid. If you use my link preparewithally.com when you order a Grid Dr. Generator, you'll get over $800 in free preparedness gifts, including a four week survival food kit, water filtration, a cook stove, and more. Go to preparewithally.com. What we read in Scripture is that healthy biblical love is rooted in God's character. It is selfless, it is patient, it is enduring. It is Christ centered. We can read in First Corinthians 13. Sometimes I think that passage is seen as just trite because it's read at all of the wedding ceremonies. But how good is God to not just tell us, oh yeah. Love one another. Oh, yeah. Be loving. God is love. But to actually tell us what love is. Love is patient. Love is kind. It's never irritable, it's never resentful. I think about that a lot. And this is just an aside a little bit. It women. I do believe that we probably put too much stock in a few things. Personality tests. It all started with what Disney Princess are you? No, we were sophisticated. It's like that Winnie the Pooh meme. I might be too online for you to know what I'm talking about. But we went from what Disney Princess are you? To like, what enneagram number are you? And it became a lot more sophisticated. But really, I think it's such a focus on the self, if I'm honest and thinking too much about ourselves and our eccentricities and sometimes saying that real sins are just quirks. And sometimes I think that we use that our enneagram number or our Disney Princess type to justify things that we actually need to be sanctified of. And can I also say, I think that we might do that with our cycle too. And it's good to know how the body works. But I think sometimes people are like, yeah, I'm mean, because I'm in luteal. And I don't think that that is a good justification for discounting the work that the Holy Spirit has in our lives. And I'm speaking to myself too. It's so easy to be irritable, to be resentful, and to think that we have a good reason to be that. When really we read that love must be kind and patient, never rejoicing in wrongdoing, but rejoicing with the truth. And then we look at Song of Solomon and we see that this truly erotic, like romance, desire, pursuit kind of love, like this is not. This is like PG 13, book of the Bible. Truly, we see chapter 1, 2, 4. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. For your love is better than wine. Your anointing oils are fragrant. Your name is oil poured out. Therefore virgins love you draw me after you let us run. The king has brought me into his chambers. There's lots of chapters like this, and it's not all about the other one's physical appearance, although there's a lot of that in there. And we see that, like God created man and woman to be attracted to one another, to be attracted to their form, to want to procreate. But then there's also just a lot of sweetness in this book too. Song of Solomon 7:10 I am my beloved's and his desire is for me. And that is the closed circuit of romance that we are supposed to have. First Corinthians 13, 4 through 7, we just kind of went over this. That love is patient and kind. It also believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. And then Ephesians 5, 25 through 28. This makes feminists really angry. But this would have been so radically pro woman at the time, in a time when women were really not treated as treasures to be protected and valued, but as people to be prostituted or used or discounted or just another concubine or just an incubator for children, of course, having children. But they weren't seen as people to love and to sacrifice for. We read husbands, love your wives, as Christ loves the church and gave himself up for her. Ladies, I want you to ask yourself, is the man that you're engaged to is the man that you're dating? Is he willing to die for you? Does he care about your holiness? Does he care about your purity? Does he care about your closeness to God? God? Or is that just something he appreciates about you as an attribute? Is that just something that he might list on his list of positives about you? But he is not working with you to help make you holier and godlier. Because the passage goes on to say that he, the husband, might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor. This is Christ doing this to his bride, the church, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish in the same way. What a high calling. Husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. Women, is the person that you are dating that you are engaged to, does he love you like he loves his own body? Would he lay his physical life down for you? But also, is he spiritually leading you? Now I will say, listen, if you are in boyfriend girlfriend territory, don't be playing house. Don't be pretending that this person is your husband, but you should be looking to looking at his attributes to make sure. Okay, is this person going to lead me and lead our children? Is he currently leading us towards holiness? Or is he leading us as close to sin as possible and then stopping because he knows that's my boundary. That's not something, that's not someone who is ready to marry you. John 15, 12, 13. This is my commandment that you love one another first. John 4, 7, 8, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God. And whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. Colossians 3, 12, 14. Put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience bearing with one another. And if one has a complaint against to another forgiving each other, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must also forgive. This is the kind of tenderness, the kind of humility, the kind of elevating someone's importance above your own that we just don't see in any of these novels or these movies. It is all about just rugged desire and fulfilling that as quickly as possible, no matter what the cost is, no matter how it affects other people, no matter how it affects your own heart or your own body. It is all about what you want and doing what you want. And God is saying, sometimes what you want isn't right. Jeremiah 17:9 says, the heart is desperately sick. Who can understand it? Romans 12, 9, 10 says, Let love be genuine, so not fake, not all about you, but genuine, sincere. Abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good, love one another with brotherly affection, outdo one another in showing honor. And I think it's so interesting that abhor what is evil is sandwiched right, right between those commandments to love that we cannot love what is evil, condone what is evil, affirm what is evil, reject what is good, and love one another. Well, so actually, when we see this glorification of evil and this glorification of sexual immorality, it's not proper love at all. It leads to destruction for our own selves, certainly for our daughters. And then it has an effect on society as a whole. It's destabilizing to families. It encourages women to pursue the wrong things. And we have to have healthy love, healthy marriage, healthy child rearing, healthy children in order to have a healthy society. So in some ways, like what we think about love really does change everything. All right, that's all I got time for today. We will be back here on Wednesday day.