I have a confession to make. I read Fifty Shades of Grey when it was released. I did so precisely because it was so popular. I've read my share of trashy novels, but the luster of hot literary lust lost its appeal as I grew older. I read it only because the female friends I have were reading it and talking about it. I found I was able to participate in conversations about redemptive sex precisely because I'd taken the novel seriously.That said, I thought the novel was horrible. It was so poorly written, with little literary variety and value. Its imagery was cold, the writing was poor and the plot was predictable. Aware as I was of so many other books -- remember, I've read my share of trashy novels -- I just couldn't bring myself to read the second or third books in the series. But I have read the first book.
And I'm still not going to see the movie -- precisely because I know what's in the book.
I've never really said anything publicly about the book. But now, given the movie's potential popularity, even among my Christian female friends, it's time for me to be open and honest about the book and movie.
I know how consumerism works. We watch commercials and are left feeling like we don't have enough. We read these novels in an effort to live vicariously through them, because our relationships just "aren't enough". The novel and the movie work on us so well precisely because they feed this consumerist monster. Hear me well: Porn changes our humanity and our needs, because it rewires our brains to think about sex differently, to think about relationships differently.
I've touched on this before here. I'll let all those comments stand for themselves. I'm not here to talk about why porn is bad. But believe me, it is.
I know that watching movies with lots and lots of unhealthy sex will elicit feelings (illicit feelings!) of desire and fear. That's what the novel does. And it's what the movie will do.
But hear this: Desire and fear DO NOT belong together.
Once you see this movie, you can't unsee it. And for me, the echoes of these images on my mind bring with them the echoes of feelings that are meant to accompany them. I don't want desire and fear to go together in my head or in my heart. So I won't be seeing the movie.
I believe God made sex to be beautiful and celebratory and intimate. As an expression of martial love, sex is meant to be all the things that God's love -- which martial love mirrors -- is: Not self-seeking, nor arrogant, not easily-angered.
Sex, as the expression of love, still casts out all fear. Any sexual relationship in which fear is the foundation cannot, and will not, be an expression of love. Period. Full stop.
I'm all for amazing sex, and, based on reading the Song of Songs, I believe God is too. Sex has all the potential of the beauty of the love of God -- something of intimate beauty, something of vulnerable power. But precisely because it's so intimate, beautiful, vulnerable and powerful, it's possible to pollute and corrupt it.
The way I see it -- after having read the novel -- seeing the movie just dumps lots of toxic pollution in the beautiful terrain of the love I have for my wife, as an expression of God's love for us.
That's not something I'm willing to do.