Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1304 ｜ ‘Wuthering Heights’ Movie Is NOT What I Expected

00:00:00.000 The new movie Weathering Heights was just released. And what does this adaptation, as well as the marketing campaign 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?

00:00:21.180 We've got all of this and more on today's episode of Relatable. Also, a couple of 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 to sharethearrows.com. Get your tickets today. This is our no-fluff Christian Women's Conference.

00:00:45.780 Also, tomorrow, I am moderating the Attorney General primary, Republican primary debate, Blaze TV YouTube, Blaze TV X, 8 p.m. Eastern Time. But we got 7 p.m. 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.

00:01:13.740 This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to GoodRanchers.com. Use code Allie at checkout. That's GoodRanchers.com. Code Allie.

00:01:30.920 Hey, guys. Welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. Hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine's weekend celebrating what love really means, according to the God who is love.

00:01:40.920 And we've got really good news on this Monday. God's eternal plan of redemption is going off without a hitch.

00:01:46.300 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,

00:01:59.540 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,

00:02:07.240 He is in control of all of it. He's not waiting there wondering what's going to happen next.

00:02:12.800 He already knows. And He has chosen you before the foundations of the world in love. That's what we read in Ephesians 1.

00:02:20.140 That is the best news ever. If we never get anything else that we want in life,

00:02:24.480 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,

00:02:35.160 to pay for our sins, and to be liberated from sin here on earth, but then spend forever and ever with Him.

00:02:41.840 That is really good news.

00:02:43.560 So whatever disappointments we feel here in this life, and maybe even more than that,

00:02:47.680 maybe it's heartbreak, a betrayal, or whatever it is, we always have an underlying joy and hope,

00:02:53.720 knowing that that is our future. There's a lot of chaos and a lot of tragedy going on in the world every day.

00:03:01.480 It feels like we are constantly faced with just the depths of human depravity, demonic activity,

00:03:08.640 demonic possession that might not look exactly like it did in Jesus' time,

00:03:13.080 but nevertheless, Ephesians 2 is true today, that the prince of the power of the air is at work among

00:03:19.380 the sons of disobedience. And we are faced with that on an everyday basis. When we look at things

00:03:24.580 like the Epstein files, I mean, some of it just makes you want to turn your phone off, throw it into

00:03:29.820 the ocean, never look at what's going on in the news again, because we are just not made to be

00:03:35.620 constantly fed the reality of evil that is being perpetrated against the most vulnerable people.

00:03:41.840 And it's really easy to lose hope. It's really easy to just be dejected. It's really easy to

00:03:47.480 just bury our head in the sand and say, I'm just not going to think about it. I'm not going to look

00:03:51.240 at it. And sometimes you do need to just not look at it. Sometimes you do just not need to dwell

00:03:56.220 on the negative. However, I do want to caution you against being completely cynical and losing hope,

00:04:02.380 because I don't know exactly what justice for all of Epstein's victims and all the victims of

00:04:07.460 injustice looks like here on earth. We pray for that. We work toward that. We advocate for that.

00:04:12.180 What I do know is that Psalm 37 is true, that one day all injustice will be done away with.

00:04:19.180 One day there will be no more reason for sadness. One day there will be no more reason for cynicism,

00:04:25.320 disappointment, dejection. One day we won't have young fathers like James Van Der Beek dying from

00:04:31.760 cancer. There will be no more death. There will be no more cancer. There will be no more injustice or

00:04:36.260 oppression or abuse because Jesus is coming back and he will rule in perfect peace forever and ever.

00:04:42.680 So I just want to encourage you. I hear these horrible stories of people dying before it seems

00:04:49.280 like in our mind what their time should be. They don't get to live a long life, whether it's Charlie

00:04:53.500 Kirk or James Van Der Beek or a number of other people you know in your life. And I just want to urge you

00:04:59.180 that today if you feel conviction, if you feel that prompting either to become a Christian,

00:05:06.720 to repent of your sin, and to be saved by grace through faith in Jesus, like if you're prompted

00:05:12.320 to learn more about who this Jesus is, if you're prompted to read the Bible, if you're prompted to go

00:05:17.560 to a Bible-believing, Bible-preaching church, if you're prompted even as a Christian to repent of your sin,

00:05:22.700 to bring darkness into light, to come out of hiding, to put your faith in action, whatever

00:05:28.860 that may be, don't resist it. Don't think that you have all the time in the world to do what you know

00:05:37.320 you need to do. God has given you this moment and I don't want us to be deluded by Satan into thinking

00:05:45.360 that you'll have all of the chances in the world to do the right thing or to know the God who loves you.

00:05:51.180 So that's the message I have for you this morning, just to start out this episode,

00:05:56.000 as we do talk about some of the darkness going on in the world, that that is our obligation as human

00:06:01.440 beings. That is also our hope as Christians, the hope that we have in Christ and the joy that we can

00:06:06.940 find in His salvation. Now, unfortunately, we do live in this fallen world and Christians are called

00:06:15.280 to be salt. We're called to be a preservative of all things good. We are called to give

00:06:21.040 flavor in the world, but we are also called to be lights. And in order to be light, we have to

00:06:26.700 sometimes walk into dark spaces and we have to talk about dark subjects. And I am fascinated,

00:06:34.380 maybe fascinated is too positive, I am interested in, in a very concerned way about the particular

00:06:41.380 darkness that is targeting young women. That's leading women into unhealthy relationships,

00:06:47.720 unhealthy choices, leading them into bad personal decisions, bad political decisions that lead them

00:06:55.780 into a life of unhappiness where they are pursuing fleeting pleasures, whether it's through relationships

00:07:03.040 or through their careers or through their pets or through politics rather than one following Christ,

00:07:10.020 but also pursuing lasting things like marriage and children. And I have long been interested in how

00:07:16.000 our entertainment and the messages that we see from romance novels, from TV shows, and how movies are

00:07:24.800 playing into that. And one example of this is a movie that I've seen advertised so much recently.

00:07:31.900 It came out over the weekend and it's Wuthering Heights and it's based on the book by Emily Bronte

00:07:37.840 that was written in 1847. It tells the story of two tortured lovers, Catherine and Heathcliff.

00:07:45.560 If there have been adaptations of this over the years, this time it's a movie starring Margot Robbie

00:07:51.400 and Jacob Elordi. I've seen all kinds of marketing for this that has been really effective because

00:07:58.500 I thought, okay, I might want to go see this. It's based on a classic novel. I like Margot Robbie. I don't

00:08:05.660 know anything about this Jacob guy, but it looks like a good romance and I'm a sucker for a good romance

00:08:12.340 movie. But then I started seeing the trailers and I was like, oh, I feel like this is more like 50

00:08:18.340 shades of gray set in the 19th century and maybe not. Here's that one.

00:08:48.340 Do you want me to stop?

00:08:57.780 No.

00:08:58.140 So there is this like deep obsession in this storyline and that is true of the book. It is

00:09:14.020 just hyper-sexualized it seems like in the movie. So if you don't know about the story, it begins

00:09:18.320 at the isolated Wuthering Heights farm where young Catherine Earnshaw and the orphaned Heathcliff

00:09:24.080 formed this deep, intense bond under her abusive father's roof. Heathcliff doesn't have a last name

00:09:30.020 because he grew up as an orphan and has unknown parents. And that highlights this kind of class

00:09:35.980 gap and this tension between him and Catherine, kind of like we see in the Titanic. And that's

00:09:40.720 a major theme of the book and film. And that's like a common trope in a lot of books and can be

00:09:44.460 really interesting and add attention there. And then as adults, their unspoken passion clashes

00:09:49.060 with class barriers. Catherine marries the wealthy, refined Edgar Linton for social security and

00:09:54.880 stability, driving the devastated Heathcliff away. And then years later, Heathcliff returns mysteriously

00:10:01.220 rich and more attractive and transformed. And that reignites their fiery, now completely forbidden

00:10:07.360 connection, not only forbidden because of the class disparity that once existed, but also because she

00:10:12.640 is married. And then she also gets pregnant. And this leads to explicit torrid affairs. And Heathcliff

00:10:21.180 enacts revenge. There's a lot of jealousy going on here. There's a lot of like, you know, different

00:10:27.280 people, obviously Catherine's husband and then another woman who is all kind of being, they're all kind of

00:10:33.700 being used as pawns in this very sadistic, masochistic, like torture, revenge thing going on.

00:10:41.200 Um, Heathcliff manipulates and marries Edgar's smitten, repressed sister Isabella in a scheme to

00:10:47.680 hurt Catherine and to punish those who separated them. And then in the end, Heathcliff reduces the

00:10:53.900 heirs of his enemies to lowly powerless, to a lowly powerless state that he wants endured. And he

00:11:00.500 controls all of their estates and their education and their social standing and their freedom and

00:11:04.420 their daily lives. And then Catherine's brother dies. Heathcliff becomes the guardian of his son and

00:11:09.900 keeps him uneducated and illiterate by denying him schooling and books, turning him into an

00:11:13.840 ignorant servant. It's all very sad. And then he schemes to have Catherine's daughter to marry his

00:11:19.000 son, imprisoning her until she agrees to the marriage. And so it's dark. It really was dark

00:11:25.840 in the 1800s, but it's even darker in the version that we read today. And we'll get into more of how

00:11:32.360 this theme seems to be played out in this movie and the unhealthy effect that I think it has on the

00:11:37.480 minds of women and also how the actors are portraying their relationship with one another in real life

00:11:43.460 that I also think is an unhealthy symbol of what love should be. Let me pause and tell you about

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00:12:50.100 So the film is being promoted as inspired by the greatest love story of all time. Now, just remember

00:12:55.740 all of that, and I probably gave you too much detail, but just about what the storyline is. Is that really

00:13:01.740 the greatest love story of all time? And it also carries this tagline, which I think is important

00:13:08.660 to the theme that we're talking about, drive me mad. This idea that the greatest love story of all time

00:13:15.960 has to do with insanity and jealousy and bitterness and cruelty and torture and revenge and also these

00:13:23.840 very, very, very hyper-sexual and it seems even edging on violent sexual affairs that these two

00:13:33.000 lovers are having even during pregnancy. That is what is being marketed as the greatest love story

00:13:40.860 ever told. Now, the marketing for this is brilliant. If you like this kind of love story, it makes you want

00:13:48.140 to watch it because these actors, and Margot Robbie is very good at this. She does this, I think,

00:13:52.520 with all of the films she's in. She basically portrays the character in one way or another

00:13:58.380 in her real life. Now, I don't think she's fully trying to act like she is Catherine,

00:14:03.040 but she plays upon this obsession with her co-star, Jacob, and we can pull up this Vogue magazine cover.

00:14:12.820 If you didn't know any better, you might think that maybe they really are in love. At least there's

00:14:17.540 a sexual component to their relationship. It seems it's a very sexual picture. And not only that,

00:14:22.860 but they look like they are playing a modern version of their roles. She looks a little bit

00:14:29.500 ashamed, a little bit guilty, but she can't help herself. He is looking at her with longing. And I

00:14:35.740 just want to remind you, as we're talking about all of this, that Margot Robbie is married. She has a

00:14:42.060 child. There are a lot of interviews that go around that talk about the film, and they're talking

00:14:48.820 about not only the characters they play, but the real relationship they have with each other. So there

00:14:54.280 is this Valentine's Day interview where Margot Robbie says to Jacob, my next question for you,

00:15:01.560 we were shooting on Valentine's Day. So not a Valentine's Day interview, but they were talking about

00:15:06.000 Valentine's Day in this interview, I guess maybe last Valentine's Day. And she says,

00:15:10.240 you made my day. And as Heathcliff filled my room with roses, and it was so cute. What did I do for

00:15:17.080 you? So they're saying as Heathcliff, but this is real life. And Jacob says, I don't think you did

00:15:21.540 anything. The thing is, I thought you would. I mean, they're playing their characters. You definitely

00:15:27.340 beat me. Yours was so epic. I remember thinking on Valentine's Day, oh, he's probably a very good

00:15:32.220 boyfriend because there's a lot of thoughtfulness in this. You did a lot of very thoughtful things.

00:15:36.460 It wasn't just the gesture of the roses. It was the thing written from Heathcliff. And that little

00:15:41.880 tombstone thing, I was like, ah, crafts, love that. It was crafty. It was meaningful. It was dramatic.

00:15:49.700 Okay. So if you didn't know any better, you would think maybe you're taking the method acting a little

00:15:54.880 bit too far because it's infiltrating your real life. And you can say that it's just his characters,

00:16:00.060 but at the end of the day, this is happening off set, off camera, and you really are married to

00:16:06.100 someone. And he says, I really didn't like shooting. This is another interview when Margot

00:16:11.120 wasn't there. I hated shooting when you weren't there. The two describe missing each other when

00:16:16.000 shooting scenes with other actors. And Margot Robbie says, love them. The other actors more

00:16:20.800 than anything. But I was like, he's mine. And she actually admits that she felt very codependent

00:16:27.800 on this man when she was on set. I found myself starting to look around to see where I was like,

00:16:34.960 well, he's obviously going to be somewhere close by. Where is he right now? Because he's not in a

00:16:38.720 corner of a room watching me right now. And then I was, he wasn't. And I was really unnerved and

00:16:43.400 unmoored. And I, and I felt like quite lost, like just like a kid without their like blanket or

00:16:49.720 something. And then she also described this other romantic gesture that she received from Jacob's

00:16:55.520 Do you know how that happened though? Is we went to rehearse it and they rehearsed it with the

00:17:00.260 rain machines on because we're checking if the rain machine level was right. And I, I was going

00:17:04.680 like that because the rain had started. And of course, when you looking at, when you're acting with

00:17:08.700 Jacob, you're like looking up like this. So I went, I went like that and he just automatically went to

00:17:13.620 cover my face because he's a gentleman. And it's just like, that's second nature to him. He just

00:17:17.520 automatically went like that. And honestly, both Emerald and I just went, okay, stop. And he was

00:17:25.980 not aware that he had done anything chivalrous or romantic at all. And we were just like, that was

00:17:31.020 one of the most romantic things I've ever experienced and seen. So do that for the whole scene. And then

00:17:37.400 we made that the scene. I think it's strange how you can kind of push the boundaries of what is

00:17:43.200 acceptable in a relationship between a man and a woman, not just on screen. I still think there's

00:17:49.200 something morally wrong with that, obviously. But when you're not even filming and it's justified

00:17:55.700 because it's all under the umbrella of, well, this is just my job. And then of course, Jacob says that

00:18:02.540 his obsession was mutual. Margot's obsessed with him. He's obsessed with her. Stop for it.

00:18:08.080 We have a mutual obsession. I think the thing is, if you, regardless of plot or screen,

00:18:13.200 play, if you have the opportunity to share a film set with Margot Robbie, you're going to make sure

00:18:19.120 you're within five to 10 meters at all times, watching how she drinks tea, how she eats her food,

00:18:24.620 how she does it. When is it going to slip? When is the thing going to come undone and it never comes

00:18:28.780 undone? She's just like an elite actor and she's producing the movie. Okay. So I think this is

00:18:38.100 probably all genuine. They probably feel this way about each other, which you could argue is troubling

00:18:42.660 in itself. It is also part of marketing, but it is what draws women in. It's what draws the audience

00:18:49.660 in that I want to see. Wow. If it is this tense, if there's this much sexual tension and this much

00:18:55.860 romance and this much obsession when they're out of character, when they're not in their costume,

00:19:01.140 when they're off screen, how much more exciting is it going to be to see all of that released and

00:19:06.720 manifested on camera. So this is all kind of part of a marketing scheme, but it builds this idea in

00:19:13.100 women's minds that this is the greatest love story ever told. This is what love and romance should

00:19:18.560 look like. And if you think that I'm exaggerating the effect that movies have on women, then you

00:19:26.100 should talk to your friends who read the Colleen Hoover books, who are obsessed still with the

00:19:32.500 Twilight series, who are constantly just consuming even things like The Notebook. I love The Notebook.

00:19:38.480 It's terrible. But I remember loving The Notebook when I first saw it and thinking that that was a love

00:19:44.140 story. That's actually another example. Totally immoral, totally unethical, not at all a healthy idea of

00:19:51.600 what love and romance and marriage and pursuit should look like, but it really does affect the mind of

00:19:58.140 people, married or unmarried, and setting our standards for what romance and love should actually

00:20:04.760 look like. And a lot of this is, I believe, the intention of the writer-director Emerald Fennell,

00:20:11.620 who is behind Wuthering Heights. This is her third feature as a writer-director. She also wrote the

00:20:19.420 queer-themed psychological thriller. I hate that term, queer-themed, whatever that means,

00:20:25.740 LGBTQ-affirming saltburn. And I did not know what saltburn was about. I watched it for maybe five

00:20:33.400 minutes, and I was like, what did I get myself into? I don't know. I guess the commercial made

00:20:38.300 me think it would be interesting. And I like dramatic movies and shows, but I started watching

00:20:44.140 that. I was like, this is too dark, and I think it's weird because I can't really tell what's going

00:20:47.520 on between these two men off, and I never watched it. And I only put it together yesterday that Jacob was

00:20:53.920 also in that, and that he is in this. And Fennell seems to have this desire to queerify or sexualize

00:21:04.260 or make darker storylines. She said this. I don't know what this means. She said,

00:21:10.740 what I have attempted to do is adapt my own experience of reading it for the first time.

00:21:16.620 It is an adaptation of a feeling, my first disemboweling by the baby god.

00:21:22.380 Now, this is where I wish that I had Brie on the show. This would be an example of something that

00:21:29.980 Brie and I would have discussed together. And see, Brie had a little more insight into the arts.

00:21:36.640 And she would probably be able to tell me exactly what Fennell meant when she said disemboweling

00:21:43.440 by the baby god. Honestly, I could see that as a Taylor Swift lyric. I feel like it's all in the

00:21:49.460 same vein. Brie would probably be able to tell me what that means. By the way, we're going to have

00:21:53.540 Brie on for a segment. I know a lot of you guys miss our back and forth. We still chat very

00:21:58.660 consistently. And one day she's going to come on because someone reminded me, this is just an aside,

00:22:04.040 that I haven't rated the outfits of people at the award shows. That's very important. I know that some

00:22:11.620 of y'all hated that, but a lot of you liked that. So I'm going to have her back on maybe to just

00:22:15.620 dissect what this strange quote means, but also to rate people's weird outfits at the Grammys and the

00:22:24.000 Met and all of that. Fennell described her goal as recreating the primal and sexual emotional response

00:22:33.140 that she had as a teenager. TMI. TMI! She noted that some of the more risque elements she added came from

00:22:41.160 what she mistakenly thought was in the book as a 14-year-old, filling in gaps from her youthful

00:22:45.520 imagination. Maybe why a 14-year-old shouldn't be reading something like this, but also just goes

00:22:50.040 to show that actually people do fill in the gaps in their minds. And she is actually trying to

00:22:55.880 imprint something on women's brains about sexuality and also about sex. We'll get into more of that in

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00:24:16.380 Okay, so Fennell said that she has been deeply obsessed with this novel for years. She described

00:24:22.500 the adaptation process as, quote, an act of extreme masochism to try and make a film of something

00:24:30.460 that means this much to you. So masochism in maybe a different way than it's portrayed in the movie,

00:24:37.640 but it seems in fitting with the theme. Fennell is not the only director to kind of take these bold

00:24:43.100 liberties with classic literature. We've got, for example, C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia.

00:24:50.080 There has been some talk about Greta Gerwig, who is the director, apparently, of the new

00:24:55.860 Chronicles of Narnia movie. She directed Barbie, that she might make Aslan a woman or have a woman's

00:25:02.960 voice like Meryl Streep. We don't know if that's true. And then the film's editor, Andrew Wisblom,

00:25:08.700 said in an interview that he's actually not even going to refer back to that material because

00:25:13.560 they're doing their own rendition of it, which is very unfortunate. It's one thing to make an

00:25:19.880 already dark novel like Wuthering Heights even darker and more sexualized. It's another thing

00:25:24.920 to take such a beautiful novel that paints such a beautiful picture of Jesus's victory over evil,

00:25:32.360 like the brilliant C.S. Lewis did in The Chronicles of Narnia, and make it something woke and dumb and

00:25:37.160 gay. My goodness. So that's just an aside. I'm not looking forward to that. Hopefully that's not

00:25:45.400 going to be sexualized. I mean, that's not really in keeping with the theme that we're talking about

00:25:49.880 right now. I hope it's not going to paint this dark picture of romance. We know that we've officially

00:25:54.260 gone off the rails. If Aslan and the White Witch are getting together, we've got problems. Hopefully

00:25:59.680 that's not going to happen. But this is just a theme of kind of taking classic literature that really

00:26:04.340 could be made into something beautiful and lasting and actually worthy of our admiration and

00:26:11.460 turning it into something that I think is just like a really cheap imitation. Now, these outlets

00:26:17.060 have something to say about Wuthering Heights. The Independent says it uses the guise of interpretation

00:26:21.940 to gut one of the most impassioned, emotionally violent novels ever written. It's an astonishingly

00:26:27.860 hollow work, not high praise. The BBC says finale channels something essential in the book. The corrosive

00:26:33.780 behavior that can result from thwarted desire, jealousy, anger, vengeance are as natural to Kathy

00:26:39.820 and Heathcliff as their endless passion for each other. Empire says while the film doesn't need a

00:26:45.300 denser narrative, it could benefit from feeling more grounded, especially when Kathy and Heathcliff

00:26:50.380 fight and fornicate like teenagers ricocheting between lust and loathing. But apparently that is

00:26:57.980 what that's what the film is. So this seems to be a theme in which dark romance is targeting women

00:27:06.920 and trying to shape what they think about love. If you look back, this is not new, by the way.

00:27:13.560 Obviously, Wuthering Heights was written in the 1800s. But if you look back to the Twilight Saga,

00:27:18.660 I was one of the first consumers of the Twilight Saga. Okay. I actually didn't know anything about it.

00:27:25.700 I was in high school. I frequented Barnes and Noble very often. My friends and I were always

00:27:30.660 looking for good books to read together. And I came across this book with a little, it was a black

00:27:37.120 book with a little red apple on it that I was like, ooh, that looks really good. And I read it. And of

00:27:41.940 course, I was obsessed because that is the nature of these books. They're very, I would say, superficially

00:27:47.740 written. They're very easy to read. They draw you in and they really play upon the hormones and the

00:27:53.500 immature mind of a teenage girl to just suck you into it. No pun intended, since we're talking about

00:28:01.040 a vampire, a vampire series. But the possessiveness and the jealousy and the even like violence that is

00:28:11.020 normalized in Twilight and like the intense sexual tension, also the weird idea of imprinting upon

00:28:18.440 a baby. There's a lot of very dark and disturbing themes in something like Twilight. Also, there are

00:28:25.960 other books that celebrate the kind of like dark romantic themes like Great and Terrible Beauty that

00:28:31.580 were very prominent and popular when I was a high schooler. And I just wonder how much this has had

00:28:38.680 an effect on young women. Is this part of the reason why women tolerate staying in abusive relationships?

00:28:47.640 They end up settling for the guy that is aggressive or they end up trying to go for the guy that is

00:28:52.980 possessive of them and all of their time and cuts out their friends. And you hear these terrible stories

00:28:58.280 of these women who were abused sometimes to death or abused in the hospital and there were always signs

00:29:03.780 before it. Now, I'm not saying that's the only factor, these romance novels and movies, but I do think

00:29:10.540 that's part of it. That while we are simultaneously saying, women, don't settle. You deserve better.

00:29:16.740 This is what a healthy relationship looks like. And you should never sit around and be abused

00:29:24.660 emotionally or physically by a man. We are also feeding them this stuff and saying, well, it's fine.

00:29:30.080 You can separate that from reality, but clearly most people can't. You actually can't celebrate or

00:29:36.280 separate many people what they're being entertained by and like their guiding philosophy in life,

00:29:42.580 especially when you see the actors like Margot Robbie and Jacob kind of conflating their

00:29:47.960 characters with reality. It becomes very confusing and very convincing for a lot of people. Bridgerton,

00:29:54.600 I've never seen Bridgerton. I think I should start a club of, I will be the president of the,

00:29:59.980 I've never seen Bridgerton club and I never want to see Bridgerton club because it's weird.

00:30:06.060 And I've seen the commercials for it. I don't like if you're going to have a period piece,

00:30:11.080 then make it actually seem like a period piece, not a New York city pride parade in 2026. Um,

00:30:20.080 but it's the same kind of thing. It highlights obsessiveness, intense jealousy, the push pull

00:30:25.840 dynamics, which is really fun to watch. However, again, glamorizing this kind of volatility

00:30:33.460 that really is not healthy in a real life relationship. There was that Netflix series,

00:30:39.380 you, another one that I tried to watch and I was like, why did I even, I don't know. Very dark,

00:30:45.520 very scary. It's this guy who he becomes obsessed with these different women and then he ends up

00:30:50.520 stalking them and he has like a fixation on them. He manipulates them. He ends up abusing them. He ends

00:30:56.820 up getting married to and impregnating one of them. There's all kinds of infidelity and stuff,

00:31:02.400 but how it is written, it makes you want them to be together. It's really strange and it makes you

00:31:09.620 almost like him and almost root for him, even though he is literally a serial killer. Of course,

00:31:15.500 we've got things like 50 shades of gray, but then we also have the same theme and music. Um, when you

00:31:22.240 look at someone like Taylor Swift and I know people are going to be like, you're just a Taylor Swift

00:31:26.640 tater. No, you know what? I, I also rolled down the windows to my Volvo when I was 16 years old and

00:31:37.740 blasted the fearless album. Okay. I am not so different than you. It's just that I feel like

00:31:43.560 I have grown up and Taylor Swift has not, you know, and I just don't relate to a lot of the themes

00:31:49.860 and the dark themes in her, um, in her albums. Like for example, if we look at blank space,

00:31:58.200 2014, and we look at some of her other albums, here's a line, I get drunk on jealousy, but you'll

00:32:03.960 come back each time you leave. Cause darling, I'm a nightmare dressed like a daydream. It's just really

00:32:09.040 silly, but there's lots of different themes like that. Always talking about jealousy and obsessiveness.

00:32:13.980 I knew you'd linger like a tattoo kiss. I knew you'd haunt all of my what ifs. And I'm not saying

00:32:20.240 all of that is wrong. Obviously when you first fall in love with someone, a lot of us have

00:32:24.900 experienced that like, can't eat, can't sleep obsession, just love them so much. But this type

00:32:31.180 of overly emotional glorifying jealousy, I actually think is really dangerous for women to imbibe.

00:32:38.100 Billie Eilish, same thing. One of her songs, I didn't change my number. You're obsessed.

00:32:43.480 Don't take it out on me. I'm out of sympathy for you. Actually, a lot of her songs have these

00:32:48.560 very disturbing themes of obsession. She's talking about both men and women. Um, and then of course,

00:32:56.700 we've got Sabrina Carpenter and it's like a funny kind of lighthearted song. If you watch the,

00:33:02.700 if you watch the music video, which I'm not recommending, but it does make light of something

00:33:08.360 that is really very dangerous. She's talking about dating this guy that she knows is terrible. Like

00:33:15.120 he's a bad person. He like just got out of jail or whatever. And, uh, she knows that he is going

00:33:22.160 to hurt her. And she sings, I know I have good judgment. I know I have good taste. She's being

00:33:26.540 tongue in cheek there. It's funny. And it's ironic that only I feel this way. I promise them that you're

00:33:31.280 different, but just don't. I heard that you're an actor. So act like a standup guy, whatever devil's

00:33:36.600 inside, you don't let him out tonight. And it's this whole story of a woman settling for a guy that

00:33:42.420 she knows is really bad in general and really bad for her. So we see this Olivia Rodrigo. So many of

00:33:51.280 the stars, the movies, the books, the songs that are targeting young women are encouraging this very

00:33:57.480 unhealthy mentality about themselves. Um, and also about the man that they're supposed to pursue.

00:34:04.800 And I just wonder if these unrealistic expectations of what romance should look like are

00:34:10.700 actually keeping women single for longer than they would be. Maybe if they were looking for

00:34:15.980 enduring qualities, like of course, as Christians, Christ likeness, but also just diligence and

00:34:21.280 faithfulness and a quiet confidence and being a good friend. Maybe if they were looking for those

00:34:28.640 things rather than the like, will he, won't he obsessive things that we read in Colleen Hoover

00:34:35.120 novels, like maybe women would have eyes for a healthier relationship sooner. It's not great if

00:34:43.240 women are only realizing that their expectations have failed them when they're 40 years old. Now,

00:34:49.760 for some people, that's just God's plan for you to meet the person that you're supposed to marry

00:34:54.520 when you're 40. But when this is the cause, that's a really big problem. Also think that it probably

00:35:00.900 has to do with this TikTok theme of these young women. We're talking teenage girls. We've talked

00:35:07.620 about this before on this show, this unfortunate trend of kink talk, where you've got these young

00:35:13.860 women who are pretending like they like to be choked and they like to be violated and they like to be

00:35:19.520 treated as objects, like these pornographic objects. I think that all of this media pressure

00:35:26.080 and this narrative from entertainment that this is what love looks like has really messed with women's

00:35:33.420 heads and is leading them in really, really dangerous places. We've got more on that in a

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00:36:42.160 There was this 2014 study in the Journal of Women's Health that found that women who read

00:36:48.740 Fifty Shades of Grey. So most of you are probably familiar. I mentioned it briefly earlier, but it's

00:36:53.500 just the sadomasochistic BDSM glorifying book that turned into a movie and women loved. Yuck.

00:37:01.480 They were more likely to experience stalking, coercion, physical abuse in real life. Now think

00:37:08.400 about that for a second. So women who were watching this or reading this were more likely to be stalked.

00:37:16.600 Now, the men were not stalking them and violating them because they knew they read Fifty Shades of

00:37:21.840 Grey. Obviously, it created in them a tolerance for that kind of behavior and just an immunity to

00:37:29.820 the red flags and the warning signs that then led to that. I'm not trying to victim shame here. I'm not

00:37:35.200 saying that it's all women's fault that they were violated in that way. I'm saying that this chips away

00:37:41.880 at our conscience, and this chips away at our discernment when we see these glorified depictions

00:37:46.260 of violence. The study says problematic depictions of violence against women in popular culture,

00:37:52.120 such as in film, novels, music, or pornography, create a broader social narrative that normalizes

00:37:57.100 these risks and behaviors in women's lives. Our study showed strong correlations between health

00:38:01.740 risks in women's lives, including violence victimization and consumption of Fifty Shades, a fiction

00:38:07.760 series that portrays violence against women. In the journal Gender Issues, a 2021 study shows

00:38:14.180 media violence against women increases acceptance of domestic violence attitudes with women often

00:38:19.800 depicted as victims or objects reinforcing patriarchal norms. The study says results indicate a significant

00:38:28.280 positive relationship between exposure to pleasurable television violence and self-reported

00:38:34.000 intimate partner abuse. Endorsement of domestic violence beliefs and victimization experience were

00:38:39.800 found to be the strongest predictors of intimate partner violence perpetration. A 2025 study published

00:38:47.140 in the journal Social Sciences showed, quote, the culture of romance is a significant associated factor

00:38:53.500 to adolescent gender violence due to entrenched traditional stereotypes and media influences that make

00:38:59.580 control or jealousy or dependence appear as proof of love. Now, listen to that, what I just said,

00:39:06.980 and think back to what Margot Robbie was saying at the beginning about being codependent on her star,

00:39:14.320 not even just her character, but in real life, and think about the effect that that has on young women.

00:39:20.320 In this study, they found that 26.6%, that is very significant, said that boys should control who their

00:39:27.520 girlfriends associate with. So, like, really break down that boys, okay, so we're talking about minors,

00:39:33.080 should control, okay, not just like, hey, I don't think that that's a very good friend to you,

00:39:37.920 she's pretty mean, should control who their girlfriends, not their wives, obviously, we're talking about

00:39:43.220 minors, should associate with. And I'm not saying that husbands should be, quote-unquote, controlling.

00:39:50.260 I'm just saying, like, think about who we're talking about here. We are talking about teenagers

00:39:54.140 and a fourth of them, over a fourth of them, saying that it's okay for boyfriends to be controlling.

00:40:00.060 I absolutely think that that is glorified to our young girls today. There are also some mental

00:40:04.940 health blogs that write about this topic, framing harm, how media shapes our understanding of domestic

00:40:10.140 and sexual violence, romanticizing abuse, the dangerous normalization of toxic relationships.

00:40:16.780 So, this is absolutely a problem. And I just want parents, my girls are young, but I just want

00:40:23.460 parents of preteens and teens to be extremely careful about the sources of romance that your

00:40:31.240 children are seeing. You know, my parents were very restrictive about the things that I could watch.

00:40:37.580 They probably could have been even more restrictive at the time. I thought they were so strict and the

00:40:41.820 most ridiculous parents ever because they were actually much stricter than a lot of my friends'

00:40:45.980 parents. But looking back at some of the things that, like, I was watching and especially the

00:40:50.900 things I was reading, I'm like, oh, well, that's where I got that lie about romance or love. And I'm

00:40:56.900 so thankful that I found such a wonderful husband after college and that I've been married for 10

00:41:01.800 years. I'm so grateful for that. But not having those unrealistic and unhealthy depictions of love

00:41:09.340 fed to me at my most vulnerable and hormonal time as a teenager would have set me up much better

00:41:15.540 for dating and relationships and all of that before I met my husband. I think that a lot of

00:41:21.320 parents, maybe my parents thought this, that if they're not, we didn't really have social media.

00:41:25.980 Like, we had Facebook. I don't think we even had a Facebook app on our phone. I didn't have a

00:41:30.160 smartphone until I was, I don't know, 16 or probably 17, actually. And so, like, scrolling at

00:41:35.520 night wasn't a thing. Thank you, Lord, that I was born before I could be a teenager with Snapchat or

00:41:41.840 TikTok. I think my parents probably thought, well, she's reading. And so, that's healthy. But all of

00:41:48.140 these very dark and truly monstrous romance books that I was reading were actually very sexual,

00:41:54.500 very trashy, and not healthy, not expanding not only my mind, not expanding my virtue. And I think

00:42:01.300 that we as parents just have to be a lot more cautious of that. Even those of us who are parents

00:42:06.040 of little ones and thinking about the shows that our child is watching, obviously, it's not going

00:42:12.280 to be romantic. But asking the question, not just, is this not bad for them? Or is this not as bad as

00:42:18.220 something else? Or at least they're not on an iPad, or at least they're not watching this. But is this

00:42:23.100 expanding their mind and expanding their virtue? Will, after this, they have a better idea of what is

00:42:30.220 good, right, and true? Or will they have a more distorted idea of what is good, right, and true? Will they

00:42:35.620 better understand the God who created them and the world of right and wrong? Will they have a better

00:42:40.840 understanding of who they are, their identity? Or will it be worse? Or maybe you could argue that

00:42:48.500 it's neutral. But time is a very finite commodity, and what we fill our mind with is going to shape us

00:42:55.140 in some way. As always, though, the Bible gives us clarity. What should love actually look like? I'm not

00:43:00.760 just talking about the agape love that God has for His people, that unconditional love, but even

00:43:05.480 eros love, erotic love, romantic love, these different types of love that in the right context

00:43:11.600 are really healthy, but in the wrong context are really detrimental. What we know about the Bible

00:43:17.220 is that not everything is prescriptive. Some things are descriptive. When I got into an argument with

00:43:23.520 someone in Jubilee, they were trying to tell me, well, biblical marriage is not just between one man and

00:43:29.260 one woman. Look at Solomon. He had all of his wives. Even David, they had multiple wives. That is

00:43:35.420 descriptive, not prescriptive. What did I, I said then, and I will say it again, mo' wives, mo' problems.

00:43:42.120 Mo' women, mo' problems. Whether you're talking about Jacob or you're talking about Solomon. And so,

00:43:48.380 actually, the Bible, God is so gracious that He was like, look at how my people messed up over and over

00:43:53.100 again. Look at how mo' wives, where that gets you. Gets you in a lot of trouble. Surrogacy gets you in

00:44:00.620 a lot of trouble. Concubines gets you in a lot of trouble. This unhealthy jealousy obsession actually

00:44:06.140 gets you in a lot of trouble, and God has a better way for us. So, let's learn some lessons from that

00:44:11.560 in just a second. Let me pause and tell you about our next sponsor for the day, and that is Shopify.

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00:45:32.040 Okay. So, let's look at a few clear examples of what the wrong kind of love or a perverted

00:45:39.560 kind of love, an ungodly kind of love, like what that can actually lead to. I think of Samson and

00:45:45.540 Delilah. Samson had this obsessive passion for Delilah that overrode his God-given calling that

00:45:51.940 made him vulnerable to manipulation. He keeps returning to her despite obvious lies. Like,

00:45:56.340 she's a bad person and she's leading him in the bad direction. We probably, like, you can probably

00:46:01.460 think of friends or guys that you know who keep going back to the wrong girl because of this obsessive

00:46:07.260 desire, although he might know that she is bad for him. So, this is driven by his lust,

00:46:13.940 by his, like, obsession for her rather than discernment. And here is, like, the key segment

00:46:19.560 of the passage in Judges that describes his downfall. After this, he loved a woman in the

00:46:25.440 valley of Sorok whose name was Delilah. And the lords of the Philistines came up to her and said to

00:46:31.880 her, seduce him and see where his great strength lies and by what means we may overpower him that we

00:46:37.660 may bind him to humble him. And we will each give you 1,100 pieces of silver. Remember, Samson was

00:46:44.600 really strong. They were scared of him. They didn't like him. And so, they used a woman,

00:46:49.380 a honeypot, to basically say, okay, you can basically convince him to be entrapped and then

00:46:57.100 we can see what is actually making him so strong so we can try to take him over. And then we look at

00:47:01.940 Judges 16. And she said to him, Delilah, how can you say I love you when your heart is not with me?

00:47:07.920 You have mocked me these three times and you have told me where your great strength lies.

00:47:12.840 You have not told me where your great strength lies. And when she pressed him hard with her words

00:47:16.960 day after day and urged him, his soul was vexed to death. And he told her all of his heart and said

00:47:22.880 to her, a razor has never come upon my head, nor have I been a Nazarite, for I have been a Nazarite to

00:47:29.160 God from my mother's womb. If my head is shaved, then my strength will leave me. And then, of course,

00:47:36.360 she betrays him and he is weakened. So, his intense desire has actually blinded him to her

00:47:43.440 manipulations. And this is a cautionary tale of prioritizing unchecked passion over God's wisdom,

00:47:50.380 leading straight to betrayal, loss of strength, and then eventually death. And it also just goes to show

00:47:57.120 the power of a manipulative woman using her body and her sexuality to sap the strength of a man and

00:48:04.360 to betray him. And so, this kind of undiscerning obsession led to his downfall. And then, of course,

00:48:13.780 we know the very tragic story of David and Bathsheba. David lusted after Bathsheba after seeing her take a

00:48:21.120 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

00:48:27.740 kill him myself. I'm going to be very crafty. And I am going to send Uriah to the front lines, knowing

00:48:34.460 that he is going to die. And then, after that, he, of course, got Bathsheba and she became his wife.

00:48:42.540 And so, this ungodly love, outside of the parameters that God had placed for desire and

00:48:49.700 marriage, it led to murder. It led to lifelong grief, really, from David. You can see throughout

00:48:56.840 the Psalms, him still just heartbroken over his sin. There's a lot of lessons to be learned from that,

00:49:03.420 that God is a God of redemption. God still calls David a man after his own heart. There was so much

00:49:09.460 abundant grace and mercy for David, but still we see yet another cautionary tale that the wrong kind

00:49:15.780 of love and desire can lead you in a very bad and murderous direction. And then, of course, we had

00:49:22.160 Solomon. Solomon, the wisest person in the world. He had so many foreign wives, and his foreign wives

00:49:28.320 turned his heart away from God. We read in 1 Kings 11, 1 through 8, Now King Solomon loved many foreign

00:49:34.100 women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh. Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, the Hittite women.

00:49:45.040 This sounds like a bad bunny song, but in biblical times. From the nations concerning which the Lord

00:49:50.580 had said to the people of Israel, you shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they

00:49:54.560 with you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their God. So, God, who created us and who

00:49:59.720 created our hearts and created romance and who is love himself, 1 John 4, 8, he knows the nature of it.

00:50:07.020 He knows the nature of emotion. He knows the nature of lust. He knows that when you are sexually

00:50:12.600 one with a person, that you can be led into idolatry. I actually think I've never really

00:50:17.360 thought about this before, but when you see the list of different sins in the New Testament,

00:50:22.320 that when people are in an unrepentant state committing things like sexual immorality and slander

00:50:27.680 and reviling, these things are always listed with idolatry too. And I've wondered, why are those

00:50:33.920 things always together? But I do think that it happens so often that sexual immorality leads to

00:50:39.120 idolatry. You could even say that sexual immorality is idolatry. You are idolizing the object of your

00:50:45.660 lust. You are elevating it to a place above God, but you're also idolizing yourself. You're saying,

00:50:50.980 I know better. My desire is more important. And God is so gracious that in his word, he shows us

00:50:57.120 over and over again, okay, if you do that, things will not go well for you. And I want things to go

00:51:02.640 well for you. I created marriage for this love to be a safe place, to be fully exercised. And when you

00:51:09.200 go outside of that, you're going to have problems. But Solomon clung to these wives in love. He had 700

00:51:16.100 wives. Can you imagine 700 women asking you when you're going to be home from work? Who were

00:51:21.700 princesses and 300 concubines. And his wives turned away his heart for when Solomon was old. And this

00:51:28.360 is 1 Kings 11, 1-8. When Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods. And his

00:51:33.540 heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father. For Solomon went

00:51:39.460 after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians. And after, this is really a lot for me to pronounce,

00:51:46.480 after Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites. So Solomon did what was evil on the side of the Lord

00:51:52.100 and did not wholly follow the Lord as David his father had done. Then Solomon built a high place

00:51:57.580 for Chamash, the abomination of Moab, and for Melech, the abomination of the Ammonites on the mountain

00:52:03.940 east of Jerusalem. And so he did for all of his foreign wives who made offerings and sacrificed

00:52:09.720 to their gods. Sexual immorality can lead to idolatry. It might not look like paganism today,

00:52:17.420 but it might lead to justification of violence, justification of unhealthy relationships,

00:52:25.600 an unhealthy and untrue view of yourself, and of course, missing out on what real, true,

00:52:32.120 biblical love looks like. So let's take a look at that in just a second. But let me pause,

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00:54:01.200 What we read in Scripture is that healthy, biblical love is rooted in God's character.

00:54:06.560 It is selfless. It is patient. It is enduring. It is Christ-centered. We can read in 1 Corinthians 13,

00:54:13.100 sometimes I think that passage is seen as just trite because it's read at all of the wedding

00:54:16.960 ceremonies. But how good is God to not just tell us, oh yeah, love one another. Oh yeah,

00:54:22.000 be loving. God is love. But to actually tell us what love is. Love is patient. Love is kind. It's

00:54:28.280 never irritable. It's never resentful. I think about that a lot. And this is just an aside a little bit.

00:54:34.460 Women, I do believe that we probably put too much stock in a few things. Personality test. It all

00:54:42.600 started with what Disney princess are you. Now we are sophisticated. It's like that Winnie the Pooh

00:54:47.860 meme. I might be too online for you to know what I'm talking about. But we went from what Disney

00:54:51.580 princess are you to like what Enneagram number are you. And it became a lot more sophisticated. But

00:54:56.860 really, I think it's such a focus on the self if I'm honest and thinking too much about ourselves and

00:55:03.920 our eccentricities and sometimes saying that real sins are just quirks. And sometimes I think that

00:55:12.540 we use that, our Enneagram number or our Disney princess type to justify things that we actually

00:55:18.260 need to be sanctified of. And can I also say, I think that we might do that with our cycle too.

00:55:24.120 And it's good to know how the body works. But I think sometimes people are like, yeah, I'm mean

00:55:29.300 because I'm in luteal. And I don't think that that is a good justification for discounting the work

00:55:36.560 that the Holy Spirit has in our lives. And I'm speaking to myself too. It's so easy to be irritable,

00:55:41.620 to be resentful, and to think that we have a good reason to be that when really we read that

00:55:46.620 love must be kind and patient, never rejoicing in wrongdoing, but rejoicing with the truth.

00:55:52.420 And then we look at Song of Solomon and we see this truly erotic romance, desire, pursuit kind of

00:56:00.440 love. This is like a PG-13 book of the Bible, truly. We see chapter 1, 2 through 4,

00:56:08.400 Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your love is better than wine. Your anointing

00:56:12.120 oils are fragrant. Your name is oil poured out. Therefore, virgins love you. Draw me after you.

00:56:17.060 Let us run. The king has brought me into his chambers.

00:56:20.260 There's lots of chapters like this. And it's not all about the other one's physical appearance,

00:56:25.420 although there's a lot of that in there. And we see that God created man and woman to be attracted

00:56:30.800 to one another, to be attracted to their form, to want to procreate. But then there's also just

00:56:36.320 a lot of sweetness in this book too. Song of Solomon, 7-10, I am my beloved's and his desire

00:56:42.120 is for me. And that is the closed circuit of romance that we are supposed to have.

00:56:49.340 1 Corinthians 13, 4 through 7, we just kind of went over this, that love is patient and kind.

00:56:54.920 It also believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. And then Ephesians 5, 25 through

00:57:01.180 28, this makes feminists really angry, but this would have been so radically pro-woman at the time,

00:57:08.080 in a time when women were really not treated as treasures to be protected and valued, but as

00:57:12.980 people to be prostituted or used or discounted or just another concubine or just an incubator for

00:57:19.380 children. Of course, having children is important, but they weren't seen as people to love and to

00:57:24.380 sacrifice for. We read, Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for

00:57:31.160 her. Ladies, I want you to ask yourself, is the man that you're engaged to, is the man that you're

00:57:36.540 dating, is he willing to die for you? Does he care about your holiness? Does he care about your purity?

00:57:45.460 Does he care about your closeness to God? Or is that just something he appreciates about you as an

00:57:50.740 attribute? Is that just something that he might list on his list of positives about you, but he is not

00:57:58.060 working with you to help make you holier and godlier? Because the passage goes on to say that he, the

00:58:04.060 husband, might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might

00:58:08.940 present the church to himself in splendor. This is Christ doing this to his bride, the church, without spot or

00:58:15.020 wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way, what a high

00:58:20.360 calling. Husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. Women, is the person that you are dating,

00:58:27.860 that you are engaged to, does he love you like he loves his own body? Would he lay his physical life

00:58:34.600 down for you? But also, is he spiritually leading you? Now, I will say, listen, if you are in boyfriend,

00:58:41.600 girlfriend territory, don't be playing house. Don't be pretending that this person is your husband,

00:58:47.860 but you should be looking at his attributes to make sure, okay, is this person going to lead me

00:58:56.200 and lead our children? Is he currently leading us towards holiness or is he leading us as close to sin

00:59:02.280 as possible? And then stopping because he knows that's my boundary. That's not something, that's

00:59:07.300 not someone who is ready to marry you. John 15, 12 through 13, this is my commandment that you love

00:59:14.660 one another. 1 John 4, 7 through 8, beloved, let us love one another for love is from God and whoever

00:59:21.260 loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love.

00:59:27.780 Colossians 3, 12 through 14, put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts,

00:59:34.560 kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another. And if one has a complaint against

00:59:41.160 another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you. So you must also forgive.

00:59:46.880 This is the kind of tenderness, the kind of humility, the kind of elevating someone's importance above your

00:59:52.120 own that we just don't see in any of these novels or these movies. It is all about just rugged desire

00:59:59.100 and fulfilling that as quickly as possible, no matter what the cost is, no matter how it affects

01:00:06.660 other people, no matter how it affects your own heart or your own body. It is all about what you want

01:00:12.760 and doing what you want. And God is saying sometimes what you want isn't right. Jeremiah 17, 9 says,

01:00:18.820 the heart is desperately sick. Who can understand it? Romans 12, 9 through 10 says, let love be

01:00:24.720 genuine. So not fake, not all about you, but genuine, sincere. Abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is

01:00:33.100 good. Love one another with brotherly affection, outdo one another in showing honor. And I think it's so

01:00:39.960 interesting that abhor what is evil is sandwiched right between those commandments to love. That we cannot

01:00:46.060 love what is evil, condone what is evil, affirm what is evil, reject what is good, and love one another

01:00:53.320 well. So actually when we see this glorification of evil and this glorification of sexual immorality,

01:01:00.660 it's not proper love at all. It leads to destruction for our own selves, certainly for our daughters, and

01:01:07.900 then it has an effect on society as a whole. It's destabilizing to families. It encourages women to

01:01:14.640 pursue the wrong things. And we have to have healthy love, healthy marriage, healthy child-rearing,

01:01:22.240 healthy children in order to have a healthy society. So in some ways, like what we think about

01:01:27.980 love really does change everything. All right, that's all I got time for today. We will be back here on

01:01:34.240 Wednesday.

01:01:36.000 .

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - February 16, 2026

Ep 1304 ｜ ‘Wuthering Heights’ Movie Is NOT What I Expected

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