one of those rare days that after church lunch was possible, esther was trying to convince me to go watch "27 dresses" with the girls. as soon as she heard much opposition from the guys, she asked the next question: "why is it that girls always have to compromise to watch guy movies, but guys would never ever compromise to watch girl movies?"
i quote an article that i was reading the night before:
"And young people are absolutely striving for intimacy, for identity and for significance. Unfortunately, our post-modern culture often does a better job than we [the Christian community] do of addressing it. They don't have the true answers, but at least they are paying attention to the question."
there isn't a direct link between the quote and esther's question, but is another point that i am making. i love the truth of the first sentence: intimacy, identity, and significance. have these things been taught to you in school? do your parents ever tell you of their importance in life? most of us don't bat an eye as to the effect of these three things, but in reality, it composes the root of who you are.
who will be there to affirm that you are someone of worth? that your being, your words, your presence is worth so much?
will you know who you are? where you belong? that you are needed among friends? or is it that you are just another person that can be replaced?
and.. intimacy. do you truly KNOW someone? and do they truly KNOW you? can you be close to them?
such are the yearnings of the heart. here is another quote:
"...God cared about my deep, long-unmet need for fatherly love and affirmation. When I saw that the cry of my heart mattered to God, and that He had a pure and right way to answer it, I got the strength to break my dependence on sin."
God's grace, God's mercy, God's limitless love, God himself is the one that comes DOWN to us to intimately commune with us. he CARES about our deep, long-unmet need, the deep hidden darkness inside our hearts that causes our knees to buckle when even grazed upon. but because it is often so hidden, and our lives, our family and friends, our culture does such a wonderful job in making these fundamental ideas so ambiguous and invisible, we subconsciously find other things to try to satisfy these needs.
from the good to the bad, we find anything that we can to try to fill this hole: time with friends, close friends, significant others, the fun, video games, activities, productivity, school. all such things, the blessings of life, the richness of the experience, perverted just to fill yourself up with the wrong thing. and how painful it is, how deep the sorrow, when those things are torn away for your heart. when you thought you were worth something, but what you really thought was just wrong. when you thought you were knew who you were, but then life would continually prove you wrong. when you thought that you could share your heart, but in the end your heart was crushed. you may refuse to believe it all, but it would happen.
why do you think guys ever want to watch girl movies? maybe because they bring out the searing pain of lost intimacy, unmet need; sheer loneliness with no almighty god.
"why don't you heal, God? why don't you carry away my heart? how long, God?"
wounded: shane barnard
4 comments:
do you mean "why guys don't see girl movies" or "why guys do see girl movies"?
I try not to watch girl movies a lot because they're often so unrealistic and romanticized. And it makes girls feel like they need a relationship to be fulfilled.
So I try to avoid watching too many girl movies as a way to guard myself against wishful thinking or how the world sees relationships.
interesting connections victor!
I don't really understand your blog. What I get from your blog is that you are without God, and you have that searing pain of lost intimacy. On a normal basis, regular people will watch a chick flick and see it as another chick flick. However, someone like you to be bringing out this point seems as if you are the one who is lonely and have unmet needs. From my perspective, this friend of yours just seems to be asking courteously to watch a movie. A normal person would just say no but you unawarely bring out your deepest yearnings.
Hey Hey man. interesting blog. Life is literally a rollercoaster of pride and disappointments and we are all searching for more in life, no matter how much we have. Even when we have God it still feels like not enough sometimes. Its all about how we deal with it. sounds kinda vague but you get the idea. But yeah, girl movies? No self respecting guy can say that he'll watch any chick flick for the same intentions as watching Rambo 4, but that doesn't mean there aren't any worthy chick flicks. Love Actually, really funny, What Women Want, as cheesy as it is....wouldn't every guy want to be able to read women's thoughts? As I once heard from Jorge, "the 2 hardest things to determine is God's will, and a women's will". All I gotta say is well done Mel :P
Anyway, I hope your school year goes well and have a fun reading week!
it seems like there's been some misunderstandings as to what i'm trying to say. i was using the occasion of the chick flick as a connection, but not as a direct link. therefore, i'm not trying to say that watching chick flicks will ruin a guy (though that could happen to some), but i am more so pointing at the fact that it caused me to think about how one fills their lives with things other than God, and sometimes that could cause a great feeling of loss when that is taken away.
sarah, i think that i meant in the last paragraph, "why guys don't see girl movies", though as i just said, that point doesn't actually matter that much.
it'd be nice to not have anonymous comments posted cuz i don't know who in the world you are. and for the record, i DO watch chick flicks, i just prefer other movies over them. sarah said some really valid things about girl movies that i also believe are true.
hope this clears things up for ppl, whoever reads this.
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