True Romance

I have recently been reading two books, which are quite different in genre. Both books can be pretty much summed up by their titles. One is called ‘Faithful Women and their Extraordinary God’ by Noel piper and the other ‘A weekend with Mr Darcy’ by Victoria Connelly. One is encouraging, thought provoking, challenging and faith stirring and one is about a boy who gets the girl, loses the girl and gets the girl back (Sorry if I’ve spoilt it!).

I enjoyed reading ‘A Weekend with Mr Darcy’. It took two days and it was like watching a movie for a couple of days, a nice bit of escapism and girlie-ness. I was especially amused by a line from a disgruntled boyfriend in the book;

“I know you women-you don’t care who the man is as long as he’s on a horse. Put Jabba the Hutt on a horse and you’d all be swooning over him”.

I enjoyed the book immensely but was very aware of the caricature of men throughout. They were pretty much brandished as losers, cheats and liars, apart from the handsome, funny, sensitive and romantic heroes of course.

 As I read the book, I was reminded of a blog I had read recently, it was interestingly titled “Beware Romantic Pornography”, written by Betsy Hart for The Gospel Coalition. She describes romantic comedies as stories which usually involve a wonderful woman and an idiotic man. The idiotic man does not realise how romantic he is until the wonderful woman shows him and he starts to talk about his feelings and as she quite rightly observes, it usually involves a fountain at some point.

 The title of the article is quite striking, but she is wanting to voice her opinion clearly and dramatically, as she says;

“Sexual pornography twists an understanding for men about real women’s bodies and sexual appetites, so romantic pornography twists the perception for women about real men and how they ‘ought’ to behave toward women, which tends to amount to… behaving like a woman”.

She makes such a valid point, and it was an interesting read. As a mum to my boys, I know I have a duty to teach them how to treat women but also to be secure in their masculinity, and not be feminised by the culture or the girls they meet. As a wife, I need to remember that the husband is made in the image of God. I’m not expecting the husband to arrive home on horseback this evening, however delightful and also amusing that might be, but I may well have let other incorrect expectations of him creep in from one too many romance novels. I need to let him be the man that God has made him to be, as well as keeping my eyes fixed on the ultimate husband Jesus Christ to captivate my heart, care for me and rescue me.

"So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them."

Genesis 1v27