From A.:
“I do read romance novels…and enjoy them. I don’t think they are wrong to read…if they are centered on CHRIST. Some romance novels would be bad…but I enjoy reading books written by Janette Oke and Grace Livingston Hill. Really, I don’t know anywhere in the Bible where it says it’s wrong to read romance novels (partly because in the Bible times they didn’t HAVE romance novels…but that’s beside the point!).
“Some people may have different opinions…and I’m sure that’s okay…there’s nothing wrong with NOT reading them, either. Really, I’m only a 13-year-old girl not really sure what is right…but for now I’ll read them, because I don’t see anything wrong with doing that…but I might change my mind tomorrow!”
From B., age 14:
“I think that anything that puts unclean thoughts into your head and gives you a false picture of how your life will be with your true love should be avoided altogether. Not to mention that you might start to imagine yourself as the ‘beautiful, slender maiden’, and a face may even form of the man you love.
“I don’t read romance novels, but I think romantic movies can have the same effect. She falls in love with him, he falls in love with her, and it’s mooches smooches after that. Not a very clean and pure picture in your mind. However, I think that movies and books that have love in them is acceptable. Just as long as it does not get carried away, and is pleasing to God.
“No, I don’t believe that romance novels are good for one’s spiritual well-being. Philippians 4:8 should be looked at before doing something that is possibly hindering to one’s mind and soul—like reading or watching a romance novel or movie. Also, I like the question, ‘What would Jesus do?’—I try to ask myself that constantly and reflect on it.”
From R.:
“One reason not to read romance novels is to protect our innocence. Even many so-called Christian novels are very ungodly and unclean and breed lack of innocence. Corrie ten Boom, in her book, The Hiding Place, told a wonderful story that applies. As a little girl, she had heard the phrase ‘sexsin’ in a poem read in school and didn’t know what it meant. Since she always went to her father when she needed answers, she asked him one day, ‘Father, what is “sexsin”?’ He thought for a few moments and then told her to pick up his briefcase. ‘It’s too heavy,’ she protested. ‘It’s like that with some knowledge, Corrie,’ he told her. ‘Some knowledge is too heavy to be carried by children.’ That’s one reason we must guard what we read. Our innocence is priceless.
“Romance novels make us daydream about our Prince Charming whisking us away to ‘happily ever after land.’ They’re ‘grown-up fairy tales.’ But has anybody ever written the sequel to Cinderella? We know they got married and said ‘I do’ (according to the movie) but what was Prince Charming like a year later? Ten years later? Twenty-five years later? Did he say, ‘I did’? What happened when Cinderella burned the roast? How about when she wasn’t as pretty anymore after having ten children? When she went through menopause, was he there for her? Or, a better question, did Cinderella still see him as her Prince Charming, when he was no longer so charming? Or did she satisfy herself by picking up a romance novel?
“My point isn’t that all men are weasels who divorce their wives when the going gets tough (although a number of them do that), but that even the best and most godly of guys are human and even the most godly of marriages is not like the romance novels… There’s laundry to do and people get the flu and the car breaks and you have to spend your vacation money to have it repaired…romantic? No, just plain everyday life that usually leaves little time or energy for romance. After all, sneakers are more practical than glass slippers when running after toddlers and changing diapers.
“Also, reading romance novels will only feed an attitude of ‘what I could get out of a relationship.’ They will not make me fit for marriage, but very unfit, because marriage isn’t about what I can get but about what I can give. It’s sacrifice and longsuffering and patience…and lots of things that are definitely not flowery or ‘romantic.’
“Finally, it’s virtually impossible to read romance novels without putting yourself in the place of the heroine…and think about what you’re really doing when you do that…lusting after a different person with each book that you read…really, it’s adultery. And we will never be satisfied if we think romance will fulfill us!
“So, after indulging in romance novels and the discontentment that they breed, how do we come to the point of purity where Jesus is all we need? Maybe that’s a question for the next newsletter.”
From Mrs. K.:
“Romance novels can be a little weak in the area of being good for your spiritual well-being, but as long as they are balanced out with other reading that’s not bad it’s okay. As far as ruining my resolves to keep my emotions pure, I am not sure—being married—but feel it may make me feel more loving toward my husband.
“I think our reading of them should be balanced, as far as reading some once in a while, or avoiding them altogether. In the area of some types being better than others, some seem to be more secular and have no thoughts toward any difference other than Christian in word only. No, I wouldn’t agree with what Denny Kenaston said! [‘Throw away all those romance books! They're ruining you! It's poison. They need to be burned!’]”
From S.:
“I read Christian romance books… They are pure and the characters wait till marriage. I honestly enjoy them more than anything else right now.”
From age 14:
“I do read romance novels, but I try to keep my diet down to a minimum of those sort of books. For I have found that I have a lot harder time keeping my emotions under control after I’ve been reading a romance novel.
“I enjoy George MacDonald’s best of the romance-type books I’ve read, for they’re not really romance books at all! They have such good, solid truths, and are the type of book that really makes you think. Also, the examples of love are such pure, Christian, self-sacrificing views of love (I’m talking the commitment kind of love, not just emotional sort!), that I really grasp a truer meaning of the misused and abused word “love”.
“But, all in all, I try to keep from reading too many romance novels. When I do read one, I always try to give myself a good dose of Josh Harris or Elisabeth Elliot afterwards, so that I get my mind back to the ‘waiting, not dating’ thinking mode.”
From S.:
“I think that it is normal to read Christian romance novels, or a classic. I really cannot see how anyone could resist. I love romance novels… Actually, these books have made me realize how much God is needed to have a strong relationship with the one you are to marry.”
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