1. Two things are going on. One is that evil sells. This is why the news is all crime, war, disaster etc. The other is ideological. It advances their project to solidify power, undermining the vestiges of Christian culture.
2. This second point is one of reasons our culture industry encourages authors and creators to do anti-hero stories, stories in which the heroes are degraded and morally corrupted. They push to overturn moral boundaries by constantly trying to show that they don’t really exist.
3. The other thing is personalize the moral conflict, to show that breaking the barrier provides the better path. Never is it shown that it is better to do the right thing, although harder and depriving one of pleasure is the better path.
4. One of the reasons that stories like Tolkien’s in which heroes have noble character, face the forces of evil, face moral dilemmas, deal with their flaws and yet choose the harder better path, the impossible fight against the overwhelming evil and triumph still sell.
5. In spite of what our modern news and media tells us constantly, people want heroic stories. Instead of the heroic, we are given a parade of stories, a constant narrative that celebrates the corrupt, the evil, the sick, diseased and weak as the highest and best among us.
6. While it is a good thing to triumph over adversity, we tend to celebrate not the triumph but the weakness and the corruption. The triumph says these things are not good and must be overcome. It is key difference.
7. Thus we never hear stories about how someone, facing the temptation into homosexuality, overcomes this weakness within themselves. Instead we celebrate this and a whole host of other moral weakness as a good.
8. Do we hear stories about married couples overcome their relationship challenges and forge a deeper long term bond? Not really. Rather, we get story after story of how divorce “liberates” is.
9. If truth is formed through the stories we tell, we are abandoning the stories of our culture in favor of a whole collection of made up tales that take the foundation stories of our culture and undermine them.
10. Adam and Eve. Cain and Abel. Noah. Babel. The 10 plagues. Crossing the Red Sea. The capture of Jericho. David and Goliath. Jesus, his birth, life, death and resurrection. The missionary journeys of Paul. Constantine. George and the Dragon. Roland. You get the idea.
11. Instead we get stories of how a rebel teen moves to a small town and confronts the narrow minded preacher to have a dance that liberates them and sets them free.
12. We get stories of two women, one shacked up with a man she doesn’t really love, another married to a jerk. They run away, almost get raped, kill the rapist and then demonstrate their feminist freedom by committing suicide driving their vehicle over a cliff.
13. Instead of stories that inspire us to build something and draw close to God and struggle for the good, to make sacrifices to fight the good fight even if it seems hopeless, we are at every turn encouraged to give in to corruption and pleasure, to take the easy path.
14. The way forward for our society will be one of sacrifice and hardship, living within limits and boundaries. We need to tell stories again of heroes who faced these challenges, suffered and overcame and did the right thing.
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