Author: pilgrim

The Problem with Cuties

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Last week I saw that the notorious movie, “Cuties”, claimed by many to be paedophilic, became the fourth most watched movie on Netflix in the USA. I posted the article on Facebook with the comment:

So you heard it was paedophilic, but you watched it “Just to make sure”? Good grief…

What surprised me were the number of people out defending the movie. For example:

So we shouldn’t learn about horrible things that happen because they are horrible? Do you need to watch a movie about war to know it’s bad? No, but it helps humanize what is happening. I don’t think young women should be sexualized, and I believe that across the board.

Facebook User, Victoria

The “logic” here is horrendous. Victoria argued that sexualising child actresses helps humanise sexualising of children and it thereby makes it okay? I’m not sure how that logic works!

Would this mean that it would be moral to watch a graphic porno, as long as the moral of the story is that porno is bad? That’d be crazy, right?

Does she need to watch a movie with a graphic rape scene to know that rape is wrong? I hope not!

I also found it strange that she would say that she doesn’t think young women should be sexualized and she believes that “across the board”…but then doesn’t seem to remember the children acting in this movie who are being sexualized, or the countless other who would have auditioned for these roles…

Whatever happened to the Biblical concept of custody of the eyes? Can you imagine St. Mother Theresa or St. John-Paul II watching this movie? If not, that probably tells you that you shouldn’t be polluting your mind with it either….

Other responses were equally incredible:

If you’re sexualizing these girls that’s on you. You can watch it without doing that…

btw there’s only about 1-2 mins of the “sexualized” dancing in the entire film, and nothing is really that bad. Maybe the breast shown in one frame is too much for us audiences but as someone who goes to nude beaches often and has been in coed changing rooms sexualizing nudity isn’t something that happens by default for me, and it’s not a problem at all

Theres much worse content on Instagram and tiktok and we should be more concerned about those than a film that actually makes talking about these things easier for parents/children

Facebook User, Seth

Another person even tried to compare the twerking in the movie to what might happen on a gymnastics team.

I suggested that they all cancel their Netflix accounts and send the money instead to Children of the Immaculate Heart who will help children who have been sexualised and trapped into sexual trafficking.

The Upside

My friend Maggie pointed out that there was an upside to seeing people defend this movie:

Thank you for sharing and speaking truth on this matter. It blows my mind that people are ok with this. I actually welcome their comments because it makes it easier to pinpoint who I should keep my children away from. If that’s any consolation to you… now you know who has normalized child sexual abuse and welcome this kind of content. Red flags!!! Keep your future children away and warn your loved ones

Music Monday: Honest Questions From Isaiah

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My wife and I are trying to finish reading through the Bible in a year. At the moment, our Old Testament reading is coming from Isaiah and it put me in mind of this song from my youth by Daniel Bedingfield:

Can you see
The honest questions in my heart this hour?
I’m opening like a flower to the rain
And do you know
The silent sorrows of a
Never ending journey through the pain

Do you see a brighter day for me?
Another day?
A day?
Do you wonder what’s in store for me?
The cure for me?
The way?

Oh look down and see the tears I’ve cried
The lives I’ve lived
The deaths I’ve died
But you died them too
And all for me
And you say:

“I will pour my water down
Upon a thirsty barren land
And streams will flow from the dust of
Your bruised and broken soul
You will grow like the grass
Upon the the fertile plains of Asia
By the streams of living water
You will grow
You will grow”

Do you know
My story from the start?
And do you know me
Like you’ve always told me?

Do you see
The whispers in my heart against your kindness
My eternal blindness
Do you see?

My faith came alive around the time this song came out and I remember that, as I listened to the album, when I came to this song, something seemed very familiar:

I will pour my water down

Upon a thirsty barren land

And streams will flow from the dust of

Your bruised and broken soul

You will grow like the grass

Upon the the fertile plains of Asia

By the streams of living water

You will grow

You will grow”

Daniel Bedingfield, Honest Questions (Chorus)

…and it finally clicked:

For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit upon your descendants, and my blessing on your offspring. They shall spring up like grass amid waters, like willows by flowing streams

Isaiah 44:3-4

…which is itself alluded to by Jesus in John’s Gospel:

On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and proclaimed, “If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink. 38 He who believes in me, as[a] the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.’”

John 7:37-38

Lewis Group Picture

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I’ve you’re reading articles about Lewis, you’ll quite often see this picture of Lewis and a number of other men sitting on a short wall:

I recently saw this article from the Sydney Morning Herald which included a cropped version of this picture, identifying the men, from left-to-right as J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams and C.S. Lewis. However, this is incorrect!

The men in the above picture are Commander James Dundas-Grant, Colin Hardie, Dr. Robert E. Havard, C.S. Lewis, and Peter Havard. They are sitting on the Thames River embankment parapet wall at The Trout pub. Behind them (out of shot) is the old Chinese style wooden bridge, leading over to the island which had a stone lion statue on it.

PWJ: S4E00 – Bonus – “Season 4 Trailer”

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In anticipation of Season 4, Matt sat down and shared some of his favourite quotations from the book which we will be reading this Season, The Screwtape Letters…

S3E00: “Season 4 Trailer” (Download)

If you enjoy this episode, you can subscribe manually, or any place where good podcasts can be found (iTunes, Google Play, Amazon, Podbean, Stitcher, TuneIn and Overcast), as well as on YouTube. The roadmap for Season 4 is available here.

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The roadmap for Season 4 is available here.

Time Stamps

00:00 – Entering “The Eagle & Child”…
00:11 – Welcome
01:35 – Book Setup
02:16 – Quotations
13:23 – Closing Remarks

YouTube Version

After Show Skype Session

No Skype Session today!

Show Notes

There is no need to despair; hundreds of these adult converts have been reclaimed after a I brief sojourn in the Enemy’s camp and are now with us. All the habits of the patient, both mental and bodily, are still in our favour…

If once they get through this initial dryness successfully, they become much less dependent on emotion and therefore much harder to tempt.

The Screwtape Letters, Letter 2

Teach them to estimate the value of each prayer by their success in producing the desired feeling; and never let them suspect how much success or failure of that kind depends on whether they are well or ill, fresh or tired, at the moment.

The Screwtape Letters, Letter 4

He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself—creatures, whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over.

The Screwtape Letters, Letter 8

…the Trough periods of the human undulation provide excellent opportunity for all sensual temptations, particularly those of sex

The Screwtape Letters, Letter 9

The Enemy’s demand on humans takes the form of a dilemma; either complete abstinence or unmitigated monogamy

The Screwtape Letters, Letter 18

It is the business of these great masters to produce in every age a general misdirection of what may be called sexual “taste”. This they do by working through the small circle of popular artists, dressmakers, actresses and advertisers who determine the fashionable type. The aim is to guide each sex away from those members of the other with whom spiritually helpful, happy, and fertile marriages are most likely.

The Screwtape Letters, Letter 20

You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep; a column of advertisements in yesterday’s paper will do. You can make him waste his time not only in conversation he enjoys with people whom he likes, but in conversations with those he cares nothing about on subjects that bore him. You can make him do nothing at all for long periods.

You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at last he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, “I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked”. 

The Screwtape Letters, Letter 12

You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep; a All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden 

The Screwtape Letters, Letter 9

 Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts

The Screwtape Letters, Letter 12

Everything has to be twisted before it’s any use to us. We fight under cruel disadvantages. Nothing is naturally on our side.

The Screwtape Letters, Letter 22

To be greatly and effectively wicked a man needs some virtue.

The Screwtape Letters, Letter 29

You must therefore conceal from the patient the true end of Humility. Let him think of it not as self-forgetfulness but as a certain kind of opinion (namely, a low opinion) of his own talents and character

The Screwtape Letters, Letter 14

Surely you know that if a man can’t be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that “suits” him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches.

The Screwtape Letters, Letter 16

You should always try to make the patient abandon the people or food or books he really likes in favour of the “best” people, the “right” food, the “important” books.

The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel…

The Screwtape Letters, Letter 13

Pilate was merciful till it became risky.

The Screwtape Letters, Letter 29
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