Why are Hallmark Movies Popular?

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We're gonna take a little break today from social justice controversy.

How does that sound? That sounds good to me. I can't take too much of it. It's not good to have your mind always in those things.

It's good to know about what's going on. It's good to do something if you can about what's going on because there's a lot of evil on the march and it's marching very quick.

I believe God is withdrawing his hand in some ways from the United States, including the churches here and the evangelical church and really from the whole

West in general. And it's a sad thing to live through, but we can't always be there because God's still at work.

Even in the places in which he's withdrawing his hand and there seems to be judgment, there's still,

I think, a sense in which God is saving people. God is still doing a lot of good things and we can't lose sight of that.

And if you just walk outside and you look at the trees and the sun and everything that God has blessed us with that we are undeserving of, it changes your perspective.

And so it's important that we not only focus on bad things because there's a lot of bad things.

I get that. We have to at some points, but we also have to talk about some good things. And I realize a lot of what

I've done on this podcast has been exposing and helping Christians understand what's going on around them, culturally, politically, socially, biblically.

But at the same time, I want to focus on some other things that are also going on that I think are positive or indicative of something positive.

And one of those is going to be what we're gonna talk about today. And that is as we approach Christmas, because Christmas is when the

Hallmark Channel is more popular, right? Everyone loves... Actually, a little story about this. I was getting my hair cut.

This is over a year ago. And it was in upstate New York, I think.

I think I was home for the holidays or something, but maybe it was two years ago. Anyway, I was getting my hair cut and the lady cutting my hair, she was dressed up, as I recall, in a festive...

I don't know if she had a hat or... She had something that indicated Christmas. And I asked her, I said, what's your favorite

Christmas film? Which is actually, that's a good question to ask this time of year. And it's a good way to get conversations started that could lead to sharing the gospel, sharing about the

Bible, inviting someone to church, all of that. So I asked her, what's your favorite

Christmas movie? And she started rattling off all these titles I had never heard of. And I was feeling kind of weird about it.

I thought, I like Christmas movies. I've seen a lot. I mean, and I started naming some Christmas movies. I said, what do you think of,

It's a Wonderful Life? And she goes, it's a wonderful what? She had no clue what I was talking about. And she was probably a little bit younger than me, but I asked her, all the movies that you just mentioned, where have you seen those?

And they were all the Hallmark Channel. And this is something that, it's an interesting phenomenon in my mind that a lot of people in general, but one of the demographics that most interests me is young, eligible -to -be -married women, late teens, 20s, early 30s, that love

Hallmark movies. And we have to ask ourselves, why is that? Why do they love Hallmark movies?

Otherwise, people who would be into probably music that, I'm not saying for everyone, but for many people in that demographic, they would be into pop music that probably glorifies some objectifying women and these kinds of things, super shallow music.

And most of the entertainment probably is like that, but yet they like Hallmark movies. And I think that Hallmark is kind of out of step.

I haven't really watched Hallmark much. I have some relatives who like it. So I've been in the room and seen some of the scenes.

In fact, no, that's not true. There is one Hallmark movie I did watch not too long ago, because I happened to be in the room and that's what was being watched.

And so I was doing something else, but I happened to, I picked up on it. They're pretty easy to follow, right?

Those storylines. And so I wanna talk about that. Why is that a popular genre? And then, and I'm not saying the

Lord, this is one of the Lord, the good things the Lord's doing. It might be, I don't know. Hallmark's also gone off the rails on some things.

Apparently they have some LGBTQ stuff, but I don't sense that that's the popular stuff.

I think the popular stuff from Hallmark, it follows a very similar theme. And it could be that this is something positive from our memory.

As we look back and we remember what grandma and grandpa were like, we remember the things of yore, especially around Christmas time.

We value these more traditional relationships, traditional settings.

We're yearning for something. And so this is something I think we can tap into.

This is something we can use as a conversation starter. If you're into that kind of thing, I think there's a reason for that.

There's a longing and it's, I don't know if people even understand quite why they're longing for these storylines and all of that.

So we're gonna talk about that. And I'm not, again, not saying this is the Lord moving in a certain area, but I do see this as a positive thing that can be used, that is something positive about perhaps even a more

Christian culture that is being exemplified and promoted this time of year. So let's talk about that a little bit.

Before we get into everything though, I wanna make a quick announcement for you all. I did, let's see if I get the right button here.

Yes. If you go to worldviewconversation .com,

I have put before Christmas, I don't even, I think I have these ending on the 21st or 22nd,

I do have some deals going for books. So if you go to books right here.

Now I had some really good deals, Black Friday. These aren't quite those deals, but they're pretty good.

Christianity and social justice, religions and conflict, $19. I just got a shipment of these. Social justice goes to church, $13.

And if you click on it, I added a few things. See if it'll load. Yep. So I put,

Votie Bauckham said something positive about it on a podcast. I put his quote there. And I did the same thing with Christianity and social justice.

I put a number of people who have endorsed the book on some level in the quotes that they've said in the section there, just in case you're on the fence.

You don't know. I don't know if I trust this John guy. Well, maybe you'll trust, you know, Bill Roach or Votie Bauckham or someone like that.

So anyway, it's, you know, I'm not really a great marketer. I'm not a marketer by nature.

I'm just, I'm not the kind of person to really promote myself, to even like put out that I have, you know, you can ask me to come and speak or order my book.

That's kind of a stretch for me, but I'm getting more used to it. I'm getting, I'm understanding more. Paul said, you know, worker is worthy of his wages.

I've, you know, I've got a Patreon. I'm using some ad revenue here or there. And, you know,

I just realized how important right now before the dust settles, this battle is. And so this is one of the ways you can support me if you are so inclined.

And I think it's, I mean, it's a pretty good deal. I'm giving you from my books, signed copies. We have, I have some copies left of A .D.

Robles' book, Social Justice Pharisees as well. So I put that on sale for 11 bucks. So this won't last forever, but if you're interested in these books, these are books that will help you, especially

Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict. That'll help you understand and respond to the social justice movement.

And I named the names in Evangelicalism. You know, I, it's bigger than Evangelicalism. You can give it to anyone really, but I do get specific on Evangelicalism in the book.

So there you go. Social justice goes to church. Someone actually just asked me about this. What's the difference between them? That one is about how social justice thinking got into Evangelicalism.

So it's history. So if you want the philosophy and the theology and some history and understanding of the movement, you get

Christianity and Social Justice. If you wanna understand specifically how social justice got into Evangelicalism, social justice goes to church.

So there you go. All right, that's my little announcement. Let's get into it. We, what in the world?

Oh, let's see here. Let me, do, do, do, do. There, that's what we want.

Okay, so this was a meme that was shared on a website. I don't, or a

Facebook group called Reject Degeneracy, Embrace Tradition.

Now, look, I can get behind that. Reject Degeneracy, certainly, of Christians.

Now, embrace tradition. Yeah, if what you mean by that is the concept of tradition. Tradition's a very good thing.

Now, tradition can be very corrupted too. And man -made rules that contradict the word of God, as the

Pharisees did, can get enmeshed in tradition. And those things have to be rooted out. So tradition can't be like the only standard.

And I don't think anyone that I know of who embraces tradition thinks that. They're trying to get the true and valuable, positive things from tradition and say, we should keep these, we should conserve these.

And there's really good reasons for it. And that's for another podcast probably. But this is pretty good from what

I've seen, Facebook group. And they posted something interesting on December 8th.

And let me show it to you. It says, it's a picture of a fine -looking man and woman at a

Christmas -type event, it looks like, outside, smiling for the camera. And they're in love,

I think, in the movie probably, dressed in warm clothing, Christmas -type weather for the winter.

And I asked, why is this a popular theme? Well, what's the theme? Well, the theme is, and this is what it says, modern women sent to mountains by corporate job meets

Alpha Chad, mountain man. For those who don't know what a Chad is, I'm gonna botch this. Chad, I think is, it's kind of like a masculine man, you know, a man who's actually a man.

There's hardly any of them left today, right? But that's, Hallmark tries to show someone who runs a small business, works for themselves, independent, self -sufficient, takes care of their body, takes care of their family, values their family, values the traditions passed down to them, wants to pass them down to their children.

Usually there's some kind of, I think, a religious component in there as well. You know, there's a lot to be said about a

Chad, okay? So meets Alpha Chad, mountain man, falls in love instantly, dumps beady -eyed beta city soy boy fiance.

Okay, this is a, I don't, I just know from the advertisements that I've seen of Hallmark movies, they tend to follow this line.

That's true, oftentimes it's a girl who feels trapped in the city and was on track to marry some guy who's not very masculine, and what does that mean?

You know, wants to fit in in the city means not independent, looking at themselves through the eyes of all their peers in their social class, not valuing family, but valuing the elite class that they wanna be part of.

That's the same problem with Big Eva. It's the same problem with just, really, it's not even just Big Eva, it's just anyone who wants to just kind of subvert the, their regional and familial identity to be part of some metropolitan elite group and of people that are influential in some way.

So there's, I know the type, I know the kind of archetype they're talking about here.

And so it's a girl who kind of feels trapped, but that's the, you know, that's what you do. That's just what's expected, right?

Which is an interesting twist, because it used to be, and you see a lot of Hollywood movies depict this, you know, what was expected was, well, you marry one of the farmers in our community, or if you're in royalty, you have to marry, you know, like you don't have just a choice in your marriage.

You have to think of other people, your kingdom, your family, who you're gonna marry. And there's strategic alliances, and that's so horrible, right?

You gotta marry for love, right? That's the thing. You can't just marry for the duty and honor, and, you know, these are constraints that you shouldn't have.

But the thing is, today, women who are working women, especially in the cities, they're actually more trapped than probably a lot of what

I just described. They're more trapped than what we would think of as traditional women who had family constraints that they had to think about.

You know, you look in like Pride and Prejudice, or some of the, or War and Peace, right? Some of these old books that this was just common.

You had to think about your family. How are you gonna provide for them if you don't marry someone who can provide for them, right?

This is a real dilemma. And so that's viewed as horrible now.

You should just marry for love. But in this world where we've created, where we just marry for love, this is what's happened.

There's a radical individualism where people are islands to themselves.

And in order to try to gain some kind of community, it's not a family or a region so much as it is a social group, a peer group that you belong to.

And you have to abide by the rules of the peer group, the unspoken rules. And it's, you climb the corporate ladder.

You try to go for success, right? This is kind of like movies like Sweet Home Alabama, right?

It's kind of that theme that Hallmark picks up on where you're trapped.

The woman feels trapped. She thinks this is what she wants because she's supposed to want it.

Everything around her tells her just about, except Hallmark movies, that that's what she should want. But then she gets there and she's not complete because what actually brings a measure of completion, a measure of joy and satisfaction?

Well, it's in being a helpmate to a man. It's in raising children. It's in keeping house.

It's in, and I'm not saying that's the only, you look at the Proverbs 31 woman, she engages in business. There's stuff like that.

But if you just cut off the maternal instinct that a woman has and you're only focusing on her as this atomized individual who is competing with men on a corporate ladder, then it's a very lonely place.

And so I think this loneliness, well, I'll get into this later.

I think Marxists have picked up on this to some extent too. They see this, but there's a dissatisfaction with quote unquote capitalism, with this, and I'm not saying free markets.

I'm saying there's a dissatisfaction with a world of just cause and effect, price tags on everything.

Everything is reduced to kind of like a price and a commodity.

That's the thing. And Marxists have tried to pick up on this. Now, of course, their way of trying to answer this is way more horrific than that world is.

They wanna give you an ideology that just reduces everything to oppression. So it doesn't really, it puts you from the frying pan to the fryer.

But anyway, let's go through the theme more. So the modern woman sent to mountains by corporate job meets alpha chad mountain man, falls in love instantly, dumps beady -eyed beta city soy boy fiance, quits job, spends

Christmas with her new man and his family around a crackling fire and perfectly decorated spruce tree and commits to helping him with the family business.

And it's love, you know, happily ever after, everything's going well. And so I ask, why is this popular?

Why in this society where all the corporate ladder climbing and success driven fitting in with the elites is reinforced and popular, why at the

Christmas time especially does this theme arise? That it feels contradictory, right, to everything else.

So we have people who have weighed in and I have not read these yet. So we're gonna have fun time. We're gonna read these and then I'll comment at the end.

So let's see what people have to say about this. Brenda Blake Bixky says, "'Because feminism is a farce, "'it demasculates men and places women "'outside their

God -made, God -intended design "'and deep down, everyone knows it.'" I think she's right about this. I think that's a big part of this.

I don't think that's the only thing going on here. I think it's a huge part of this, that there's a disaffected way that women are just, they're not enchanted by the corporate ladder climbing dream that has been impressed upon them.

All right, so Jake Starbucks says this, "'As a beady -eyed city boy, "'I take great offense to this characterization.

"'I avoid soy like the plague.'" Ha ha ha, that's pretty funny. Yeah, it doesn't mean that, I don't think living in the city necessarily, it's just, so cities tend to, you lose tradition more.

You tend to be more disconnected from the family. People tend to go there from wherever they were raised from and they lose connection.

So there are people in the city, though, who aren't like that, who, generations back, they've always lived in the city.

They take ownership of the place. So it's not, but we're talking in generalities right now.

So I appreciate that, Jake. And then Amanda Lorraine, "'Because women want this, but they don't admit it.

"'I, for one, will proudly do so.'" Well, thank you for honesty. And then Michael Tucker says, "'In general,

I would say that people love "'romantic love stories between a real man and a real woman "'that end with a positive, happy ending.

"'And they want the man to be and act like a man, "'and they want the woman to be and act like a woman, "'but,' and here comes the big but, "'Hallmark has caved in,''

Okay, so I know this. Yeah, they've caved to social justice and openly, intentionally putting homosexual relationships in their movies.

And he says, "'I started watching their Christmas movies three years ago "'and I can tell you that now they have "'added these kinds of relationships.'"

So he's kind of, he's saying that, yeah, like there is something to this, but there's evil stuff going on, is what he says at Hallmark.

And so some of these themes, now, and I wonder, and I don't have anything to back this up. I wonder though, how popular are those movies?

Compared to the traditional heterosexual theme that I just told you, how popular are the quote unquote homosexual themed

Hallmark movies? I bet they're not all that popular. I could be wrong, but I bet that they're not anywhere near as popular as the other ones.

But I, you know, I don't know. It's 2021. Jonathan Leary says, "'Because Hallmark is,'' let's see, "'Hallmark,''

I think he meant, "'Hallmark decided to break this pattern in a bad way. "'Many people don't like that. "'At least

I think it's, that's why.'" I wouldn't really call it Hallmark nationalism though. Yeah, which is what the, the post that I posted, it said on the meme,

Hallmark nationalism. And he said he wouldn't call it that. I don't think I would either. He says, "'That seems cheesy, even cheesier than a

Hallmark movie.'" And you know, Hallmark movies are full of a lot of cheese. We can admit this. They tend to be lower budget and cliche and fake.

In some ways, the acting's not always the greatest, but it's like B movies from the 1930s, right? The Westerns that he would crank out.

Like, it seems like, you know, they crank out like 10 a day, you know, just, all right, we're not gonna rehearse this.

Let's just film. But they were popular. They fulfilled a need in people. There was something they were looking for that they found in those

Westerns. And the people who watched those Westerns ended up winning World War II. There was something about them. It represented something.

And I think Hallmark's, there's something to this. There's just something similar going on here. Phillip Martin says, "'Our country is hungry for traditional gender roles.

"'People are not being fulfilled in their real lives. "'So this is a fill -in.'" Absolutely right, Phillip.

"'We are attracted to God -given purpose "'as males and females.'" Boom. Yes. I think that's, that's most of it.

I think he's absolutely right. Darren Lawrence, "'The more I know, the less

I want to know.'" Okay. I'm not exactly sure what that means. Holly says, "'Because it's how our father created us.'"

Yes, there's something design -related in this. Teresa says, "'The man as federal head "'is a plan instituted by God.'"

Let's see, she goes on, "'The idea of a man as a leader "'and women as his helpmate "'is how we are created in the

Garden.'" So she's appealing to design here as well, which I think is spot on. Matt says, "'For the same reason we gravitate "'towards music by Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby, "'nostalgia.'"

Now, I think Matt is tapping in to another aspect of this, because I don't think it's just gender roles.

I think he's right that there's another element to this. There's probably a few, but I think nostalgia is a big part of it too.

There was something firm and immovable and stable about that time period in our minds, the way we remember it.

Now, of course, there was sin, there were people, but grandma and grandpa stayed together. There was stability, more so than there is now.

And I think that people associate the stability, the gender roles being really defined.

People from that era would wear hats and suits if they were men, and they would take their hats off when they came inside and they'd stand up when a woman walked in the room sometimes or pull up a chair for her.

There were boundaries between the sexes that enabled people to navigate those relationships.

Today, men and women have no clue sometimes how to navigate these relationships with hookup culture and the dating scene.

It's just, they don't know what to do. And so I think there's a sense of stability, and we want that, that's the thing.

We actually want that on some level. We buck against it. I'm saying we as Americans.

There's a sense in which we buck against it, think those are the dark ages, you know, the racist, sexist past, but then there's something in us that knows that that's partially a lie, that that's not really exactly true, that there's something left behind, something we dumped off at the junkyard that we're wishing we still had.

I think he's right about this. He says, nostalgia appeals to tradition, ties that bind to hearth and home. It appeals to a world where there is comfort and security and healthy social bonds.

Boom, bingo, social bonds. A threat of that nostalgia is traditional gender roles, a threat of that.

The town and area I live in is ground zero for the filming of these Hallmark movies. Even though I'm in Canada, my town and surrounding town can easily pass for small town

America, appealing to nostalgia. Social bonds is a big concept.

The right, and I mean like the neoconservative elites today have no clue how to handle it, it seems.

They don't know how to deal with it. They don't know what it is exactly. They don't see the need for it as much. They maybe a little bit here or there, but when you give up marriage,

I've said this before in 2015, when you give up marriage and monuments, you've given up social bonds. And totalitarianism is going to be the alternative.

When you don't have, there's two kinds of American individualism. One of them takes into account these social bonds.

And one of them is a radical individualism. One came from New England, one came more from the

South. And Richard Weaver has a great essay on this, on the two kinds of American individualists.

And I think Hallmark is appealing to that, that more Southern variety of American individualism.

I'm not saying it doesn't exist in the North. It certainly does, but it's, but you think of like the transcendentalists and Unitarians, they had a type of individualism where man is an island to himself, not in a social bond that he's born into, or she's born into.

And this appeals to, you want to be part of something. You want a sense of belonging. You want to have the security of social bonds and you need rules for social bonds.

That's what we don't like. No one should tell me what to do. There has to be some kind of a rule or else you don't have them. Everett Thomas says,

I don't know, but my wife consumes this stuff like it's candy. I hope that means I'm a real man and she's just confirming her good choice.

Or should I be worried? That's actually pretty funny. Because Sandy says, because speaking as a woman, we like real men.

For some people, that may not be more complicated than that. John says, that's because nobody wants to redistribute the wealth, but they want to possess it.

I don't know if I'm understanding that one. Maybe, I don't know what he's, maybe he's talking about the business owning side of it.

I don't know. Okay, KT, because working women just want to believe our perfect man is just waiting for us there in our hometown and it's that simple.

Just quit your job in the big city and move home and poof, there he is. And I think there's a side of this that's true.

The dating in cities is tough because there are so many people to choose from. The men treat you like you're disposable.

And that's true. If you're dating in a big city, it's like you don't even have to see that person again.

It's just, you don't have to be serious about it. You can just go from person to person and try it out.

And I've seen this. This is something that should be studied. I've seen this at like Liberty University, for instance, is a good example.

Big Christian college, right? You'd think that you go to Liberty, it'd be very easy to find someone to marry, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Some people do get married there. There's a lot of people who do, but there's a lot of people who don't. And I think there's probably a number of reasons, but I think one of them is because there's so many people, you feel as though you're almost afraid of making the wrong decision.

Like, oh, there's so many people. Like, what if there's someone better in another class that I haven't had yet?

And so you're just afraid of, whereas in a small town, your options are limited. And so, you know, to invoke something like destiny or, you know, providence of some kind that there's this man or this woman for you, and it's meant to be because there they are and the options are limited, there's a comfort in that to some extent.

Kyle McDaniel, these comments are great. Curious to hear from the woman, what constitutes a biblical man in your opinion? Like, okay, so this is more of a asking questions.

So we'll skip over that. Mike says, we only watch pre -2019 Hallmark. Yep, sounds like that's the way to go.

Sharon, because the world lies about what is fulfilling. Yep, soy boys will leave her having to change attire.

Cheryl, they don't know actually how to live practical life is what

Cheryl is saying, and she's right about that. Yes, the soy boys, the urbanites who don't actually get their hands dirty, they're not very good in an emergency.

We'll put it that way. When a hurricane comes through the South, who are the guys going out there to save people?

It's the rednecks. It's the small town guys with swamp boats and four wheelers. Stephen says, fine, except for the stealing someone's else's fiance or girlfriend.

Oh no, they're not married, so that makes it okay. I guess maybe not. You know, interesting story with John MacArthur. I mean,

I shouldn't have started this because now I have to finish it. I'll just give the abbreviated version. So he actually got engaged to a girl.

It kind of like broke up the engagement, and he ended up marrying a girl who he started pursuing while she was engaged.

Interesting story, but my personal view of that is because someone's engaged, they're not married yet.

There's an agreement to be married for sure, and there's something to be said for that, to respect that.

But certainly while someone's dating, if they're dating, and you see, this is getting me in the courtship dating thing.

So I'm saying like actually, they're dating in a casual sense of, they're just trying to get to know each other, but there's no commitment, okay?

That's all I'm saying, there's no commitment. And I don't think it's wrong to then say, hey, would you wanna go out with me, right?

Now, if they're engaged, yeah, it's a little bit more tricky, but I think even that, engagements can be broken off.

There's a reason you have an engagement. It's kind of like a testing period in a way. You have the stress of a wedding coming up, you have to make decisions together, you're starting to figure out what a marriage would be like, and sometimes you find out, wait a minute, this isn't the person

I thought they were, let's break it off, and that's wisdom at times. So I don't think it's always wrong to do that.

Anyway, Heather says, it's because the feminist movement trained women to focus on their careers for decades instead of producing a strong family.

So she's talking about feminism and dependent men and weak dependent men. So anyway, we're gonna go through all of this.

Let's see, we only have a few more. Alpha men are attracted to real women. Real men, women want real men.

That seems to be the general theme. Okay, so I agree with these. I think the people analyzing this on the

Conversations That Matter Facebook page are right. This is an example of how intelligent this audience is.

They nailed it, they understand it. It is a combination of things. It is the nostalgia for stability and tradition.

It is the desire for traditional gender roles.

It is the dissatisfaction with modern ladder climbing urban life and the broken promises that it gives about how fulfilling it will be.

It's not fulfilling, right? You're disposable, you're replaceable, and you're not that way when you're the perfect fitting puzzle piece in a small town.

Now, this is romanticized, we can admit that. Life isn't like a Hallmark movie. But life is actually,

I think, closer to a Hallmark movie or could be closer to a Hallmark movie sometimes than it is to many of the popular songs that are out there that objectify women and men and are just sin -driven.

There's a sense in which people think that's edgy, right? That's when you have really gross sexual things in a movie, that's really edgy, right?

That's real. It's, we're trying to do it for real. Well, it's also real to have a man and a woman who love each other come together and be honorable with one another and get married and make a commitment.

And that's also real. And it used to be more real, and people long for that.

So Christmastime, I think, brings out the nostalgia, brings out the desire for these things. And I think that's a good thing.

I think it's a positive thing. And I'm not gonna be watching Hallmark movies. Sorry, that's not who I am, really. But I do think that that is something that especially a lot of women are attracted to.

And in our day and age of 2020 and 2021, I think a lot of people are looking for something stable, something with a happy ending, something that at the end of the day, they can look back and say that that was ordained, successful, planned, beneficial, and not the sad endings we're seeing all around us, the instability we're feeling, the lack of trust we have, the social bonds that have deteriorated.

And I've seen it in real time deteriorate, especially in areas that have had the hardest lockdowns and mandates.

People don't trust each other hardly at all, in especially more urban areas. And I've traveled around quite a bit this last year, and they have changed the culture of this country and everywhere because of these, just about everywhere.

There's some small towns I don't think much has changed because they never operated by the restrictions anyway.

I've been in some of those where they're like, we never did anything. We're still not doing anything. But in a large portion of the country, things have changed.

And this harkens back, I think, to a stability, an era that was not changing.

You did the same thing your parents did. Your kids will do the same things you do. And there's repetition, and there's just a sense of belonging when you have that kind of stability repetition.

So that's my analysis. I think this is a good thing. I think that there is a theological element to this.

Gender roles are grounded in creation. This is how God designed people. And you can see hints of it throughout scripture.

For instance, how many times in scripture do you see the command to be a man?

First Corinthians 16 talks about this. It says, be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.

First Samuel chapter four says, take courage and be men. And there's other places that say these kinds of things.

To play the man is something that you're kind of expected to know. There's not like a itemized list, an abstract kind of list of things.

Now, we could take some things. We could say, yeah, providing, right? If you don't provide for your family, worse than an unbeliever.

Providing, that's part of that. Defending, right? That's a responsibility we see in the

Old Testament that's really just given to men. It's a shame for a woman to be in any kind of, in a political leadership position or in a military position, definitely.

So you see this example in the Bible about how men are supposed to be taking these roles.

And this is an extension of the command to subdue the earth, to take dominion. Women, more of a helpmate role.

It doesn't mean that they're less valuable or anything like that. It just means they have a different role.

And they do compliment one another, but it's not a complementarianism, right? That's just because the

Bible says this. No, it's actually grounded in creation. It's God designed things this way. That's why

I think the word patriarchy shouldn't be a bad term. So the patriarchs in the Bible, right? It's good when we refer to them, but for some reason now it's a horrible term.

You should never use it, but it's not a bad term. The example we get from the patriarchs of how they manage their households.

And yes, those, look, those households, very politically incorrect today. They included, I mean, it's kind of like,

I'll compare two things. You have the Abrahamic household, right? Where you have slaves, you have, or servants, right?

Slaves really though. And you have his wives, his concubines. There's a lot of things in there we can see, especially from New Testament teaching, but even teaching from creation that not all good at all, but we can see even in that, that Abraham was a man, right?

We can see that. We can see that he functioned as a man. He had a lot of responsibility. He had to go out and fight to defend his people at times.

We've gotten so far away from that, that it's almost offensive to even say that a man has these expectations that they should achieve.

There should be a rite of passage. There should be something that denotes that they're in the community of men now.

The other thing I was gonna compare it to is I've been going through the war and peace, which

I, for some reason, I like Tolstoy. I like war and peace. And you see that same kind of thing, right? The large manners with the servants and the people, the peasants all rely on the person who has the money, lives in the mansion, and there's this social bond, this relationship between them.

And there's a sense in which there's a masculinity that has to be present or else the whole relationship doesn't work.

The peasants, the men who are peasants have to have a, they have to see things in a similar way with the man who is the head of the household or the manner on which they live.

And those bonds, we look back at all those things, right? We look back on servants and slavery especially, right?

And we look back on masculinity as aggressive tendencies in men to go defend their own property and people.

We look at all of this and we just, that is the dark ages. That is horrible, right, as Americans.

I mean, look, that's just not what America's about anymore. And instead we've replaced it with this radicalized individualism.

But somewhere along the way, we've lost some true and valuable things. I'm not saying everything about all those relationships was good.

I'm just saying there was some true and valuable things that we've thrown out in the garbage can. And I think

Hallmark is bringing some of that back, a sense of control. You have a business, your job and your status is not dependent on what other people think of you.

You're secure in your family and you just run your business. Your town loves you. You supply something for your town and you make it beautiful and you take responsibility.

And people wanna be part of that because we've lost it and they're not part of it. And so that's,

I think, a positive thing. And that's grounded, I think, in creation. I think there is something that the yearning for whatever this is, is these traditional gender roles.

It is rooted in God's design. It can't be denied. It won't ever go away. We can suppress it all we want. We can butcher our bodies.

We people can become feminists. They can enter into interesting relationships that aren't even, it's not even a man and a woman, it's a man and a woman and a friend and they call it a marriage.

And there's just weird things going on. People I know going into these things, people I grew up with that were, I wouldn't think would have gone towards these things, going towards these things.

You can do that all you want, but it's never gonna fulfill you. It's never going to match up with the design God's given you.

And even the design God's given you, I should note this, isn't gonna completely, there's nothing completely fulfilling, like until heaven.

That's why we believe in not just the temporal world, but the eternal world. But here in the temporal world, there are things that are temporarily fulfilling, that are designed in a certain way to communicate with the inner longings that we as humans have, because we've been programmed with them.

And to make us fit like a cookie or a puzzle piece, singing cookies because it's

Christmas. And anyway, I really like Christmas cookies, but as a puzzle piece, you fit into something and people feel today like they don't fit in.

And so what's the takeaway? Is there any takeaway of all this analysis? Well, I think the takeaway is, be a man and be a woman where you are.

And whether you live in the city or the country or wherever you live, be a man and a woman. And part of that, I think is, yeah, don't care about where you are on the social ladder.

Don't worry about what other people think of you. Don't worry about getting canceled or called names. That's being a man, right?

For a woman, don't be afraid to take on as part of your identity, your husband's identity.

That's part, don't be afraid of attaching your ship to his ship. Don't be afraid of trying to make him prosperous and his reputation good and working to help his family.

And so I think there will be more satisfaction if you had that more today.

And Hallmark, I think is more of, it's not a teaching moment. I'm not saying to watch Hallmark and get your ideas about how to be this from Hallmark.

I think it's more, Hallmark is more of a reflection of desires that we have.

And of course, the word of God is the first place to go to see what your responsibility should be. You see the failures there.

You also see the successes. You see a template in real people. It's not just abstractions.

That's one of the great things about the Bible. Have you ever noticed this? Oftentimes you're not given like the list of like here's, you're given people, you're given study this person, study

King David, study Jesus, study the Apostle Paul. We have so many people to study and to model our lives after.

So that's my encouragement. Hope that was interesting for you. And a good needed break from the social justice stuff.

Merry Christmas. Don't forget worldviewconversation .com. You can go and get Christianity and Social Justice, Religions in Conflict and Social Justice Goes to Church and A .D.

Robles' book, you can get Christianity and Social, or sorry, what's his, Social Justice Pharisees. That's the name of his. And I think those would be beneficial.

They should still be able to get to you before Christmas if you order now, but that window's closing. So God bless.