THIS Is How We BEAT Hollywood | with Filmmaker Brian Godawa

Hollywood’s Hostility, Wokeness, and the New Anti-Christian Culture

But in these last few years, the mentality in Hollywood has become aggressively hostile, such that they're now hunting people like me. They're hunting Christians and conservatives. In some ways, go woke, go broke.

It's like, this is terrible storytelling, right? Because you're preaching, you're like a bad Christian movie, only you're atheist and you're woke, right?

Of the contingent of Christians who just want to avoid the arts, you called it a ghetto. How can we explain to them that no, Christians should be artists? And how should Christians tell art today? So tell us about this story.

Tell us about the Philosophy Killer.

Could you defend your beliefs if your life depended on it? My name is Charles Cullen. They call me the Philosopher Killer because I ask my victims to give me one valid reason why I should not kill them.

Ideas, you see, have consequences. Cruel Logic, The Philosopher Killer, a brilliant theological thriller novel by Brian James Godawa. Get it now at amazon .com in Kindle, paperback and audio book.

Yeah, so Cruel Logic is a novel that began as a screenplay actually many years ago. I'm a Hollywood screenwriter and I came up with this idea that had been haunting me actually for years before that. And the premise of the novel is there's a brilliant killer called the Philosopher Killer.

Why?

Because he's actually a philosophy professor at a fictional California university who is actually a serial killer. And what he does is he captures university professors at this woke university and he debates with them.

And the topic of his debate is his moral right to kill them. So he'll ask them like, well, if what you say is true about the world, he'll get like a evolutionary biologist or a critical theorist or a gender theorist or whatever.

He captures the various professors and he asks them, if what you believe is true about reality, then give me one valid reason why I should not kill you and I'll let you go. And of course, as each of the professors seek to do so, without giving too much away, they're not gonna be very good at it, shall we say.

And in the course of that story, we have a cop and a psychologist. They have to track this guy down as he's killing these professors. And so there's a cat and mouse game going on there and there's a higher purpose to what this killer is doing.

He's making a higher point than just what you see on the surface.

Wokeness as a Marxist Worldview and the Decline of Western Civilization

But what I'm hearing on the one hand is this is kind of like, I mean, my mind goes to like Silence of the Lambs, maybe Seven, something like that. But something that is sort of an indictment against the existentialist, maybe secular humanist worldview, yeah, our culture, which is really great.

Yeah, because what we see going on in today's world, the wokeness that we see, and wokeness, you could define wokeness as a sort of a leftist Marxist attempt to reduce all of society to two components, the oppressor and the oppressed.

And of course, the oppressor are white heterosexual Christian males and the oppressed are everyone else. And this is, it's a ridiculous sort of paradigm, but it's been being festering in universities for decades.

And now we are seeing the fruit in our own society. And so the decline of our culture is very much rooted in this wokeness, which is ultimately a rejection of Judeo-Christianity. So we hear a lot about Western civilization, and now there are all arguments about Christian nationalism and all this, but the point is Western civilization itself was rooted in a Judeo-Christian biblical worldview, and a mixture with some of the enlightenment rationalism to be sure, and to that extent, it gets weakened.

But nevertheless, there's a broad consensus of understanding and acceptance that civilization, Western civilization is based on that. So that's why the enemy of the woke is Western civilization, right?

And all its components when they use words like patriarchy and colonialism and heteronormativity, right? And of course, white supremacy, and all these terms are really just code words, ultimately for Christianity.

I really believe that that's what it is. So you can see how conceptually all these things are interplaying. To communicate one of my dominant themes, which is ideas have consequences. When you teach various things, whether it's relative morality, whether it's we are only evolving animals, so therefore all of our beliefs and transcendence, spiritual world, or whatever our delusions or fairy tales, when you teach people that all whites are inherently racist, it's no surprise that those students will start to behave in certain ways.

And it's usually the second and third generation that starts to live more consistently with the ideologies that are being preached. So that's some of the big picture themes of what I'm wrestling with.

But my goal was to write an entertaining crime thriller, like you said, A Silence of the Lambs. Yeah, so it's not for the faint of heart to be sure. But I've always had a passion to write stories that wrestle with the problem of evil, the existence of God and human nature, because it's human nature, are we essentially good or are we essentially bad?

These kinds of things I think are the primal questions that still continue to go on in our culture and require a real strong understanding and communication of it.

From Screenwriting to Hollywood Success and the Making of To End All Wars

I love it, man. It's so brilliant, the premise, the idea of it. I maybe wanna ask you about that. Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and do that. How does this become an idea in your mind and then transform into a novel?

Now, I know that this was a short that you did a while ago and then it sort of transformed over time to become this project for you that eventually culminated in a novel. But how does this even become a concept in your head in the first place?

Yeah, yeah. Well, ideas come in various different ways and sometimes it's sort of plain, boring origins. Sometimes there are spikes of inspiration or whatever. A lot of times for me, it's usually research.

As I'm researching and just learning, as I'm learning, things start to come together in my head. So I've always loved apologetics, as you know. And even though I love the imagination and my personal calling is storytelling, I still have loved the life of the mind, reason, Christian apologetics and philosophy.

So I've always listened to lectures and read books and stuff on that material. And many years ago, actually, I had been listening to this old apologist whose name is Walter Martin. And Walter Martin was back in the 60s and 70s.

And of course, he's passed away since then, but he wrote The Kingdom of the Cults. He was real famous for that. He was a rascally old guy that I loved him. He had a good sense of humor. But he would argue a lot with atheists.

And he was on this Long John Nubble show from the 60s that I was just re-listening to the tapes over and over again because I loved it. And I remember him saying that, so this is many, many years ago, remember him describing his frustration he had with an atheist.

He was trying to describe to the atheist, your atheism gives you no foundation for your morality, without God, right? And the guy said, what do you mean? I have morality. I believe in morality. And he's trying to explain to him, well, yeah, you believe there are morals, but you have no basis for it with your worldview.

And so he got so frustrated. He said, okay, all right, it's 1938, Germany. I'm a Nazi with a gun pointed at you and you're a Jew. Give me one reason why I shouldn't kill you. And it left him flustered, the atheist flustered, of course.

And it never left me because what it was, was apologetics is not just rational dialectic that we have with people. It's not just, you know, these abstract arguments, although it includes some of that, of course, but I think the real power of a good apologetic is the ability to bring it home in a way that connects with our human existence, with our emotional capacity, but also our sense of life, you know?

Of course, you know me, you know that I don't negate rationality. I'm not a post-modernist, but there are limits to reason. As C .S. Lewis also, you know, had often said, there are limits to how reason can communicate.

And so sometimes a good story or a good image or metaphor or analogy can bring home with power and impact what a logical argument may not do on the surface. And to me, this was one of the most powerful expressions of the moral argument for the existence of God.

Well, I think it's pretty powerful. And the premise alone, I'm excited to get through the whole book. I want to talk to you about some process questions, especially as a Christian and an artist, how to create compelling, beautiful art, compelling stories and things like that.

We have some questions too from our Patreon supporters. So I'm going to go there, but I want to go back in time to your initial success in Hollywood. How did that go for you? Was it hard to be a Christian?

Because you started out writing movies. So like, can you tell us a little bit about that?

Of course, I've always been an artist all my life. And I started out as a visual artist, illustration and graphic design and such. And so I've always had an artist temperament, but I also have also loved drama.

And of course, when I was like college age, I just fell in love with movies and I saw how powerful they were in terms of this connecting with our souls and communicating truths or lies, as the case may be.

I saw a lot of lies in Hollywood and I'm like, I want to see truth up on that screen. So I had had that sense and passion to do that. And I wanted to tell Hollywood movies, but with Christian worldview, which means not like the typical Christian movies that you see and all that kind of garbage, but more like chariots of fire.

Which was my original inspiration. But now, in later years, I think my ultimate inspiration has been Braveheart, the movie Braveheart, in terms of communicating a Christian worldview and such. And so what I did was I actually did my own research and I read books, went to seminars, went to conferences and learned how to tell a story.

So I was self-taught in that sense. I didn't go to UCLA or USC.

Did you take classes from Sid Field by any chance? Did you read any books from Sid Field?

Yeah, actually I read his book when his was, this'll date me. I read Sid Field's book when it was about literally the only book available on storytelling for screenplays in that day. Now, of course, there's thousands of them.

Yeah, that's right.

And I've read a lot of them and draw from each of them. What is it? Save the Cats, a great one. Truby's story structure's great. So I get to Hollywood and it took me some years before I got my first movie made, which was To End All Wars.

That was in 2001. The emperor.

I'm still alive, you can understand that, can't you? Take a look around you.

You tell me what you see.

Hope.

My first movie that got made is probably my ultimate movie expression of what I wanted to do with my life. It was all downhill from there because basically it was telling the story of how these men found meaning and purpose in their life first because they're being starved and brutalized, used as slave labor by the Japanese to build a railroad for a supply line for the Japanese in Thailand, Burma.

And so they find meaning and purpose by starting a jungle university where they find various books that men had, Shakespeare, Plato, and the Bible. And so they were teaching these and then the Bible was one of them and the Bible started to transform their lives and they learned what it meant to love your neighbor and how not to be every man for himself, right?

But to love your neighbor. And it showed their journey ultimately where they were faced at the end of the war with what does it mean to love your enemies? That was truly the most profound thing to struggle with.

And so it, but it shows Christianity in a very, you know, it's a Hollywood movie with Kiefer Sutherland in it, right? So it was really, that was my goal and my passion. And as years went on, you know, I've done a few independent films, but nothing to that level.

And in these later years, and I would say probably in the last five years, Hollywood has always been leftist. It's always been very bigoted against Christians and conservatives. But I think in the last five years, particularly in the last few years, you know, right before COVID and all that, with the Me Too movement, that marked an acceleration into wokeness in Hollywood such that they were no, like I used to be able to get in, fly in under the radar, right?

So as a writer, I would find, you know, producers or directors who are independently making movies, they're not with the big studios necessarily, like-minded in their goals. And you work together to put a movie together, you know?

And a lot of times, you know, you would just, like I say, it would be under the radar and, you know, you'd have a Christian worldview, but it's not like you're making a Christian movie, right? And so you can get stuff made occasionally.

But, you know, a lot of times people would find out what it is. And I had people, you know, high level people find out we're Christians and not working with us, you know? But rather than be victims, we just moved forward and kept, you know, trying to get our movies made.

But in these last few years, the mentality in Hollywood has become aggressively hostile such that they're now hunting people like me. They're hunting Christians and conservatives and not working with them.

And deliberately, you know, as we've seen people getting canceled, right? Everywhere. Even if you say a peep. And then of course, with all the academy putting all these new woke demands on movies, it's now become the ideology of wokeness of this, you know, like I said, this oppressor, oppressed mentality.

It's very racist too, because it's in the name of anti-racism, it's racism against people who are not the preferred skin color. And so it's this movement to turn everything into leftist woke ideology.

And we see this, don't we, in all these movies, right? That are coming out. And a lot like the latest Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, right? You know what I mean? It's just, in some ways, go woke, go broke, right?

You make these terrible movies and they're terrible ideologies and people sniff it out, even if they're not even political activists or anything like that, but they just, it's like, this is terrible storytelling, right?

Because you're preaching, you're like a bad Christian movie, only you're atheist and woke, right? And so I want a new genre or a new description, bad atheist movies, you know? They always say bad Christian movies.

Well, let's have a bad atheist movie category, you know?

The Razzies for atheists.

Yeah, yeah, that's true, yeah. But more conservatives have literally left California, but also the business and they're starting parallel economies, you know, like the Daily Wire is now making movies for, that are, and by the way, they're not, like the Daily Wire isn't trying to make conservative propaganda movies, no, they're just trying to make good entertaining movies because they're not made anymore, you know?

Right.

And I know lots of others like me who have also left the system because we can't, you know, we can't, they won't let us work anymore. They won't work with us and they won't let us work. So we're gonna work somewhere else, you know?

That's basically the bottom line there. And so since I've left, I even moved out of California myself to get away from it all physically as well.

Parallel Economies, My Son Hunter, and Storytelling Beyond Politics

Yeah, that's what I was gonna ask you was, I mean, we're, from the audience's perspective, maybe, you know, we're not seeing what's going on behind the curtain, so to speak, but we're seeing The Chosen come out, Nefarious just came out, had some success, but you're saying

Sound of Freedom.

Sound of Freedom, but these are not made in Hollywood. These are made in your parallel countries. Exactly, exactly.

And they're proving the fact that there's a lot of money to be made if you wanna just make good movies with American values, good old American values, you know? And that's exciting. And, you know, the last movie I made was just, within the last year, was called My Son Hunter.

And that was a political satire about Hunter Biden's laptop. And, of course, it was a satire because I didn't wanna do a documentary, and the producers came to me, we wanna do a movie about Hunter Biden's laptop.

We don't know what to do, you know, give us some ideas. So I came up with these ideas, and we went down this path of a political satire, and it allowed us to be able to deal with a lot of information, but make it entertaining and cover a lot of territory because there's, you know, as we now know, there's just so much depth to the corruption and the crime of the Biden crime family.

But my, interestingly enough, our goal in making the movie, and this was the producers and me as well, and then the director who came on board, we didn't set out to write a political hit piece on Hunter Biden.

In fact, all the left-wing outlets hated our movie, of course, but there were several of them who admitted that Hunter Biden was actually a rather empathetic character because when we wrote this, we're like, of course there's political crime going on, and we want to cover that, but I don't want to do a political movie.

What I was interested in was this dysfunctional godfather-mafia family dynamic going on in the Bidens with Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and his deceased brother, Beau Biden. That was really fascinating, and it was tragic to me.

I actually wasn't pathetic. I, you know, there's a way in which you feel sorry for a crack addict and a, you know, a sex addict and stuff, and yet at the same time, the absurdity of what's going on. So again, it really, the politics is secondary because it's more about the human element, the human component, and that's why I think it struck a chord with so many people, you know?

And that's why many left, some leftists even admitted like, in fact, it's funny because the leftists are so deluded by, they're so blinded and deluded by their ideology that some of them also said, you know, Hunter's kind of empathetic in this movie.

They must not have realized what they were doing. Like, in other words, they can't conceive of writing a story where they're empathetic with someone they don't agree with, you know? Because their concept, they don't know how to tell stories anymore.

You know, they're just, it's just everything's smear and hit piece, right? So anyway, so that's the long, the short of that.

Why Christians Should Make Art Without Retreating into a Ghetto

Yeah, it's weird how things have shifted. Cause I remember, you know, I'm not a youngster anymore. I remember when Christians were making movies and we were super proud to have the Kendrick brothers come out and make a bunch of films, you know?

But they weren't great. And so your choice was a very secular, you know, promoting the worldview of secularism, secular humanism, all that stuff, but well-produced movie with a good story, or, you know, a Christian movie that is basically preaching.

But now it seems like it's shifted and it's bizarre. I would have thought at least the Christians would be making better films, competing with the better movies that Hollywood has consistently made. But now Hollywood is making crap movies.

So what

Oh, they really are.

What happened?

Yeah, yeah. So that's ideology for you, you know? So they, because here's the thing, Hollywood has become religious because the wokeness is ultimately religion. It's not actually politics, it's religion.

And it has a specific all-encompassing religious vision. And so now they are acting like Christians used to act. They believe that their religion is so, is the most important thing in life. And so they have to preach sermons through all their art.

It must have sermons in it, right? So yeah, you're right. It's just, it's funny how now they are the ones guilty of doing that very thing. And it's kind of humorous for those of us sitting over here in the peanut gallery, watching and laughing a bit.

But, you know, yeah, but I'm enjoying myself, you know, working outside that system. And it was really quite actually a relief to get out of it, to be honest, you know?

I'll bet.

Yeah, so it's, the new goal is parallel economies. But this is important to understand, not because we believe that we should have a separate conservative culture with conservative art or Christian culture with Christian art.

That was the ghetto mentality that I had always wanted to not be a part of, you know? But the problem is, is, but there's also, what we didn't take into account was, when those in power actually turn and become oppressors of us, then we have no other choice.

They won't let us work. That's the problem. And so now the parallel economy notion, we're doing it out of necessity because we can't get work anywhere else. So we'll make our own movies and then boom, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars because people really do like good storytelling.

And it doesn't fit the new Hollywood religion, sadly.

Christian Storytelling, Depiction of Sin, and the Bible’s Use of Genre

Yeah, well, I'm glad you sort of went there because that's kind of the question that I was thinking was, how can Christians be artists? So let me back up. There are still a number of Christians out there, a contingent of these Christians who I do not doubt their motives whatsoever, but they are highly wary of movies, you know, Christian storytelling, if it has sort of the features of reality that we understand in a broken world.

And so whether that's, you know, cursing or other kinds of things, even the sort of display in full view in movies of paganism or something else, you know? I remember, so the example that comes to mind is a few years ago, I think it was Batman versus Superman came out.

There were some Christians that were very upset that Lex Luthor, the villain, was basically quoting Euthyphro's Dilemma to Superman. And here I am sitting here going, but wait a second, that's the villain saying that though.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But they don't. So, you know, of the contingent of Christians who just want to avoid the arts, right? You called it a ghetto. How can we explain to them that, no, Christians should be artists. And how should Christians tell art today?

Yeah, well, that of course has been something I've been doing for decades. Began with Hollywood worldviews, which was my very goal was to reach Christians, the two extremes, you know, the cultural anorexics, those who abstain from all culture because there's sex and violence in it, so it's all bad.

And they don't realize that there's a lot of sex and violence in the Bible. So what's going on here, people? There's a reason for it and there could be a legitimate reason for it in art. And then the other extreme, maybe Christians who might say, you know, oh, it's just entertainment.

So it doesn't affect me or, you know, oh, I'm freeing Christ to watch porn because it doesn't affect me or something. And that's another extreme where, you know, you might be abusing your freedom or you may not be realizing that all art does have a worldview and it's going to affect you and even more so if you don't know what they're doing.

So my goal was to teach storytelling to Christians so they basically had some idea of what to look for in movies. And it's really helped a lot of Christians over the years. They're still using the book in Christian film schools across the country because we need to understand how worldviews are communicated, right?

But I would also say, you know, that the first time that book came out was like 20 years ago and I did an updated edition later.

And it's still being

I think so.

Something like that.

Oh, wow.

That's amazing, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, because it was before, it was released right after To End All Wars because what happened was because I made the movie, then the Christian publishers thought, oh, he's an expert so we can print his book, you know?

And so, yeah, it's been about 20 years. But I gotta say this, you know, I have to say that the Christian church is a mixed bag and I think that there are a lot more Christians that do get it now than did even 20 years ago.

They do understand the nature of depiction of sin in movies and there's, you know, we have to debate these things and there's no absolutes, there's no black and whites, but a lot of Christians get it better than they ever have before.

I really believe that. However, there's always gonna be a certain contingent of, you know, the more stringent, not conservative, just sort of the fundamentalist strains, if you might say, who have a simplistic understanding of culture.

They don't understand what the Bible's really saying. They just sort of follow their rigid, hyper-religious, fundamentalist sort of mentality. There are still a lot of people like that out there. I get them responding to me a lot too.

But I do believe that's a small fragment of the people and I think Christians are getting it. But there's still also just, you know, by virtue of the fact that, Christians are more conservative in general and conservatives always have a harder time with things that push the envelope or whatever, things that are new.

So case in point, Nefarious was a movie that came out real recently, which is about a death row inmate who's demon possessed. And it's a great movie. It's like a modern updated version of Screwtape Letters.

That was also done outside the system because they couldn't, no one else would do it. And it's a great movie. I highly recommend it. But it does have a guy demon possessed. It's not gory or like The Exorcist or anything like that.

It's more mental. It's Screwtape Letters. You know what I mean? However, still, it's a story of a guy who's demon possessed and a lot of Christians just believe that inherently depicting that as evil or it's gonna make you demon possessed.

It's what they don't, actually, these are Christians who are superstitious. They're literally following pagan superstitions, but they don't know it. But what I wanted to say was, that movie did well, but horror movies often, really good horror movies can do really well.

And this is a low budget too. And so they can often do really well. But because it was strongly marketed to the Christian and conservative realm, you know, it did mediocre in terms of, you know, it did, I don't know, I think it did six or 7 million, which is good, but it could have done so much better because the horror genre is still, you know, Christians are still wary of that.

And I understand, I understand. But what they don't realize is that all genres can be used, all genres have been used by God in the Bible. Actually, God uses the horror genre in some of the visions that he gives, whether it's Daniel or the book of Revelation.

And these aren't true historical, or they're symbols, but my point is a lot of times they're fictional symbols used to represent something else or fictional parables to tell these gruesome stories in order to get the point of how serious our spiritual reality is to God, right?

But God also uses romance. God also uses all these different genres and you can have a good and bad version of every genre and not every genre is for everyone. Like a lot of guys don't like the, you know, the chick flick romantic comedies, okay?

I happen to be one who does, but one of my favorite movies of all time is Sense and Sensibility. But, you know, not every genre is for everybody. But the conservatives often do, they're slower to sort of take on these other more risky ventures.

And, you know, I'm not against it inherently because the notion of conservative is to conserve what is good and be careful and cautious about what is new.

That's how it should be.

The extreme is nothing new is acceptable, only the old, right? And that's the extreme that's wrong, actually. So it requires education, which by the way, while I'm here, I highly recommend this book called Christian Horror by Mike Duran, Duran, I think it's, no, I should know it, Mike Duran.

Anyway, the second edition is coming out soon in the next couple of months, I think, but even the first edition is out there. And I've written an endorsement for it because he does explain for Christians a very sensible, responsible understanding of horror as a genre.

Doesn't mean you're gonna end up loving it, but at least you'll start to see how some of these envelope pushing things can actually be quite biblical. And our reticence can be unbiblical. Does this mean we can have as much sex and violence as we want?

No, no, that's not what I'm saying at all. But as I made the argument for years, the Bible has a lot of sex and violence. And so, and why, why does it have it in there? Is it exploitative or is it revolution?

I'm sorry, what am I thinking of? Exploitative or moral.

Redemptive.

Redemptive, exactly. And because the Bible sometimes shows gruesome sins and even uses them, even uses gruesome sexual sins as a metaphor for spiritual depravity, right? Just read Ezekiel 16 and 33 and you'll see what I'm saying.

You won't read that to your kids. It's R-rated. It's actually maybe closer to X, but anyway.

Storytelling, Biblical Depiction, and the Moral Use of Evil in Art

So one of the things that I heard, because we've had you on the show before and talked to you about this. One of the things that I heard in terms of pushback was, and I'm curious to get your thoughts, is, well, okay, Brian, but that's the Bible it was written down.

So the Bible has not filmed these horrific images for us to see with our eyes. So what do you think, like how would you respond to that kind of pushback? If you believe in what God is doing here at this channel, I want you to join me.

Wise Disciple is now live on Patreon accepting membership. So go ahead and go over to Patreon and look up Wise Disciple here. What I'm praying for is that Wise Disciple becomes a community where we can start making a difference in our homes, in our churches and neighborhoods for the kingdom of God.

We are in the beginning. We're gonna start out like a mustard seed. It's gonna start very small,.

But if we start out small,.

This can get as big as you want it with our own conventions, our own events, perhaps a debate community, but it all starts with you. This is exciting. I'm excited. And I'll see you all on Patreon.

What I would say is that that displays a misunderstanding of the nature of storytelling. What I mean by that is when you read a story, you do have the images. It's just not located in front of you. It's located in your mind.

Whether you have a visual display or not, it's very, very much similar. It's very much similar. Also, actually the emotional component of, if you're reading a biblical story and you're following this journey of whatever, some Judah when he has sex with a prostitute who turns out to be, was it Tamar or whatever, these examples that go on, you're imagining that in your mind, you're going through the emotional journey with those characters.

That is just as much participating vicariously through that storytelling as if you were to see it displayed in front of you. The point of it is, now of course there's always limits, to what extent, like if you shoot someone with a fake gun in a movie, you're not actually murdering them.

But if you engage in sex and naked sex, yeah, well then actually that is a violation, literal violation of scripture, of showing your nakedness and stuff. So there are some things that you could argue are violations depicting them, but most sins are not because they're not actually sinning.

You're playing a character who is actually killing someone or cussing or doing something evil. But the Bible tells about Satan and doing, Satan doing evil and other men doing evil, and you're engaging in that vicarious story just as if you're watching it on screen and just as the actors are acting it out.

And in fact, God even had some of his prophets, Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Isaiah even, he had them engage in actual dramatic prophecies where they would live out the condemnation that they're, Isaiah walking around naked as a condemnation of Israel, right?

It's theater.

Yeah, it's theater, exactly. So yeah, so I mean, look, I realize that I've seen enough of this that I realize that people are not going to, if people are stead set against understanding this, they're not gonna accept it because the Bible's written and that's the only thing that's good and acceptable.

And so the question comes, well, if they had movies and cameras back then, would they have used them? Of course they would have, because that would be part of the culture. So it's a technological difference, but nevertheless, acting is not the same as engaging in the actual sins.

You're playing a character who lies, who murders, who cheats or steals, but that doesn't mean you're actually doing the behaviors. And then secondly, watching those behaviors is the same thing as watching them in your mind as you're reading the story.

I guess that's how I see it. And I just don't see a problem with that. Where I see it a problem is when you become exploiting, like if you read a story in the Bible, like I say, okay, like Ezekiel 16, where he's describing, he's using a parable where he's telling a story about the faithless, the spiritual adultery of Israel and Judah.

And he's describing them as women who are having sex with every Egyptian and Assyrian and having sex with gods and goddesses of Egypt and other pagan gods, literally having sex. And that's of course an analogy, but the point is, is that's a story.

And so is that evil? Well, no, why? Because he's using it to repulse you to the sin. You read that, you see it's disgusting and you see the consequences are separation from God. Well, many movies do the same thing.