Fireproof (2008)： Unpacking the Feminism
Episode Stats
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Summary
My review of the film, "Fireproof" by Dallrock and The Becloff's review of "The Pro-Marriage" by The Dalloff's and my thoughts on the movie and the message behind it.
Transcript
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Hey folks, this is my review of the film Fireproof.
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It's been previously reviewed around this corner of the internet by The Becloff, who requested this video, as well as by Dallrock, and there are links down to their articles below.
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Now this film, if you haven't heard of it, is a Christian pro-marriage film.
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It tries to offer advice to help fix marriages, but at the core of things is a terrible, awful lie that completely undermines the entire premise of the movie, and that's primarily what this review is going to be all about.
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But that said, taking a page from Confused Matthew, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.
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So I'm going to start this review by saying something nice.
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Then, I'm going to be mean for a long time, but I'm going to finish off with being nice again.
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Because the intent behind this movie was not evil.
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It wasn't trying to wrap a poison in a candy shell.
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It was error that led them into making this terrible mistake.
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And, furthermore, I'm not going to be doing a film critics review of it.
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If the creators, if you're listening to this, you know it has problems, you've heard it all before.
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And I'm just going to comment briefly that with any creative endeavor, be it writing or film, you need to cut, cut, cut.
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You need to take those beautiful words that you put on the page and throw them in the dustbin.
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You should have cut it, but you know that already.
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Overall, aside from the length, I actually think it was very well done for the budget and all of that.
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First off, it, the core of it, the message it's trying to get across is actually a very, very good message,
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which is summed up in this scene halfway through the movie.
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Caleb, if I were to ask you why you're so frustrated with Catherine, what would you say?
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Has she thanked you for anything you've done the last 20 days?
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And you'd think after I washed the car, I've changed the oil, do the dishes, cleaned the house,
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that she would try to show me a little bit of gratitude.
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In fact, when I come home, she makes me feel like I'm an enemy.
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Dad, for the last three weeks, I have bent over backwards for her.
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I have tried to demonstrate that I still care about this relationship.
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I have taken her insults and her sarcasm, but last night was it.
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I did everything I could to demonstrate that I care about her,
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to show value for her, and she spat in my face.
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How am I supposed to show love to somebody over and over and over
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how can someone show love over and over again when they're constantly rejected?
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Caleb, the answer is, you can't love her because you can't give her what you don't have.
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Okay, it doesn't make any sense to get married.
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You know, it makes far more sense just to have casual couplings until you get sick of one another.
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Actually trying to build a love that's greater than the two of you is impossible in the purely material world.
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You know, as the saying goes, the husband needs to love his wife as Christ loves the church.
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Even though Christians are not obedient and are constantly sinning, Christ still loves the church.
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And as a husband with a wife that's getting out of line, yeah, you need to keep loving her.
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When you make that vow, it is a serious commitment.
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It's not just husbands that need to devote themselves to their wives.
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Wives need to devote themselves to their husbands.
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The man needs to always cherish his wife, always protect her, always provide for him.
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See, where the man leads the marriage by being that stalwart hero.
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That even though his wife is imperfect, even though his wife is disobedient, he continues to lead.
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A woman with a disobedient husband, she needs to be even more of a woman.
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She needs to be gentle, graceful, beautiful, and woo him back into being the husband that he should have been.
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Codependence is encouraging them to keep doing what they're doing.
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What you need to do is be a faithful wife or husband to them.
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So that bit of advice was absolutely beautiful.
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And if the whole movie, if it just weren't so blind to that one little thing, it would have been wonderful.
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But that blindness, that one bit of falsehood, ruins things.
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We start with a young married couple, Caleb and Catherine.
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They've been through the marriage ceremony, but they're a couple of atheists.
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Except that they moved in together and they have a few bills that they share.
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And quite frankly, they're both acting like assholes.
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Are you planning on making a grocery trip soon?
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Caleb, you work 24 hours and then you're off for 48.
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Caleb certainly could have been gentler with his wife.
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But his wife also could have bought the bloody groceries.
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He's working full time as a firefighter, which involves like multiple day shifts where he sleeps at the fire station.
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Whereas she is an empowered career woman doing some sort of HR nonsense at a hospital.
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She's just a woman that wanders around in a power suit feeling self-important.
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You just can't expect me to work every day and still get the groceries while you sit at home looking at trash on the internet and dreaming about getting your boat.
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You chose to take this job and no one said you had to work full time.
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We need the income, especially since you took away a third of your salary saving for a boat we don't need.
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You've got $24,000 in savings, but we have things in our house that need fixing.
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The back door needs to be painted, the yard needs better landscaping, and I keep telling you I want to put more shelves in the closet.
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Now we're supposed to think that Caleb is really greedy for buying this boat, but let's rewind a little bit here.
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Keep in mind, Caleb has already afforded the house.
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You know, everything, all the bills are covered.
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She's working full time because it's part of the whole feminist self-empowerment fantasy.
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And so him buying a boat with the excess funds that he's saved up, and again, he's not buying this boat on credit, folks.
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He's the hallmark of a responsible man that's earning more than enough money to support his wife and take care of her.
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But she's not buying the groceries when it would be easy for her to swing by the grocery store at the end of the day.
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So, yeah, he could be kinder, she could try doing her job.
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But ultimately, she really doesn't have anything to complain about.
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You know, he's fulfilling the letter of the contract, and that's all it is to them, isn't it?
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But as if that's not bad enough, then we're subjected to this scene.
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Why do you have to make everything so difficult?
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Seems to me like I'm the one carrying the weight around here while you're off doing your own thing.
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Excuse me? I'm the one out there working to pay this mortgage, and I pay for both of the cars.
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Yeah, and that's all you do. I pay all of our bills with my salary.
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Because you care more about saving for your stupid boat and pleasing yourself than you ever did about me.
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Shut up! I'm sick of you! You disrespectful, ungrateful, selfish woman!
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How dare you say that to me! You constantly nag me and you drain the life out of me!
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I'm tired of it! If you can't give me the respect I deserve, look at me!
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Oh my god! We're supposed to have, oh no! Domestic violence! Oh no!
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Except he is not a violent man. He's hot-tempered, yes.
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He's also young. And he's in a very dangerous and trying occupation.
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But that scene right there, you're supposed to feel so sorry for the widow woman who was nagging him.
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Who was being just as emotionally vicious, just as nasty.
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And he doesn't hit her. Instead, he goes out in the backyard and does this.
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So, yes. Both of these people are acting very selfish. They're not devoting themselves to the marriage the way they should be.
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The next scene involves a conversation amongst both their groups of friends about what's going on.
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And it is just beyond striking to me that the filmmakers could write and film this scene without seeing the stark differences.
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Honey, I agree with you. You gotta get out. He don't deserve you.
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You can say that again. A real man's gotta be a hero to his wife before he could be to anybody else.
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I can't imagine living in the same house with that man.
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It's respect. That's the issue. That's the reason our marriage is failing.
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Our marriage has been fine until this year. Now, all of a sudden, she goes off the deep end.
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Do you really think this happened all of a sudden?
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You know, he doesn't understand my needs. I feel like we are completely and totally...
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Incompatible. She's probably whining to her friends, making me sound like a criminal.
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I can see them all right now crying, having some sort of group hug.
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It's gonna be okay, sweetie. It's gonna be alright. You'll get through this.
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Alright, he's not being the sort of man, the sort of husband that he really ought to be.
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But Catherine is just completely self-centered.
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All of her female friends, that little cat circle of viciousness,
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is just encouraging her to be the nastiest, most self-centered, most unempathetic wife she possibly could.
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Now, it's at this point that the movie cuts away for one of its excellent action sequences.
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One thing the movie does very well is its action sequences.
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At this point, we've established that both Caleb and Catherine are rather childish.
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They don't take their commitments to one another seriously.
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But Caleb, at this point, has gone to his friends for advice.
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and they have done nothing but badmouth him and rip him down
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And sure enough, right afterwards, she files for divorce.
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And his father offers him a book of 40 days, 40 steps,
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something to do every day to try and re-romance his wife.
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Now, apparently this is based upon an actual book.
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But he commits himself to try and become the husband
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Did you wipe the websites off so nobody would see where you've been?
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You see, this is the part of the movie that most Christians focus on so much.
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That the pornography was destroying their marriage.
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you have absolutely no business looking at pornography.
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it's probably a bad idea for you to look at pornography, period.
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It is very addictive, habit-forming, and it's unrealistic.
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You're gonna waste all of your energy focusing on that instead of real women.
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You know, both man and wife need to come together as frequently as possible.
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I mean, it's right there in the Bible telling you to have lots of sex.
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So you have no business looking at pornography whatsoever.
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Well, we have to keep up with the attractive fashions
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Well, since there's only one person in that category,
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Was making herself available to him on the regular?
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Or did she have an important meeting in the morning?
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No indication is given whatsoever that it was the pornography
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I'm gonna go out for cocktails with my girlfriends.
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Yeah, I have a husband at home, but I don't owe him anything.
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There is no indication that Caleb was abusing porn because...
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that he was resorting to it because she was not satisfying his sexual needs.
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You never assume I would do anything worthy of respect.
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But his sin was something she tempted him into.
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It was her failures as a wife that made that sin so attractive.
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And, good lord, the next scene where they mention this just absolutely blew me away.
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So after discovering this, she goes to her mother to talk about it.
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What did you say to him when you discovered him jerking it?
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Yeah, you're the one trying to make him feel ashamed.
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And if you were ashamed, you wouldn't be sharing this so openly.
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You wouldn't even want to admit it to your priest if you were that ashamed.
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You know perfectly well that you're an attractive woman.
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After all, weren't you just flirting with this sexy doctor?
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You know, you're kind of sweet when you want to be.
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Well, with some training, I think you could be a fine gentleman.
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What you are doing is you are pretending to be the victim so that you can maintain power.
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You are the one, through your abandonment of your husband, your refusal to act like a wife,
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you're the one that drove him to pornography and then you are using that as another excuse to attack him
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and make him look like a bad man and just do all of this to justify your selfish desires.
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It's all about you and your career and your family and your pride.
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Do you see what the problem with this movie is, folks?
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Next we have, again, this is one of those good scenes.
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You know, as I said, pornography is very addictive.
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A parasite is anything that latches onto you or your partner and sucks the life out of your marriage.
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They're usually in the form of addictions like gambling, drugs, or pornography.
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They promise pleasure, but grow like a disease and consume more and more of your thoughts, time, and money.
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They steal away your loyalty and heart from those you love.
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Marriages rarely survive if parasites are present.
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If you love your wife, you must destroy any addiction that has your heart.
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You know, if there is something you are addicted to that's eating you up, then you can't really give yourself to another person.
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So it's good that he's recognizing that he's been falling into this trap of pornography.
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Now, if only she would recognize that she is addicted to ego and status and career girl and feminism.
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You know, maybe if she would realize that she's addicted to that, she could start to become a godly woman.
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One of the older ladies at her workplace notices that she's flirting with the doctor.
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If this doctor is trying to woo you while you're still married, what makes you think he won't do that with someone else?
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I don't think I want to talk about this, Anna. We're getting a little personal.
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Do you notice the advice that her friend was giving her?
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Let me show you some of the advice that Caleb's friends were giving him earlier.
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Caleb, when two people get married, it's for better or for worse.
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I know that. But marriages aren't fireproof. Sometimes you get burned.
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Fireproof doesn't mean that a fire will never come.
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But that when it comes, you'll be able to withstand it.
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Caleb's friends were reminding him of the fact that he owes his wife a good husband.
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She told her, well, that new guy might stab you in the back.
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And there's an ongoing issue with Catherine's mother.
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And she thinks that the sexy doctor donated a bunch of money to buy it for her.
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Has anyone ever told you that you're wonderful?
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At the same time, she also runs into Caleb after he almost dies being a total alpha male badass hero.
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Well, he sustained some first-degree burns here, but he should be fine.
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So, the movie starts wrapping up at this point.
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And Caleb has gone from just following the rules because his dad told him to,
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to actually embracing the spirit of the rules, which is to be Christ-like to his wife.
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To love her unconditionally, even though she's a terrible, selfish, greedy woman.
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But halfway through, I realized that I did not understand what love was.
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But I am not ready to say that I trust you again.
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When has he done anything to betray your trust?
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He was not thinking about leaving you, abandoning you, and siring children on those women.
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Okay? And yeah, he should be doing it with you.
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But it's not like you were complaining about him denying you sex.
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What has he done that he needs to earn your trust back again?
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You've been flirting with another doctor, you've been refusing to take care of the home,
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you've been nagging and complaining about everything this guy does,
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and when he responsibly saves up for a boat, you criticize that.
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And you think he needs to earn your trust back.
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And if that's not bad enough, it's followed up by this scene.
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For the past seven years, I have trampled on you with my words and with my actions.
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Caleb, buddy, I know it hurts when you break up with a woman.
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Or when you're worried that she's going to break up with you.
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But the only time you're allowed to cry is when you're drunk and you're hanging out with your friends.
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That's also the only time you get a real hug, not just a man hug, a real hug.
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But you never cry in front of your wife and you never cry in front of your dog.
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That somehow you would be able to forgive me too.
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So once his blubbering is done, they both go back to their respective jobs.
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He just devotes himself to being a firefighter and he leaves everything else in the hands of God.
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And she hears, purely by accident, who it was that actually paid for the expensive medical apparatus.
00:29:31.000
Uh, I don't think Dr. Keller covered those things.
00:29:35.000
No, I'm sure he did. I spoke with him about it.
00:29:38.000
Mrs. Holt, if I remember correctly, $24,300 was given for the bed and wheelchair, but Dr. Keller was not the main giver.
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Caleb spent his boat money on the expensive stuff for her mother.
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Now, listen, as a husband, as part of the family, he probably should have done that in the first place.
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The critical issue is that she didn't realize he loved her until he spent money on her.
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And she gets to be the most selfish, greedy, scummy human being the moment that the husband that she promised herself to,
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the moment that he stops being useful or entertaining, she drops him, goes and marries a doctor.
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Caleb, at his worst, completely sick of his nagging, self-centered wife,
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at his worst, he was going to let her divorce him and wash his hands of the whole thing.
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And then, to really just drive how bad all of this is home, she shows up at his work and says this.
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See, I was worried I was going to like this movie.
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If she had walked up and said to him, I want to be more like you, and I'm sorry for being such a terrible, selfish person,
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In fact, look at this scene from a recent episode of Rick and Morty,
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a comedy show that manages to do marital romance a hundred times as good as this Christian movie.
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I'm sick of pretending that we're together because of the kids in the first place.
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I married you because you're the love of my life.
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And I'm lucky to have you, and I never tell you that.
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You know, we will come out of this stronger as a family.
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But, Lord knows, the Churchians just can't admit to themselves that women are sinners too.
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And just to put a cherry on top of the sundae, they ended off with...
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Caleb, in the presence of God and these witnesses, do you come today to freely and unconditionally commit to this covenant marriage to Catherine?
00:33:09.000
It's because we've completely abandoned the roles of masculine and feminine,
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And I feel so bad for the actual godly women out there who are receiving no guidance from their grandmothers,
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no guidance from society at large, and no guidance from the Church.
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The Church is actively encouraging them to go live a life of egoistic debauchery.
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When men become debauched, it tends to be the obvious sins.
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You know, lust, drunkenness, going about whoring about town.
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When women do the same thing, it tends to be more about ego.
00:33:49.000
For women that's debauched, sometimes it's sexual, but usually the ones that are sexual, they're the more honest of the debauched ones.
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It's usually the attention whoring, you know, like flirting with guys just to shut them down,
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or going out to clubs just to draw attention to themselves,
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or getting a high-powered career so that she can feel important about herself
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and get the attention of this rich doctor instead of her totally alpha male, good-looking, and hard-working husband.
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The Church is encouraging these women to do whatever they want, to have no regard for other people.
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The Church is tempting them into sin, and it's destroying marriages in the process.
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Please, you know, all you Christians out there, drop this feminism!
00:34:40.000
It's a godless, Marxist ideology meant to destroy the family,
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meant to turn men and women into individual cogs, meant to rip children away from parents,
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and ultimately completely corrupt and denigrate and destroy the Church.
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When you try and suck up to women who they like to go to Sunday social club,
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It has social aspects, but it's not a social club.
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As C.S. Lewis pointed out, we're in occupied territory right now,
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and you go to church to get a radio call from the resistance to remind you what the objectives are,
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how we're going to, you know, fight this battle.
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And when you refuse to speak that message because you want more money from women,
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or you don't want to offend women, or you yourself are afraid of women,
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you know, where you want a wife to act like your mother.
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And when you try and flip the roles, when you try and reverse them,
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It was attempting to do something good, and that's what really breaks my heart.
00:36:18.000
You know, there are plenty of liars out there that couch their lies in all sorts of pretty truths,
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and you have to really pay attention to spot the lie.
00:36:30.000
You know, you put a drop of wine into sewage, and you got sewage.
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You put a drop of sewage into wine, and you got sewage.
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It only takes a small little taint to corrupt the entire edifice.
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They weren't the ones trying to poison people with sewage.
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And they weren't adhering to actual biblical teachings.
00:37:06.000
And this movie that is supposed to be about loving your wife like Christ loves the church.
00:37:14.000
Christ loves the church despite the fact that it's full of sinners.
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It doesn't mean that Christ should be encouraging them in whatever depravity that they want to get up to.
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Just because, oh, I don't want them not to come to my church.
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Look, Christ isn't the one sucking up to the church.
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It's our job to try and, you know, be a church that deserves him.
00:37:40.000
I guess one final comment on biblical marriage and marriage between Christians versus marriage between pagans or atheists.
00:37:55.000
The Bible is pretty clear that if you are with your wife and you got married outside of the church and you convert or she converts, you are expected to act like a Christian husband even if she isn't.
00:38:16.000
But if she abandons you, if she leaves you, then it wasn't a marriage.
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Now, if she becomes a Christian, that then retroactively does turn you into a proper married couple.
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But in that movie, if Caleb had been acting like a good Christian husband and she had still abandoned him, then he would have been single.
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And quite frankly, the woman was just absolutely monstrous.
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It's more of a horror movie ending to the thing, really.
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And it's because instead of embracing Christian headship of the household, he blubbered like a baby.
00:39:13.000
If he hadn't cried like a little wuss, she would have abandoned him for the doctor.
00:39:21.000
Because she has no interest in becoming a Christian.
00:39:27.000
And folks, you gotta avoid those sorts of women.
00:40:11.000
You cannot be afraid Jadiak to have someone that's been saved.