Valentine’s Day is over kids, and if you think love is still everywhere you look, you don’t really know anything about what love is. This week, we discuss Tiger Wood’s attempt to salvage his own love-life and what (if anything) it has to do with us. We also discuss the train wreck that is the mainstream romantic film.
Programming Note: Starting this week, we’ll be recording the podcast on Monday and publishing earlier in the week, usually on Wednesday.
Every week, Richard Clark and Ben Bartlett acknowledge and respond to the big issues in popular culture. We love feedback! If you’d like to respond you can comment on the website, send an email to christandpopculture@gmail.com, or go to our contact page. We would love to respond to feedback on the show, so do it now! Subscribe to us in iTunes by clicking here. While you’re at it, review us in iTunes! We’ll love you forever!
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I enjoyed the podcast this week–I think you guys did a good job of discussing how unrealistic or escapist art can be dangerous if that is all we are taking in. I loved both of the movies you mentioned–Eternal Sunshine and The Breakup for this reason.
My article, as you pointed out Ben, was devotional. It was aimed more at how Christians take the idea of “The One” add it the Bible’s testimony of a soveriegn God who has an eternal plan and end up with a very unhealthy understanding of love. So I guess my point was that the idea of “The One” comes from our culture more than the Scriptures.
There is a theological issue here that is worth exploring too I think. We all agree that God is meticulously sovereign and that would mean that there God does know who people will marry. However, the Bible never condones passively searching for signs and wonders, nor does it condone hyper introspection as to whether we are “in the will of God.”
Instead the Bible encourages us to work out our salvation in fear and trembling. It encourages us to put off the old self and “put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:24). So to bring up the dishes issue again—because I have had similar discussions and have actually come to understand my wife a little better in this issue. What my wife wants is for me to want to help her because when I do she feels loved. And I want my wife to know that I love her because I do love her. I don’t like doing dishes, but I can begin to want to do it to show my wife how much I value her.
That is an illustration of what I meant about growing in compatibility. You guys did a great job of showing how this shows up in movies. For married Christians, certainly personalities are different, but that doesn’t ever mean that they are out of the will of God or that a particular couple shouldn’t be together. Hopefully, by the grace of God, I am growing to see the ways my wife is different than me as a gift rather than an unfortunate circumstance.
Some of what we see in the movies with regard to compatibility and “soul mates” etc, almost feels like self-worship. I.e. I need someone who appreciates me for me and doesn’t want to change anything about me. In my short time as a married man, I have learned that there are things about me that do need to change and I am learning to be thankful to the Lord for revealing those things through my wife.