She Doesn’t Get It

Jojo Moyes says the scientists are wrong. When their research indicates chick-flix (“romantic comedies”) raise unrealistic expectations, which expectations cause needless conflicts in relationships, she says they don’t realize women know the difference between fiction and reality. Such stories are like any other: an entertaining escape from drab and un-entertaining reality. This may be true, but for only a tiny slice of society she inhabits. The vast majority of modern women in the romance marketplace, particularly those who consume large quantities of such entertainment, are truly deluded about reality.

How many of us remember the very public efforts by women to compel men to watch a certain romantic comedy movie so they’ll “get it”? You’ll note this film was loaded with horrendous immorality. You’ll also note this film reflects a sort of culmination of many years’ worth of conditioning and propagandizing from a godless feminist point of view. This isn’t some easy, throw-away line. It’s quite easy to prove Scripture assumes a wholly different cultural base, and does so because other cultural bases stand as a rejection of God’s revelation. At it’s very heart, Western Civilization itself is anti-Christian. If you can’t realize that, we a have very long way to go in explaining what’s wrong with the Moyeses of the world. Scientists are often wrong, but she misses the point.

This is more than just allegations her article is merely protecting her income. She is promoting a very badly broken society, if only one tiny portion of what makes that broken society possible. There’s nothing wrong with romance; I woo every day my wife of 30+ years. My duty in that department is never done. That is hardly a modern Western virtue, except as it was stolen from far older virtues. The Bible promotes that, assumes it, and shows it clearly in the likes of Song of Solomon. Nor do I promote the thousands of books from air-head prissy evangelical women authors, who are often little more than a Hollywood actress with a Christian paint job. There’s nothing wrong with the entertainment angle, as Scripture itself depicts several very romantic tales.

The fundamental difference is the sum of assumptions about human nature where modern feminist culture attacks the Bible. I’m not even referring here to the obvious sexual immorality of Hollywood, but the underlying assumptions about how human emotions work, and how they should be accounted for in making decisions. Love and romance should follow, and grow from, wise decisions regarding to whom we commit ourselves for life. We make those decisions about commitment on very real factors of what makes the most sense at the time we decide. Wisdom means we don’t wait for chemistry, for some unquantifiable and undeniable romantic wave washing over us. We examine what it is we honestly must have and must avoid, with the help and advice of those who know us best. Then we finally put ourselves in God’s hands and seize the moment when He presents it. We already know that grand romantic experience will grow as a gift from God’s hands, the Kingdom privilege of obeying in faith.

Frankly, you can develop a powerful longing and romance for just about anyone to whom you commit yourself. Love grows because it’s necessary, and God makes it happen. It does not precede the relationship, except in the sense we cultivate a general presumption of sacrificial love toward our world. That sort of “you are the only one” romantic attachment arises from the wise decision to accept God’s gift of this or that spouse. Yes, they may eventually fail miserably in making you feel loved, but the Bible permits no escape mechanism from our end of things. Marriage as romance is built from the trinity of man and wife under Christ. Any other structure is doomed.

Still, on a purely secular basis, the scientists are right. Women typically write scripts for each date, and God help the man who fails to perform, even though she would never tell him the script. That ruins it, of course. If he can’t discern the script by some sixth sense, or isn’t already tuned and tweaked to follow it by instinct, he’s not “Mr. Right.” That is, unless he manages to magically perform some other heroic act of romance which wipes away his mistakes. Even the gal in question has no idea what that might be, but she’ll know it when she sees it. Got that? It all comes from these idiotic movies. Yes, real people know the difference between fiction and reality, but I dare say the vast majority of likely female candidates in modern Western society will not even be conscious of their attempts to live by the movie scripts. They just assume such fiction is reality, and demand men reshape themselves to fit this fantasy world.

Don’t buy it, guys. Start dating women from a more sensible cultural background.