"love"

Today I’ve included many sections from several different letters. They all touch upon the topic of “love” and the way society today views love, relationships, sex, etc. The excerpts here highlight just how far we’ve wandered from God’s definition of love. They also highlight the affects different media has on our thinking of love, relationships, etc.


To Foulgrin, From Prince Ishbane:

Keep feeding all of them with our sexual propaganda. Jokes and conversations about heterosexual and homosexual experiences are the norm on prime time television. Especially in programs targeting the younger audience. Slide them into the notion that while they would recognize voyeurism through a window as sick, voyeurism through a television set is perfectly normal.
Don’t ever let the MTV generation imagine the despicable truth – that the best sex happens among the married.
Think of it, Foulgrin. A hundred years ago parents allowed their adolescent children virtually no unsupervised time together. Little leisure. Little money. No cars. No billboards. No movies. No televisions. No computers. Few magazines. Almost no pornography. Back then they gave them training in moral absolutes not only in church but in school. Parents taught their children to be disciplined and hardworking. Yes, we still managed to lure some of them into immorality, and a thousand different sins, but in those days it really took effort. Now, it’s like falling off a log.
All they have to do is tread water and we have them. Only the Christian vermin have the Ghost’s power to swim upstream. And even then many of them fail to draw on it.
We’ve so permeated their culture, and their culture has so dominated their minds, they end up going with the current. Finally they go over the waterfall, smashing on the rocks below…

…A dating relationship can be detrimental to our purposes when it helps them prepare for marriage. Fortunately there are few young vermin for whom this is the case. Instead, it will twist their perspectives. Compromise their purity. Deaden their ability to carry on an exclusive lifelong commitment. After enough years of the smorgasbord of dating, they find it difficult to make one selection and stick with it.
You must see the teenage vermins’ lives in the larger context. Teenagers are a recent invention, created in America during the 1950s. Yes, there have always been people between the ages of 13 and 19. But they were immersed in family tradition and work. Adolescence was nothing but the continuum between childhood and adulthood. There was the gradual relinquishing of childhood privileges and restrictions for the responsibilities and freedoms of adulthood. But in the 1950s teenagers became a socio-economic identity. Suddenly they had their own music, tastes, and subculture. They became big business. Their preferences were catered to. Needless to say, we capitalized on this.
If we can hold them while they’re young, they’ll seldom slip through our grasp when they’re older. Our strategy mirrors the Enemy’s. Get them while they’re young and hold on to them. The older they get, the less chance they’ll ever change. And the shorter they’ll have to live even if they do. We lead them to small choices that turn into larger habits that become ongoing lifestyles.
When working with Christian vermin, make them just a baptized version of the world. If the church is simply the world, only a little better, swearing a little less and giving a little more, it’s no threat to us. The Enemy calls them to be radically different. We can put up with little differences. It’s the revolutionary changes that mess us up.
The Enemy doesn’t want a “little” of them. He wants it all.

…Your report on watching the video at Ian’s was most encouraging. Pleasantville? Yes, I see it here on our recommended movie list. “Pleasantville is a youth movie with a clear message: unrestrained sexual indulgence leads to increased health, creativity, intelligence and inner peace. Those vermin who embrace the Enemy’s morality are depicted as dull and lifeless people in black and white. Once they violate the Enemy’s standards, they become truly alive, depicted in full colour. Highly recommended. Particularly effective when watched by Christian youths. Rated VUP: Very Useful Propaganda.”
The Enemy says to them, “Among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity.” Yet they entertain themselves with these very things. They join us in laughing at the things the Enemy despises! When they watch a movie and two people are attracted to each other, what always happens? They go to bed together, naturally. Do the vermin in the movies ever examine their souls and ask whether it’s morally right? Of course not.
When this is their steady diet all their lives, how could they ever be shocked at it? How could a fan of Dawson’s Creek or Friends consider fornication anything but normal? It’s not the exception, it’s the rule. It’s how life works. Why shouldn’t it work for them that way too? I’m always amused when the same parents who’ve let their children be entertained by hundreds of fornications are shocked when they discover little Johnny or Sarah has fornicated. Duh… why wouldn’t they? Choices flow out of worldviews, and worldviews flow out of whatever they feed their minds on.

… We’ve redefined “single” to mean “I’m not currently dating someone.” Even the Christian vermin forget that in the Enemy’s eyes they’re single until they take their marriage vows. I love the notion “we’re nearly married.” Do what you can to get them to act like they’re married when they’re single, then act like they’re single once they’re married.

… Fill their minds with suggestive comments and jokes, from radio DJs and sitcoms and movies. Use clothing and swimsuit styles and low-cut, side-slit prom dresses and a hundred other strategies to provide that “hint,” and more, which He warns them against. What He forbids, we normalize. How successful have we been? Look around you. For them a “good movie” is one where people commit adultery but the camera cuts away just before intercourse, and obscenities are used “only a few times.”