Brain Dump...

I love the meme going around: You keep your Mr. Gray; I'll take Mr. Darcy.

After last Friday, I decided I was done with 50 Shades. It was taking up too much of my mental time. Then I read comments by people justifying it, and I simply had to laugh.

"Women are entitled to a healthy fantasy life."

The operative word is healthy. I admit to reading romance novels to help me develop healthier relationships. In books, I'm given a wide variety of perspectives. For the record, I've added hundreds of authors to my no list because they have a very unhealthy perspective. I don't for a minute believe novels are real. I know there are elements of reality. However, the author is always in control. The characters play their part. Some scenes in fiction are based in truth. Every person is different. No one is able to script out exactly how any encounter will unfold. There are good guesses, even brilliant, especially if one is good at reading body language, but at any time, things can change. A person will not change simply because you know it's the way the "story" is supposed to go. Fantasy: Girl falls in love with boy and knows she can change him. Boy refuses to change or changes in a direction girl didn't anticipate. Girl doesn't attain what she wants: A false fantasy. Please, yes, have a healthy fantasy life. Part of being healthy is knowing that some things simply are not healthy no matter how you dress them up.

"If you haven't read it or seen the movie how can you know it was bad? You can't."

Actually, I can. It works like this: I see the rings on the stove turn that funky orange color and I know it's hot without touching it. Really. It works. To be more specific: Reading the first page and needing a red marker for the errors is a good indication it will not improve. I'm also not a fan of first person. The content isn't something I enjoy reading, ever. The "how do you know you won't like it if you don't try it" mantra is insane logic... it's juvenile thinking. I have a brain. God expects me to use it. I've worked hard to learn what is and isn't healthy. Hurting yourself or someone else is not healthy.

"It isn't as bad as the porn men watch all the time."

You didn't really go there, did you? You did. Your sin isn't as bad as someone else's sin, so it's okay? From what I've gathered from the Bible, God isn't tolerant of any sin. Again, this kind of reasoning is unhealthy.

I've a dear friend who works in the mental health field. The story is entirely fabricated, a bad fantasy, false in every possible way. The history of the protagonists keeps both of them from behaving the way they do in the book. There's no rhyme or reason to the story. It's all a badly told lie, from beginning to end.

The adversary never expects a good person to murder someone. Instead, the adversary nudges a soul slightly off course... only a little bit... Ask a pilot what happens when they're off course by a single degree? They will not end up where they want to be but instead somewhere else entirely.