I would like to take this moment to thank the three people responsible for this article. To the pastor I heard reference this movie in a positive sense, thank you, sir, you have inspired me deeply. And to the dear lady at the Bible study that causally mentioned this movie in a positive sense, thank you, my friend, you have added fuel to my fire. And to my love, thank you for always encouraging me in the truth of God’s word.
Now I must warn you, my friend, in order to make a example of The Notebook‘s sensual immorality, I need to use examples from the movie.
Here is the list I posted in the last article that I judged the movie by.
1. What is this movie’s view of the one true God?
2. What is this movie is trying to teach you? Can you summarize it in a few sentences?
3. What is this movie’s view towards:
o Sex
o Responsibility/consequences for irresponsibility
- Authority
- Family
- Marriage/divorce
- Is it prompting lies with unhealthy and irresponsible behavior?
4. What view does this movie take towards drinking?
5. Does this movie include swearing or using God’s name as a curse word? Does this movie use words that you would not feel comfortable using?
6. Does this movie set up anything as an idol? What does this movie value as important?
7. Is this movie making your standards better or worse? Because our influences shape our standards. If I keep listening to a bunch of bad influences talking about making poor lifestyle choices, I guarantee at some point I’m going to make a poor lifestyle choice. What we watch and allow into our heads influences us whether we want it to our not. It’s time to ask yourself what’s influencing you?
8. What examples of character are being shown in this movie? What behaviors are honored? Does the movie separate consequences from actions to sell certain ideas?
So how does The Notebook answer these questions? In a very ungodly and disturbing fashion.
1. This movie’s view of God is vague. God is mentioned once in passing, but none of the main characters seem to be trying to live in a way that honors Him with their lifestyle.
Romans 12:1-2 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
This verse is basically what this site is about, trying to conform ourselves to God’s Word and not to the world. Don’t be conformed to this world. To conform means to comply with standards, or to act just how the world around us acts. Are you of the world? Do you look, talk, and live like the world? Can the world tell that you are different? Do you renew your mind with God’s word? Or are you only filling up your mind with movies and conforming to this world? Am I worshipping God by sitting in front of this movie? Is my lifestyle honoring Him or dishonoring Him by putting junk in my head?
2. What is this movie trying to teach you? I’ll cover this more thoroughly under one of the other questions.
3. I’m only going to answer a few questions in this section because like most movies, not all topics are covered in The Notebook. One unhealthy and irresponsible behavior it promotes is premarital sex. I cannot speak for the novels by Mr. Nicholas Sparks, but out of 12 movies based on his work, only two didn’t have any premarital sex, and possibly three but I couldn’t find a review on one to prove either way. The other nine movies all involve premarital sex and treated it as if it is normal. None of this irresponsible behavior is portrayed as dangerous or wrong.
The main characters attempt to sleep with each twice and the second time they succeed. Both scenes are shown in great detail. The main guy character also sleeps with another woman, something which was never treated as being morally wrong. And while it’s never shown, it is heavily implied that two minor characters are portrayed as just as happy to sleep together.
This movie encourages premarital sex by treating it as if it is normal and carries no consequences. Sex before marriage shouldn’t be treated as normal, because it’s wrong and stupidly dangerous, emotionally, physically, and mentally.
1 Cor 6:18-20 Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were brought with a price. So glory God in your body.
If you remember nothing else that I say, then remember this: run away from sexual immorality! Don’t tolerate it for a second or think that it’s okay. Because once you tolerate a little immorality, you find you have opened the door to more of it. And the eyes are a part of the body, do your eyes belong to God? Do you honor Him with what you allow in front of your eyes? Because the things you watch all influence you to some degree, even the things that you know are wrong.
It may also be worth mentioning that one of the characters cheats on her fiancé not only by seeing another guy but by sleeping with the said guy. In one scene she declares that she is pretty much a married woman, showing off her engagement ring, a sentiment that I agree with. However, according to this standard, she is not only guilty of sleeping around but also of being an adulteress. Which makes the movie even sadder.
Are any responsible decisions made in this movie? None that come to mind.
Family is shown but never shown as equally important to the romantic relationship. Nothing positive is ever said about marriage as I recall. And the fact these two characters get married after sleeping together doesn’t make what they did right.
Does this movie have any authority figures? I doubt it, most of the movies I have seen by Nicholas Sparks don’t. It certainly isn’t either of the fathers in this movie. The female lead’s father seems to be perfectly fine with the fact that his daughter is kissing this guy, not my idea of a loving or protective father. He didn’t even seem to care.
4. No one in this movie sees drinking alcohol as a problem. Characters drink in order to celebrate parties or special occasions which is pretty irresponsible. There are several different scenes where characters drink when they are upset. They drink to smother their pain, in fact, we are told that one character went on a 10-day drinking binge, which is neither healthy nor safe. Several characters are shown drunk in ways that don’t portray this as negative behavior.
5. God’s name is taken in vain repeatedly, along with other profanities. I used to consider this a minor issue, but I’m learning that we, the church, ought to take God’s name more serious than anyone else. If someone misuses our God’s name or the name of His son we should be offended. We should protect the name of our Lord and treat it with reverence, and not be willing to sit through movies that treat it like it’s nothing but a curse word.
6. Does this movie set up anything as an idol? Yes, it does. Romantic love. I say romantic because although both main characters have family, the story doesn’t seem to spend as much time on them as it does on the romantic relationship. The movie sees romantic love as being the driving force in pretty much everything.
But most of the time the movie spends looking at their relationship is when they were younger and filled with lust. The attitude they take toward sex is selfish. If you love someone then you put their needs above your own and you will protect their purity, not treat it as something that has no value. Real love, unconditional love protects, it never puts others at a disadvantage or takes advantage of others. The Notebook looks at lust and calls it love. Lust is selfish and isn’t love. This movie treats sex as something not worth waiting for, not something to be prized. Honestly, I find the whole movie a slander to what both love and sex should be.
1 Cor 6:9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Be ye not deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,
The Bible verse list goes on, but I’ll stop there. We need to see that God takes these issues seriously, and if He sees these issues as important then so should we. God doesn’t approve of sexual immorality or adulterers, something that movies like this seem to think is fine in the name of love. God also takes the matter of idolatry very seriously. Unlike people in biblical times, we don’t have temples or physical idols that we in the states worship. But we are just in danger of having idols as anyone else in history. An idol is anything you are tempted to treat as more important than God.
In the movie, that idol is romantic love which is shown to be more important than anything else. Family, moral behavior and faithfulness, and certainly more important to the characters than God. Idols are a dangerous thing because of how subtle they can be. My idols in the past looked nothing like those in the movie, but knowing my own temptations, I watch myself. I make sure these things don’t come between me and God. And I make it a priority to spend time in the Bible and in prayer every day.
What are your idols? What are you tempted to treat as more important than God?
7. Did this movie make my standards lower? Yes. I sat through more of these movies than I should have and made some very bad choices. The choices were my own, and certainly not caused by any one movie alone. But I do believe I was influenced by the world’s standards when it came time for me to make a choice about certain things.
8. What examples of moral character are being shown in this movie? What behaviors are honored? Does the movie separate consequences from actions to sell certain ideas?
The behavior of doing anything in the name of love is what is honored in this movie. Lack of self-control in relationships is seen as normal and not a dangerous mistake. Purity in relationships isn’t valued. And it disturbs me how the main characters sleeping around with even the people that aren’t their significant other isn’t portrayed as wrong. The male lead sleeps with another woman just to numb his emotional pain, no one in the movie seems upset about that. He uses this other woman and refuses to have any sort of relationship with her. She invites him on an outing so they can hang out instead of just sleeping together, and he tells her that he can’t give her the love that she wants. He basically says that all that is gone inside him.
So for some reason, it’s okay for him to sleep around, but it’s not okay for him to fall in love?
Now I agree we shouldn’t be careless about falling in love, and we should guard our hearts, what I don’t understand is why is all this causal sex seen as okay?
I understand taking time to grieve, having had to do that myself in the past, but this guy is selfish and immoral. I knew loneliness, but I made other friends, was active at my church, and spent time talking with God. There were nights when I cried because I was lonely, but I didn’t need to drink, smoke, or emotionally abuse anyone to console myself! And it took time, but I did move on.
But what I can’t understand is if this guy character is saying he can’t love this woman, why he is he sleeping with her?
Second of all, he claimed all his love or whatever is broken, and he can’t be happy and he can’t love anyone. That’s a selfish lie. He may believe it, the movie may believe it, but I can testify that it’s still a lie!
I’ve lost people, close family, and I didn’t turn into some ice hearted jerk that just used people. My heart was in pieces at times but I made a life for myself and poured myself into friendships and relationships with other family members that I did have. But this movie is saying that if you are broken you have no responsibility for how you treat others. You can be a jerk and it’s okay. We’re supposed just forgive Noah because he loves Ally, but that’s not enough to make me forgive his poor decisions. Love isn’t a hall pass to live however you want, or a pass to avoid responsibility.
It doesn’t matter how you feel inside you are still responsible for your actions. If I act like a jerk because I’m lonely and sulky, I’m still responsible for acting like a jerk. God knows how I am feeling, but He isn’t going to let me off the hook for hurting someone else just because I don’t feel like doing the work of being nice.
1 John 1:5-10
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
God is perfect and holy, which means that in Him is no sin. As His people, we are called to be holy, and among other things, this means to not put any unclean thing in front of our eyes. Such as movies we know are wrong or encourage any behavior that God says is wrong. When we watch and talk about sinful movies like this as if they are what’s normal, we tell those around us that it is fine for them to participate in things of the world, to act like the world. That spoils our witness to our non-Christian family and friends because then our choices in entertainment are just like theirs.
We need to be set apart for God and to focus on following His standard, rather than the world’s. Yes, that will make us seem odd and behind the times to our friends, and probably even our family members. But in the end, we are all going to stand before God and be accountable for our actions. And He is going to ask us how we used our time, and in the grand scheme of our lives, movies aren’t going to be that useful to us. Are they worth the time we spend on them?
Let’s have a higher standard for our entertainment! We are called to be different from the world, not merely sanitized but completely different. Let’s live our lives by God’s standards! Go forth, my dear friends, and live your lives according to God’s Word!
The Christian Thinker 