By Caitlin, The Rope Contributor
This post is going to be about something you may or may not have heard of the past few weeks…50 Shades of Grey. I have spent the past week or so trying to figure out if I want to see this movie. I feel like most people probably have a pretty firm opinion on whether or not they want to see it or even whether or not anyone should want to see it.
I keep changing my mind every two minutes on if I want to pay the $10.50 to see this movie that has taken the world by storm before opening night. The reason I am so conflicted about wanting to see 50 Shades is because I read the book. What I found while I was reading it is that what attracted most other people to the book…and I’m going to assume you know what I am talking about…is not what attracted me to the book. In fact, I had a hard time getting through some of that and skipped over certain scenes. I did, however, actually enjoy the book for the most part. I think the characters are interesting and it has the potential to be a good love story — minus the controlling behavior of Christian Grey.
The whole time I was reading the book I knew that it was not something I should be reading. I knew that if Jesus was sitting in my room while I had it open He would not be happy and I would not continue to read it, but I still read it. And now that I have read it, it makes me want to see the movie. I know that a lot of people will say that it is just a movie, but is it really? Doesn’t Jesus say “The eye is the light of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness” ( Matt. 6: 22-23)? In case I ever forgot that verse while reading 50 Shades, almost every time I turned on my music the Casting Crowns song “Slow Fade” would make its way onto my shuffled playlist (you should definitely look up the song if you don’t know it).
It is easy to say that it is “just a book.” That you know that it isn’t a healthy relationship that Ana Steele and Christian Grey have. That it doesn’t affect you at all by reading about all the inappropriateness that is in the book. I thought that too, but now I think I was wrong. The danger of things like 50 Shades is that they are presented in a way that make you think nothing is wrong with reading it or watching it or what have you, but that isn’t true.
The Casting Crowns song I mentioned earlier starts out by saying, “Be careful little eyes what you see. It’s the second glance that ties your hands as darkness pulls the strings.”
People know that adultery is wrong. They know that lying is wrong, as is murder, cheating and a whole list of other things that we are taught at an early age not to do, which is why it is easy for most people to keep from doing those things. We’re never taught that reading a book can be dangerous; it’s just a book. We’re never really taught that watching a movie is dangerous; it’s just a movie. That is what makes this book/movie so dangerous. Before we realize it, all of these inappropriate things that we never would have thought of before are all the sudden in our minds. It doesn’t mean that you are going to go out and find Christian Grey, but if you read one book like this, what is to stop you from reading another. Once you get in the habit of reading these kinds of books or watching these kinds of movies it becomes easier to justify that there is nothing wrong with the behavior of these characters. It’s a slow fade.
