THE LIVESTREAM - The Rise of Horror & What It Says About Americans’ Souls
Episode Stats
Harmful content
Misogyny
3
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Toxicity
10
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Hate speech
25
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Summary
The rise of horror and thriller movies is off the charts. They ve been rising as a genre within the film industry more than any other genre that there is. More than action movies, more than anything else you could possibly imagine. What could account for this infatuation with thrillers and horror?
Transcript
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The rise of horror and thriller movies is off the charts. They've been rising as a genre within the film industry more than any other genre that there is. More than action movies, more than anything else you could possibly imagine.
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Now, what could account for this infatuation with thrillers and horror movies?
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There's a lot of things that we could say to explain this phenomenon.
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I think one reason is because young adults who go and watch movies don't have families,
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For a long time, Christmas was always the biggest holiday that you would see celebrated
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Christmas, and perhaps as a close second runner, would be Thanksgiving.
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These days, even in my own neighborhood, when I'm driving around, I'll see as many, if not
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more, decorations on people's houses at the time of Halloween than I see with Christmas.
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Halloween has become kind of like the holiday for young adults who are stuck in perpetual
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adolescence, who never got married, and never had kids.
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It's something that adults celebrate, and I think that that's part of what explains this
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But another reason is because I think guilty people are looking for some kind of vicarious
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atonement, and we'll talk about that in this episode as well.
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There's always some scene in most horror movies where some promiscuous, sexually degenerate
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person is decapitated or taken and tortured, and it's as though the person going into the movie
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knows that that should be them. They know that they're guilty. They know that they have a guilty
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conscience, but they don't actually want to be tortured themselves, and so vicariously they go
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and watch their blood guilt passed on to someone else who suffers in their place. Horror movies,
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at some level, is a replacement for the atonement of Christ. It's a replacement for the gospel
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itself. So, childlessness, this guilty conscience that continues to grow in America, these are at
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least two of the reasons, and we'll list some more, for why horror and thriller is shooting
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through the roof. Tune into this episode now, and we'll get into the discussion.
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all right genre horror is on a generational run this year for being honest there's been a number
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of big box office hits we're about three-fourths of the way through the year uh weapons was a huge
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one i think it's going to take in something like 10 times its budget so you had weapons you had
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sinners which was another kind of quasi horror thriller movie super popular i mean alien romulus
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final destination bloodlines there's tons of people talking about 2025 has really been the
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year for horror and i think a lot of us hear that when we go that makes sense honestly we're guiltier
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than ever we're more wicked than ever and it would make sense that to a greater degree people are
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spending more and more of their money i'm going to go to the theater and i'm going to watch something
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perverse i'm going to watch something violent i'm going to watch something uh that's uh promiscuous
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like you're alluding to joel i'm going to go see that i want to parse out though and uh and make
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careful distinction because it can be it can be easy to do single factor analysis say all right
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horror is up that means people are just worse than ever but there is an actual underlying kind
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of theme that drives this now just to back up the growth and horror take a look at this graph
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here and this is film genre popularity so um for one i mean movies are the stories of a culture
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the soul of a people in some ways you could look at its art you could look at its music
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and you could look at its movies so what we're seeing here is the soul of america film genre
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popularity in the United States in the last hundred years. Actions held pretty steady. War,
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it's funny enough, we're pretty sick of war. We had two of them, World War I, World War II. We
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had Korea. We had Vietnam. War is actually pretty much at a low. Romance is going down. Similar to
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it. We're not a society that believes in love the way that we used to. So romance is on the decline.
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You've got crime a little bit on the decline. Sci-fi, fantasy, maybe growing a little bit,
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holding a bit steady but without a doubt the two that are growing the most i i'll throw three in
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there documentary would be one of them horror and thriller in the last hundred years those are the
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ones that have grown to the greatest degree musicals are way down because nobody is uh
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cultured anymore and they're just a bunch westerns are way down just a bunch of country bumpkins like
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you wes that wouldn't appreciate a musical even if it punched you in the face yeah i was raised
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on musicals west side story my fair lady my parents are both music majors so i was forced
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to play piano all these kinds of things i can't do it i was allowed to tune into hamilton i was
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allowed well hamilton yeah i okay that's gotta be the biggest musical theater though of the past
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yeah well okay the things that are popular now like what is it uh wicked right now or hamilton
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these are these are not like classic traditional musicals these are uh for people who don't know
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anything about musicals and want to watch revisionist you know history or something like
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that uh but classical musicals that used to be a thing but now nobody nobody appreciates music
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that's fair and western is down too western is the quintessential quintessential american identity
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when you think of america the cowboy is the only thing that's not canada that's not europe
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westerns are way down but anyway horror and thriller are up you can even see this is a
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second graph horror genre releases per year from 1995 to 2015 that's a 20 year kind of growth
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you're looking at about 500 movies a year to now over 6 000 this is per imdb so your releases in
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the genre calculated as horror so it's undeniable that horror has been growing and it's not just
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been in the last year or two 2025 is kind of the cap on a 50 at least 25 year growth of the genre
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people are making more more more horror movies and they're watching them now part of this is
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we have to be honest some of this is to be honest they make more money most horror movies are lower
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budget right if you compare a war movie you compare an action movie i mean how much did avengers cost
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to make you have to make five six seven eight times the amount to get your return on investment
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compared to a low budget 40 dollar horror movie or relies on suspense yeah what was that famous
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movie the um the witch trials salem witch trials was it oh the blair witch project yeah it was
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like somebody used um it's like a camcorder a camcorder and just and just shook it the whole
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time and they used flashlights you know under their faces right right i've never watched that
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movie and i still have not seen that movie and part of it is on principle it's like any movie
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that i could make myself i refuse to give my money to like i'm pretty sure my children could
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make uh the blair witch whatever i don't think there's any monster even in it it's not even like
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they had to use cgi or like prosthetics literally just people running around shaking a camera with
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a flashlight just barely out of the screen go incredible stuff and then they're just like
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take my money yeah here's millions and millions of dollars but all that being said we'll talk
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about the guilty conscience in a minute but you do have to root some of this in we are pumping out
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more crappy horror movies because they make more money and these yeah uh these these movie studios
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like if you look at it it's like well i could do this i could do that but uh practically one of the
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reasons that we're being served this up again and again and i mean you can't even go to the movies
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you're watching a pg-13 movie without three four five horror movie ads before it is because we
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got to be honest that part of it is that they make money and so it's not always going to be a single
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factor well we're guilty and that's why we desire horror we don't care how much it costs to make
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them part of it is we are being served it because it makes a lot of money right it's like a supply
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and demand so the supply is coming from uh the fact that it's cheap to make you don't need big
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act you know actors big names you like just very tactically cgi can do a lot of the work that
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you know in the 80s and 90s prosthetics would have to do you'd have to bring you know tons of
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like really high class makeup artists and and set designers and those sorts of things and now you
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can accomplish it with one guy and a computer essentially um you know where where we've arrived
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technologically speaking and so you have the supply side it's just easier than ever to make
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a horror film um simpler than ever to make a really high quality horror film at that and then
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on the demand side that's where the meta-analysis the cultural analysis becomes important well why
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are people coming to these things and so you can talk about the guilty conscience you can talk
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about the fact that horror is like almost predicated on everyone in the film I don't know
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if you've noticed this being dumber than you i think people get like a high from like oh i would
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make a better decision than that and i think directors know that and so it's like you know
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people are running from this thing when they could like jump in a car they're like passing a
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helicopter passing a car passing a plane uh running from something and so people feel good about that
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you know oh i'm maybe i'm not dumb and then there's also of course the element that goes in
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line with the guilty conscience of oh my you know i can walk out of the the movie theater and feel
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like my life is so much better than that person's life right whatever they were experiencing and the
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sense of like i did my good deed for the day because i know i'm a guilty person i know i'm
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i'm a degenerate i know that i deserve to be tortured um but i i subjected i voluntarily
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subjected myself to go and kind of do penance to go and and watch this thing that made me
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uncomfortable for an hour and a half um and and someone else ultimately you know is is split
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apart and tortured in my place so it's like this yeah it's it's like this quasi atonement so in
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terms of reasons we're saying capitalism is one of them horror movies are slop and it's super cheap
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to make and uh and people just uh it's like adam sandler you know he's like uh sloppy joes please
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can i have some can i have some sloppy seconds with the sloppy joes please you know uh please
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give me some more i know that i i know that i am slop i deserve slop and and that's what i want so
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part of it is uh capitalism works and people have a pretty low bar these days uh when it comes just
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to quality and uh and then two uh the atonement factor guilty conscience three um prolonged
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adolescence and not having children right who is not children friendly but if you know half of your
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population is unmarried you know without kids um then that just all of a sudden you have a bigger
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market for that um i think a fourth one honestly is um i'm gonna work it in there you know like
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right before we started recording i looked at myself in the mirror and i said you get in there
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and you make this episode about immigration and i honestly so like when you said uh westerns are
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down i thought like well that's quintessentially american like like you know like i understand
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that there's you know the one iconic photo of vivek ramaswami you know wearing his cowboy hat
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and the texas shirt but like by and large like what do a bunch of you know indians on h1b visas
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have like what kind of interest would they have in a country western because it's because it's
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historical and they've tried to hamilton some westerns i mean there's been some notable films
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in the last you know 10 years where it's been you know brown brown westerns but or the opposite uh
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i don't know if you've caught this but like kevin costner's a lot of his stuff is like the native
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american positive side of a western um and that's become really big as well even that play well the
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international markets too so if it's a movie for americans well what about our china what exactly
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and that's that's my point is it like i think horror is kind of universal because um part of
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it is uh the fascination so like to give you know maybe one positive attribute all these you know
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like prolonged adolescence and not getting married not not having families uh guilty consciences
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because everyone's degenerate wanting slop you know and uh capitalism playing off of that they're
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cheap movies to make um uh having a bunch of immigrants who aren't tied to america they aren't
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tied to um the you know the wild wild west and that tradition you know part of our ethos and the
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myth that's uniquely american all those kinds of things um but if if i could say one positive
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it is kind of universal um universally people um have some level of interest and fascination
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in the mysterious the unknown uh the the uh preternatural you know the supernatural um i
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think that that's that's kind of it plays on some things that whereas a western maybe only plays to
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a particular you know uh audience you know like like thinking of of the south in america you know
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like for us we're in texas uh but but something like ghosts everybody like wants to know about
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the paranormal everybody because everybody i think instinctively realizes that there's more
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to life than just flesh and blood that there's more than just the material world you know some
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have said you know the world is not just stuff which is absolutely true right so i think everybody
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made in the image of god knows that there's some kind of you know behind the veil there is a
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spiritual reality and that that spiritual reality at various times in various ways actually does
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kind of pierce through the veil even if just for a moment and have real tangible effects in the
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material world and people instinctively know that and and horror tends to uh to play off of that
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yeah i and i could add even a fifth one to that the villain in many ways is real i think of the
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conjuring film series for example it's kind of cool in the end where they said uh hey here's
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the takeaway it's i think ed and lorraine walker are the names in the movie they're like god is
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real satan is real and your soul hangs in the balance we're being honest there's been a dearth
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of good compelling villains if we've forgotten how to write many good characters i think we've
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also forgotten how to write a lot of villains how to write people that actually have compelling
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understandable interests so in the dearth of a million uh comic book movies where it's like oh
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here's a guy that villainous thanos the villainous thanos or it's just a celebrity that's like brought
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in there's nothing unique about him nothing benevolent to then go to a horror movie encounter
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oh this is something demonic or this is someone that's sadistic and twisted well these things
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exist in real life demons are real twisted serial killers are real that is something that actually
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can feel something from compared to i'm watching a popcorn flick everything is so fake and of course
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the villain himself is it's as thick or as robust as a sheet of paper yeah that's another reason
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people are drawn to horror you're right the devil is real and so it does feel realistic like that's
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what i was saying with the interest in the supernatural people that's a universal interest
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because people whether they consciously admit it or not everybody's universally interested in that
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because they they all have this sneaking suspicion that it's real but but playing with the villain
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aspect of horror films you're absolutely right like when you know you've got some movie with uh
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you know a coven of witches well uh Thanos is not real witches are yeah witches are you know or
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like there's ghosts okay well maybe it's not ghosts but uh there are demonic spirits we talked about
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this uh just a couple weeks ago in one of our episodes where we talked about you know the witch
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of Endor who conjures the spirit of Samuel. And she herself is surprised because it's actually
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Samuel's, you know, soul that comes up from Sheol. But what she usually did was probably not just
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sleight of hand and smoke and mirrors, but she probably conjured something. It wasn't actually
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the person's soul, but what it was was a demon. It was a familiar spirit that would take on the
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appearance of the person who's seeking her out, you know, who wants to talk to their dead loved
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one um and so my point is whether it's ghost familiar spirits demons or whether it's witches
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well there are actually witches or warlocks um these are things that are actually real and and
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i think people instinctively know that they're real and so again there's this universal appeal
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um of of and and they want they want i think at some level it's like a desensitizing you know
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like sometimes like people will think about death because they know it's inescapable they know it's
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inescapable and and although it's not entirely true right there there are actually good positive
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ways to think about death you know back in the day you know they would have a skull sitting on
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the table memento more you know remember your mortality remember that death comes for us all
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and and the point wasn't to be morbid the point was to to live life to the fullest in light of
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the fact that death is inescapable um well likewise so is hell for those who don't know
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jesus christ and and i think in in this tragic irony in a twisted sadistic sort of way um people
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are thinking like well i could prepare for death by thinking about it now so that when it comes
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maybe it won't be so frightening maybe it won't be so terrible and and i think you know that
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subconsciously there are many people who probably think i can prepare for hell now by going to you
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know uh saul number 49 you know whatever movie they're up to at this point um so i'm i'm preparing
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uh for this thing that i know um is coming you know and so that i are maybe i'm diffusing right
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like like a like a balloon so that when it finally does come the pop is is not so dramatic i'm
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diffusing some of the air preemptively so that it's not quite as terrible yeah i think uh that's
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a great point i think like particularly there's something we're seeing uh it's just a problem of
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american sort of late stage capitalism is that life has become so comfortable that people seek
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um sometimes for good sometimes for bad involuntary suffering so right i don't have to work you know
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till the land anymore so i involuntarily suffer by going on a run or going to the gym or cold
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right exactly but um as also i don't see death right someone dies uh you know the uh funeral
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home comes and picks them up they put a sheet over them they cover them i never experience what
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it feels like to see a dead face um to hold the dead body to have to carry a lifeless um corpse
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um and so uh i'm sort of shielded and protected and so there's an element of me that craves
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the reality of death. And horror is sort of an outlet, I think, for people along with
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sort of what's happening, you know, as it relates to, you know, biblical anthropology and
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what we know is original sin and so on and so forth. So I think that's a great point.
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The other thing I wanted to talk about was really, you know, as we think about
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the emergence of horror in the, I think the 21st century is the broadening of it. So you think
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about the exorcist if you're familiar with the exorcist film right it's like the quintessential
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film i think a lot of horror started are in that kind of very narrow uh sort of did not demonic
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demonic possession catholic priest has to travel across the globe now you see the broadening of it
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and you can just see how how sloppy it's become you think about uh this more recent horror film
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around christmas are you familiar i've never watched i wouldn't watch that slop but but there's
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apparently a film where i think it's krampus or something yeah krampus like oh yeah i don't know
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if it's santa claus per se but there's some sort of like wickedness going on and at the time of
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christmas which is just so you know it's just like poor at its basis so anyway all you all i'm
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pointing out is that you see this like broadening of the category of horror to try to get this mass
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appeal so it's not just ghosts it's not just demons it's vampires it's aliens it's a lot of
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go for kids and uh marriages too so they'll take that relationship and it'll be a couple and then
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she's realizing as they go on vacation oh my goodness he's a psychopath right or even children
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like a child becomes possessed and that's the scariest thing ever right subverting and tainting
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good natural relationships that should only be promoted and looked at hey these are good and
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beautiful and rightly ordered and it comes in and twists them and it's like can you imagine if your
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spouse was trying to kill you can you imagine if your own child had been inhabited by a demon i
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I think of Pet Sematary, for instance, that's real recoiling and you're just aghast at it.
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Yep. And then, you know, maybe one other reason to account for the rise of horror
00:20:37.160
would, of course, be Peter Thiel, Palantir, and probably the Jews. All right, let's go to our
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the show notes and use promo code rrm for 30 days free i crack myself up i feel like right before we
00:25:12.280
went into that commercial break i just i thought it in my head i thought this is funny and i'm
00:25:15.640
i'm going to say yeah you go out there and you make this about palantir yeah you make this about
00:25:19.900
palantir and immigration yep you're talking this is horror what are we doing but the subject is
00:25:25.240
about movies and horror yeah i'll tell you what's a horror movie right now our immigration policy
00:25:30.160
so when i said yeah i'll tell you that's that is a horror um now okay so palantir uh maybe maybe not
00:25:37.000
with war however though you know i threw the jews in there um i mean we do have to mention like we're
00:25:42.800
talking about hollywood there's a specific genre called body horror so you think of a alien romulus
00:25:47.380
and it's fascinating like like think of the subversion of this movie you have an alien and
00:25:51.880
the scariest thing about him is it's kind of actually a hyper fertility that someone gets
00:25:56.160
killed by it and it plants its eggs in there i mean i think in uh what was it prometheus like
00:26:01.320
this terrible scene at the end where she's literally giving birth to this half human half alien
00:26:05.320
well how is that not a image of and this is how life is and if you're not careful life will grow
00:26:10.980
and you don't want this thing and it's literally in your stomach and the origin of body horror is
0.60
00:26:15.340
literally a jewish director who pioneered the genre as this gross macabre twisting of like
0.80
00:26:21.080
fertility and femininity i knew it every single time uh let me trace this back that we've mentioned
0.98
00:26:27.480
the catharsis i literally said it as a joke but then when we went into the commercial break i
00:26:31.460
thought hang on i probably nailed it it's got to be yeah uh we mentioned the catharsis and we do
00:26:37.480
have to trace this back, not to just this is something that came about recently. I would argue,
00:26:41.680
and this goes all the way back to the Thebian plays, I'm going to use it as an example, Oedipus
00:26:44.780
and Oedipus Rex. We have told these stories for thousands of years, and the stories we tell,
00:26:50.420
they give us catharsis from some of the emotions that we experience. So Oedipus Rex, Aristotle,
00:26:55.240
I think he kind of ties it to this, there's a tragedy in it. So the fear of a lot of the people
00:26:59.480
at the time, the story, the way it's written, think about the person that, not by their own
00:27:04.400
their own action so they didn't mean it they didn't have bad intentions but they fall under
00:27:09.540
because of tragedy they fall into terrible circumstances in the story of Oedipus you've
00:27:13.780
had 3,000 years to read it I'm not spoiling it it's prophesied that he's going to kill his father
00:27:18.520
and he's going to sleep with his mother and so this whole story is him going about his life
00:27:22.060
trying to avoid it but it turns out the stranger that he murdered was actually his father in
00:27:26.360
disguise he then goes to the city he defeats the sphinx and he marries a woman who's a widow and
00:27:31.040
that turns out to be his mother because he's separated at birth. And there's this terrible
00:27:34.220
moment at the end where he realizes what he's done. And he actually takes the pin, I think,
00:27:37.720
from his cloak, and he blinds himself. And what a lot of the Greek scholars kind of, they point to,
00:27:43.440
what's this story doing? Okay, like we read a story where a guy sleeps with his mom, he kills
00:27:47.860
his dad. Why would anybody want to experience that? Well, we all recognize that life can have
00:27:52.900
tragedy like that, that we can take tons of steps to avoid our own destiny. Well, I don't want to
00:27:57.460
end up like that. I don't want to hurt those that I love. But through tragedy, we end up doing it.
00:28:01.960
So people flock to those plays and they flock to them because they say, I'm going to watch someone
00:28:06.240
go through that. And I'm going to realize that it's real and can happen. But I'm going to get
00:28:10.360
this psychological release, this psychological relief from watching someone else undergo the
00:28:16.340
punishment. And maybe the tragedy, as we were alluding to earlier, the tragedy that was supposed
00:28:20.720
to fall on me is going to fall on them. You said it earlier in the cold open, but a lot of horror
00:28:27.240
has a sexual element to it it does and how fitting is it that the most promiscuous generation that
1.00
00:28:33.460
possibly ever lived it's popular among young people popular among gen z so you have a promiscuous
0.56
00:28:38.820
generation a generation not having kids because they're delaying it that they go in and they watch
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00:28:43.540
movies and and in it they see those that are promiscuous like them they see themselves they
00:28:49.340
see themselves and then they see that's me uh what befalls on you know the person that's representing
00:28:54.900
them is what they I think you know whether conscious or subconscious what they know um
00:29:01.180
should befall right themselves you know and it's like so I have my you know my movie avatar
00:29:07.740
is going in and receiving the punishment that I know that I personally am due and um and it
00:29:14.820
it's it's weird it's it's cathartic um it's like you're going in and and subjecting yourself to
00:29:22.340
something that's demonic something that's uh horrific something that's you know grotesque
00:29:27.580
and all these different things and yet people do it uh for the thrill of it for the entertainment
00:29:32.640
but they also do it i think in a therapeutic way because ironically even though they're
00:29:37.140
subjecting themselves to something terrible they come out feel feeling a little better
00:29:42.160
right um you know because because they're like i but i kind of kind of deserve it because here i am
00:29:48.720
uh, living for myself, being selfish, being, you know, um, degenerate and all these different
00:29:54.340
capacities. Um, and yet things go well for me. Um, I'm, I'm not getting, uh, the punishment that
00:30:02.460
I know that I'm due. And, uh, and, and so I'm going to go and kind of like, uh, you know,
00:30:09.480
whipping themselves, you know, a little, uh, little self-inflicted punishment, uh, so that I
00:30:14.860
can you know just keep going and uh and not be overridden by guilt yeah i and so all the back
00:30:19.980
to the plays in that time controlling fate was a lot more difficult you didn't have predictions
00:30:24.140
for weather you didn't have uh more autonomy than you did today so we no longer tell the stories of
00:30:29.180
worrying about tragic fate befalling us but we do tell the stories that they didn't tell then
00:30:33.460
which are stories of guilt of feeling the weight of man i'm a guilty person so i think it's just
00:30:39.580
interesting that for thousands of years we've recognized hey there's a catharsis in a story
00:30:43.200
and sometimes we didn't tell the same stories that we told now so it's not just one story
00:30:46.520
playing out again and again and again we told a story then they're related to man's plight and
00:30:51.060
man's struggle but now i literally at the box office we can look at the numbers and go
00:30:55.220
hmm i wonder what people what they're feeling what would be the title maybe of a of a movie
00:31:00.620
that people are watching oh sinners like it just made like 300 billion dollars in the box office
00:31:06.120
there's literally a movie titled sinners where people go in and watch sinners get the punishment
00:31:11.460
that they deserve right i i don't know if i could make it more obvious than that but to say
00:31:15.060
that's the symptom of a sick people looking for atonement and everybody does this like even the
00:31:20.020
person that's self-pitying what are they doing they're punishing themselves so they feel like
00:31:24.280
hey i got punished and uh and you don't have to do it for me i feel guilty about this i feel
00:31:29.420
insufficient and i'm going to tear myself down it's not even a real humility i'm going to tear
00:31:33.600
myself down and that's going to atone for the bad things i've done but all of it is of course it's
00:31:39.300
It's like Adam and Eve trying to cover themselves with leaves.
00:31:42.240
Yeah, and I think that point that I made about the character being inherently less...
00:31:47.800
I think it's important that the average horror film doesn't really do any character development.
00:31:53.020
It kind of just throws you in the middle of it.
00:31:56.240
And then, as a consequence, you're kind of typically okay with them dying.
00:32:00.420
These are the subtle ways in which I think horror sort of alleviates your...
00:32:05.860
Or I would say, not alleviates isn't the word, but it sort of provides you with this sense of that cathartic release that we're talking about.
00:32:14.840
But it's like, it's very fake in the sense that you weren't attached to the character.
00:32:17.820
Even using the movie itself, it's like it didn't really cost you anything to see that happen.
00:32:23.880
And so I think of like, so that's one part of it.
00:32:27.740
the other part of horror is like the the i think it's called saw or jigsaw uh where it's like uh
00:32:34.140
i again i i get to go see people be punished and i'm actually better than them and so it's like
00:32:38.880
kind of like a pat on the back of back of like seeing just quote unquote justice be done of
00:32:43.520
course it's just gore and and um and terrible in all sorts of ways um so so you have kind of those
00:32:49.640
two different streams of horror happening one is like the self-flagellation but it's like that
00:32:54.060
fake kind and then one is like the you know i'm virtue i'm more virtuous than any person i'm about
00:32:59.120
to watch on the screen and i get to see them suffer they're getting what they deserve but
00:33:03.260
i'm better than that yeah right um i have one more major point that i want to make but i'm gonna
00:33:09.080
this is going to be a shorter episode and uh and so i'd like to save it and make it after this last
00:33:14.020
commercial break so let's go ahead and go to our final commercial break we'll come back i'll make
00:33:18.880
a point and i'd like to hear both of you guys respond to it we'll give some concluding thoughts
00:33:22.140
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00:35:05.820
Wes, you made a great point earlier where you were talking about, you know, back in the day, it's the fear of the unknown.
00:35:12.960
It's the fear of not being able to control the elements and the environment.
00:35:18.920
And so it's this fear of tornadoes and hurricanes and storms, you know, and lightning.
00:35:24.980
And then also the weather in terms of rain and crop growth and fear of famine, fear of starvation.
00:35:33.660
There was a lot of fear that came from elements of nature that had yet to be harnessed or protections.
00:35:46.700
and remove at least a great degree of our vulnerabilities
00:36:08.360
So Sigmund Freud, terrible, terrible person
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and hated Christ and hated the Christian faith and hated all religion, for that matter.
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But one of his big arguments against God, you know, because ultimately he's trying to,
00:36:23.060
you know, he's an atheist and he's promoting atheism.
00:36:25.340
One of his big arguments against God is he would say, well, all the people who used to believe in God,
00:36:29.980
the reason why they believed in deities is because deities are a way of personifying
00:36:36.980
uh certain um certain natural elements that um that cannot be reasoned with they can't be appealed
00:36:45.920
to they can't you can't like you can't barter with a storm you can't um you know even even if
00:36:52.760
there's like uh you know a mob of people who uh to take you hostage as you're walking home in the
00:36:58.120
middle of the night down the back alleyway which you shouldn't do but if that ever happened and a
00:37:01.660
whole group of people surround you and they grab you and they threaten to kill you um even though
00:37:06.300
they're terrible people and they may be beyond being reasoned with at least
00:37:10.120
their people. And so you can try, you know, you can at least try and say,
00:37:13.420
please, you know, I'm a father. I have children at home or take,
00:37:16.760
take my money or I'll give you this instead. If you spare my life,
00:37:20.860
there's some element of hope because you're dealing with a person and a person
00:37:26.000
can be spoken to a person can be reasoned with,
00:37:28.440
but there is no reasoning with a storm. There's no reasoning with famine.
00:37:32.820
There's no reasoning with the crops just not growing.
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And so what people did, according to Sigmund Freud, is, and I think some of this is true,
00:37:43.520
but it just, it explains gods, lowercase g, gods, and many different world religions,
00:37:48.320
but it does not explain God, that is the true God, the triune God.
00:37:52.720
And R.C. Sproul talked about this, and I think it's insightful, some of the things that he has to say,
00:37:57.480
and I'll paraphrase, but this is why you attribute certain personification deities to storms.
00:38:07.460
You have Thor, or you have Odin, or you have this person or that person, and the gods still
00:38:13.160
can do terrible things to you, and they're not necessarily even on humanity's side. When you
00:38:17.180
look at Greco-Roman mythology, the gods are petty. The gods are usually at war with each other,
00:38:23.620
angry at each other, and they're not omni-benevolent. Some of the gods may have some
00:38:30.940
benevolent moments towards humanity, but they can hurt you, they can help you. But with that,
00:38:39.800
at least you have a person. You have a person, and so you can appeal to a person. And one of the ways
00:38:46.180
that you think of the ancient Aztecs or the Mayans, one of the ways that you appeal is by
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blood by blood and um and and i i think of whore and going in and watching on a screen this person
00:39:00.020
being torn apart and i and i wonder like what you know what what people felt when there was a human
00:39:06.440
sacrifice because uh there was a famine and uh the rains didn't come that year you know and people
00:39:12.300
are starving and and you've attributed to this natural phenomenon um a god-like deity to personify
00:39:19.760
it so that you can appeal, right? Because otherwise you're actually more hopeless because then it's
00:39:25.400
like, well, if it's just the weather, then there's not a dang thing we can do about it. So we've
00:39:31.560
attributed this deity personification to the weather, to the rains, you know, and there's been
00:39:38.360
no rain this year. And so we're having a famine. Our people are starving and we're going to appeal
00:39:44.040
to the deity so that he might send rain, so that we might have crops, so that we might not starve.
00:39:54.260
We're going to make a human sacrifice and spill their blood out.
00:39:59.320
And everybody probably has this sense of, that could have been me.
00:40:04.820
But this person is dying for me in my place so that me and my family can eat.
00:40:10.360
so that God would see the blood of this sacrificial lamb
00:40:15.960
and turn from their wrath and bless us, the people, by sending rain.
00:40:28.080
We don't live in huts, at least here in the West.
00:40:30.880
We're far less vulnerable to hurricanes and to storms.
00:40:35.060
These things still happen, and there is still a death toll,
00:40:40.360
even today in you know if you go to like whenever there's an earthquake or something like that in
00:40:46.220
Haiti far more people die and not necessarily because the earthquake is more severe although
00:40:50.800
there have been very severe earthquakes in Haiti but there have been comparable earthquakes in the
00:40:56.260
west and less people die because because of technology the way that the buildings are
00:41:01.300
structured they you know they don't cause as much damage you know so there's just through technology
00:41:08.860
through innovation in our modern world in the West, we have found a way to drastically mitigate
00:41:17.440
the casualties of natural disasters. So my point is there is less fear instilled in the average
00:41:25.000
modern Western person when it comes to storms and hurricanes and famine and these kinds of things.
00:41:31.520
We typically don't go hungry. Even the poorest among us in Western countries are eating Cheeto
00:41:37.480
puffs and whatever on our tax dollars. And so people aren't fearing famine. They're not fearing
00:41:43.880
starvation. They're not fearing storms coming and sweeping them away. But the one thing that we
00:41:50.580
still do fear, very, very much so, is our own guilt and what we think is due to us. So instead
00:41:59.040
of we've we've attributed a deity to a storm and and we have a human sacrifice in some Aztec temple
00:42:07.700
we go to the movie theater and we have a virtual digital you know sacrifice on screen not to die
00:42:15.440
to protect us from the hurricane or to die to protect us from famine but to die to protect us
00:42:21.200
from our own sense of guilt and I think that's that's a lot of what's going on and you know we
00:42:27.020
talked about this as we were preparing for the episode, and all three of us agree that
00:42:30.820
the thing that's missing, that's probably quite obvious by this point, is that the Christian faith
00:42:38.320
has a sacrificial lamb. We actually do have atonement. The Christian faith actually deals
00:42:44.220
with moral guilt, and it deals with moral guilt not by placating people and just patronizing
00:42:54.920
them and saying, oh, you know, but you're not that bad. Somebody else is actually worse, so sleep
00:42:58.640
easy at night. The Christian gospel doesn't come to us and deal with our guilt by convincing us
1.00
00:43:04.300
that our guilt isn't that bad or convincing us that we're not guilty at all, but it actually
0.86
00:43:08.920
elevates man's guilt and says, you think you're bad, you're actually worse. You're so bad that
00:43:14.100
the only sufficient punishment is eternity in hell or Jesus being ripped apart on the cross
1.00
00:43:22.280
However, this second option is, in fact, an option
00:43:30.200
and you know you deserve on Christ who knew no sin.
00:43:33.360
He was made to be sin as a substitute on your behalf.
00:43:40.960
But one thing, going back to Sigmund Freud just for a moment,
00:43:47.000
He said, the thing that Freud didn't understand
00:43:53.280
people who were powerless because of a lack of technology
00:43:56.920
and innovation, the famines and storms and all the rest,
00:44:05.960
to make them feel like they had at least some control
00:44:18.840
And the reason is because the Christian God is actually more terrifying than the storm or the
1.00
00:44:24.180
thing that you're trying to get rid of. And so he gave the example of the disciples with Jesus on
1.00
00:44:28.880
the boat. And when a great storm, and you can tell from the text, it's a storm of demonic origin.
00:44:35.140
It's not just a natural storm. It's like Jesus is going somewhere. Satan is trying to inhibit him
00:44:40.300
and stirring up the waters. And Satan does have authority over the natural elements. That doesn't
00:44:44.880
means every time there's a storm that it's satanic or of satanic origin. But he does have that power
00:44:51.640
because Satan, remember in the book of Job, Satan is given permission by God to go and torment Job.
00:44:59.220
But the first kind of ring of permission that Satan is allotted by God is that he cannot inflict
00:45:06.620
Job in his personal body. And then later, he's allowed to inflict Job's body with sores and all
00:45:13.060
those things, but he cannot take his life. But at first, he can't touch Job's body, but he can
00:45:17.420
take everything else that Job has, his livestock, you know, all of his resources, and even his
00:45:23.120
children. And Satan does that. Satan actually, the text says that he causes a great wind to blow
00:45:29.680
that capsizes a house that Job's adult children were congregated in, and the roof collapses and
00:45:39.140
kills all of his children. So this is wind that's being controlled by Satan. And likewise, I think
00:45:44.240
when Jesus is on the boat with the disciples, it is a satanic origin of this storm, Satan
00:45:50.720
controlling the wind and the waves. Now, Jesus, of course, has even greater authority over wind
00:45:56.300
and waves. And so when he says, peace be still, the wind and waves were not just acting on their
00:46:01.760
own. I think they were obeying a voice, namely the voice of the enemy. But Jesus gives a higher
00:46:06.420
command, with a higher authority, and so they're forced to then obey the word of Christ rather than
00:46:11.020
the word of Satan, and they stop. But here's the big thing that Sproul points out. He says that
00:46:15.660
when that happens, before Jesus calms the storm, in the midst of the storm, it says that the
00:46:21.300
disciples were afraid. After Jesus calms the storm, and there's no more threat now from wind and waves,
00:46:26.400
it says the disciples were then exceedingly afraid. So if Freud is saying that the whole point
00:46:34.100
of mankind manufacturing a false god is to give them some sense of peace of mind because they're
00:46:41.480
afraid of natural elements but the god makes these things less frightening well the christian god
00:46:47.040
and the god man christ jesus himself we have from documented evidence that the gospel narratives
00:46:53.020
um that that he actually caused not less fear but greater fear because the disciples then turn
00:46:58.760
their fear is is no longer attached to the the wind and waves and the storm itself but now what
00:47:03.820
they're afraid of is that there's a man standing on the boat with them that has authority over wind
00:47:09.100
and waves and has the authority to cast their souls into hell. And so he's actually more
00:47:14.480
terrifying, not less. And so the Christian God, basically what Sproul says is that Freud's
00:47:21.900
explanation for manufacturing gods would cause you to manufacture all kinds of gods,
00:47:27.260
but never the christian god it it that that could account for coming up with you know with with zeus
00:47:33.600
or with thor with it uh but but never in a million years would you come up with um if you want to
00:47:40.180
come up with a deity and it's and it's just it's just a figment of your own imagination it's not
00:47:44.400
real um you would come up with something that would be beneficial for you so uh you would come
00:47:49.680
up with a deity that has power over the things that make you feel powerless sure so you would
00:47:54.000
come up with an omnipotent deity, but you would also want to come up with a, you would want a
00:48:00.040
deity to be powerful. This is what you wouldn't want. You wouldn't want the deity that you
00:48:04.020
manufacture in your mind to be thrice holy, terrible in his judgments, by no means pardoning
00:48:10.900
the wicked. You wouldn't want that deity. You would want him to be powerful, but you wouldn't
00:48:16.120
want him to have a moral standard of perfection that damns every single person alive. You wouldn't
00:48:22.320
come up with that God. The only way that God comes into the annals of history and the minds of men
00:48:29.760
is if it's true, if that God actually exists. And that God, terrible as he is, and terrible is a
00:48:37.700
perfectly biblical and appropriate word to describe the God of heaven and earth, to describe the
0.99
00:48:43.020
triune God. But as terrible as he is, he's also a merciful God. Not a God who sweeps our guilt under
00:48:50.140
the rock not a god who turns a blind eye to our sin he is a god who who will not pardon the wicked
00:48:56.700
every single sin must be held accountable and punished justly under his wrath but he is a god
00:49:03.600
who puts forward his own propitiation going back to the aztecs or the mayans people would put forward
00:49:10.380
they would take someone whether willing or unwillingly they would take a vessel usually a
00:49:15.340
virgin or something like that, a pure spotless lamb, but of the human variety, and put them
00:49:21.000
forward as a propitiation. That word propitiation actually comes from pagan religions. It predates
00:49:27.940
Christianity. It is used in the New Testament two or three times in the entirety of the New
00:49:34.520
Testament combined. So it's only used a couple times, but it's a concept that predates Christianity
00:49:44.300
some kind of offering to placate the wrath of a god.
00:49:50.060
But Paul uses it, and the difference in the Christian gospel is this.
00:49:54.540
It's not that, well, the Christian god, he's such a good god,
00:49:57.660
and he's the author of sugar and spice and everything nice,
00:50:01.860
He just makes his own wrath go away by just changing his mind
00:50:08.440
or turning his eye. No, he still demands a propitiation, not because he's vengeful, but
00:50:14.400
because he's just. He's just. But here's the quintessential difference. There is a propitiation
00:50:20.020
that God requires, but the propitiation is God, Jesus, given to God, the Father, and put forward
00:50:28.820
by God. Instead of mankind having to gather together and we have to find and put forward
00:50:35.680
a propitiation to die for us, to placate the wrath of the gods, God himself puts forward his
00:50:42.160
own propitiation himself to himself, by himself, who is himself to himself, to satisfy his own wrath
00:50:50.400
on our behalf. And that is the gospel. And I think horror, one of the reasons that it's succeeding
00:50:56.080
is because it's a cheap alternative to the gospel of Jesus Christ for a guilty people.
00:51:02.860
Any thoughts? I think it's the craziest thing you've ever said.
00:51:05.680
no i i i think that's helpful yeah i i i've never really thought about the
00:51:11.440
interpretation of like the pagan gods and of of the romans and the greeks in that way of like
00:51:17.660
they they sort of stand in for nature but it makes sense i guess if you think about
00:51:21.540
how these gods are lowercase g gods are depicted as fickle yeah they're right like poseidon zoo's
00:51:27.820
very fickle which is like similar to how you would interpret nature per se right if you think about
00:51:33.120
the ocean and and the wind and and storms and those sorts of things is sort of unpredictable
00:51:37.880
and and in a lot of ways they think of the gods the same way so it certainly makes sense um and
00:51:43.180
then of course i agree with everything as it relates to the gospel and and the way that god
00:51:46.680
is is much more terrible and frightening yeah i i like because it it references honestly a deeper
0.96
00:51:52.440
than deeper truth like uh like talking about blood so you said like well whore in one sense
00:51:56.720
it's the cheapening of it well it's a cheap atonement and there's that true but then another
00:52:00.960
reason it does appeal is because it is actually true that we're getting down to brass tacks
00:52:04.980
none of this action movie none of this musical we're getting down to blood the core thing at
00:52:10.920
the center of the universe i read a story it was a elapsed catholic and he did a way haska trip
00:52:16.360
and he had a terrible trip and he remembers just like looking up and feeling the weight of sin and
00:52:20.720
he said at that moment that he felt as though the crucifix of the the universe was the yearn for
00:52:26.140
atonement that he's there and he's tripping out and so obviously don't take it fully to the bank
00:52:29.800
but you're saying like he felt like man the yearning deep in my soul is for atonement and so
0.99
00:52:35.500
on some level whore is getting down to the truth of it all that blood is required and that's why
0.61
00:52:40.820
it appeals to us all the other trappings and everything else go away we're dealing with the
1.00
00:52:44.780
fundamental substrate of the universe that something is required for a people and of course
0.93
00:52:49.920
again the christian gospel is the one not a simulated blood like a whore it's not somebody
0.72
00:52:53.880
else's blood it's not the blood of bulls and goats but the son of the spotless lamb of god
00:52:57.560
who can actually atone for it amen um last little piece of practical advice take it or leave it but
00:53:04.180
uh i think there there is a clear distinction between mystery um even some you know thrillers
00:53:10.580
or suspense kind of movie you know when it's uh a whodunit you know or there's like a silly
00:53:15.760
serial killer you know and there's a detective who's trying to catch them and i think those
00:53:20.980
things are different than strictly horror uh where it's it's just uh the the whole point of the movie
00:53:27.180
is a person is going to be, you know, split apart and tortured, and you're just going to sit there
00:53:34.960
and watch it happen. So the last thing that, you know, Wes, you mentioned this before we started
00:53:39.380
the show, but to leave you guys with is, yes, there's all these different connotations and
00:53:43.700
parallels between horror and what's going on in broader society and our culture and ties to the
00:53:49.020
gospel and atonement and propitiation, and all those things I think are profound and important
00:53:54.420
to think about but in terms of should christians watch or um we do have you know so we've dissected
00:54:01.320
it but now in terms of the realm of counsel um i i think we'd be remiss if we didn't end the show
00:54:06.180
by saying uh there is uh something to be said for the scripture that tells us whatever is pure
00:54:11.000
whatever is noble whatever is lovely whatever is good think on these things um i don't think that
00:54:16.320
the mind of the christian we should be mindful of our mortality the fact that we will die but
00:54:20.940
there's a fine line in in thinking about our death occasionally uh reminding ourself that
00:54:26.220
we're made from the dust and to dust we will return and we must give an account to god
00:54:30.460
for our lives that's very different uh than um morbid grotesque torturous um right kinds of
0.55
00:54:37.700
thoughts and especially for the christian it makes sense that the unbeliever that the pagan
00:54:42.660
that the truly guilty person um would subject themselves to that again and again and again but
00:54:48.480
for the christian um we we we have uh the the willing suffering servant who was uh ripped apart
00:54:58.340
on our behalf um and in terms of things that are grotesque and morbid uh the only one that uh that
00:55:05.940
i want to allow my mind to to ever uh contemplate is uh the passion of the christ and his death
00:55:13.340
on the cross. If I want to think about anything that is truly grotesque, I'll read through
00:55:21.720
the Gospels and the crucifixion of Jesus. But beyond that, I don't want to subject my mind to
00:55:29.380
morbid, torturous things, because as a Christian, I don't have to, because those aren't things that
00:55:36.320
are waiting around the corner for me at the end of my life, but they're things that were taken
00:55:40.300
from me and for me on my behalf by jesus christ and so if i think if i think of brutality and if
00:55:47.880
i think of gore um i'll think of the blood of jesus shed um in my place so i would encourage
00:55:55.080
you to consider doing the same yeah thanks for tuning in and we will see you again next time