I remember getting on the World Wide Web for the first time in the early 1990s and being fascinated by it. I had heard about its pornography.
As a youth minister, I had fifty shades of curiosity and justification:
- I needed to know what everyone was talking about.
- I needed to see if it was really that bad.
- I needed to be able to talk about it firsthand.
- I needed to be able to help others.
- I could handle it even if others could not.
I promise my intentions were noble.
My response was not. That experience transformed an occasional struggle with pornographic magazines into an obsession that I still have to fight to this day. I so wish that I had never gone down that path.
The same process is happening with Fifty Shades of Grey. I am amazed at how many Christian women I heard openly talking about reading it and its content. I even saw it carried around in plain view.
This book describes itself as erotica or adult romance. Entertainment Weekly was more direct and called it “an X-rated book.” It is not even well-written. One reviewer on Amazon was so frustrated with the repetition that she counted 164 exclamations of “Oh my” or something similar. It was a New York Times Best Seller and sold at a pace three times faster than Harry Potter ever achieved.
The movie is getting similar poor reviews. The FOX News reviewer called it a
- “mediocre”
- “bland”
- “twisted”
- “empty of message or meaning”
- “boring”
- “pointless film.”
Even so, I still fear it will be as popular as the book.
The reviews are clear that It is not artistic in any way. It is only about sexual stimulation. That is the definition of pornography.
Please, shut down the fifty shades of curiosity going through your head to justify seeing the movie.
Just. Do. Not. Go. There.