Sweet Magnolias: A Review
There is a new series on Netflix titled Sweet Magnolias. It follows three women as they go through life in a small southern town named Serenity. The main character has three children and is in the middle of a divorce from her doctor-husband Bill, who has gotten one of his nurses pregnant. (Does this sound familiar to anyone? Maybe, Reba?)
The main character, Maddie, is actually Cheyanne from the show Reba. Since I recognized her, I decided to watch the show and see if it was good or not. After watching a few episodes, I was blown away by how (mostly) clean it was! It's a Netflix Original series and since we all know they're a liberal-run company, I was shocked to find that they could actually produce a clean, appropriate show... Or so I thought.
In this post I'm going to break down the few things they added into this show that caused me to eventually stop watching it.
1) A female pastor. At the beginning, it shows all of these women going to church. That's always a good thing.. or is it? Then it showed the pastor: a woman. According to popular church culture today, it's perfectly acceptable and even biblical for a woman to be in authority over a man in the pulpit. It's okay for women to shepherd God's flock, women and men, and lead them in the Word. In our culture, women pastors are A-okay! But that's not biblical.
“I do not allow a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; instead, she is to be silent. For Adam was created first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and transgressed.” 1 Timothy 2:12-14
Now I actually chose to overlook this because everything else was pretty clean, except for a few, spread out cuss words. So I kept watching.
2) A gay couple. There was a man in the show that I thought seemed a little feminine, and i actually remember thinking, "Wow! I'm so impressed that they didn't make his character gay." And then they bring in his "husband" named Ashley. And there we have the real Netflix, always trying to push a worldly, evil agenda.
So I decided to skip through the rest of the episodes except for the scenes where I saw the two teenagers that kind of had a love triangle going on between them. While fast forwarding, I saw the next thing that made me grateful that I had decided to skip through the rest of the show.
3) On-screen sex. The main character and her new boyfriend sleep together. It amazes me how shows can make things like gay couples and out-of-marriage sex seem SO normal. The couple who slept together had only been dating for a short amount of time. They don't know if they'll always be together because they weren't married, and probably hadn't even thought that far ahead.
What is the issue with sleeping with someone you're not married to? For starters, if you do this with every dating relationship you're in, you most likely will have given yourself to several different people. That leaves you emotionally scarred and can be dangerous physically (i.e. a higher chance for sexually transmitted diseases.)
Secondly, it's a sin before God. That is not how He created sex to be. He created sex for marriage relationships only, and it's truly for our good!
“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” Genesis 2:24-25
“Drink water from your own cistern, water flowing from your own well. Should your springs flow in the streets, streams of water in the public squares? They should be for you alone and not for you to share with strangers.” Proverbs 5:15-17
On another note, whether the couple on TV is married or not, watching people do what should only be done in private is wrong on more levels than one. You don't agree? Ask yourself if you would watch your neighbor and her husband have sex. If the answer is no, then why is it suddenly okay to watch two people you don't know on TV doing the same thing?
Why is it an issue for believers to watch shows that contain stuff like this? As long as you know it's wrong, it's OK, right? Wrong.
As believers, we are to honor God in everything we say and do, so that definitely includes what we watch. He is our Master and we are His slaves. We obey what He says. And He has stated in His Word:
“Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for God’s glory.” 1 Corinthians 10:31
Netflix, Youtube, Facebook, Snapchat, Disney and etc. all push an agenda. They push the Feminist agenda, the gay marriage agenda, the victim-mentality and white-supremacist agenda, and so on.
Jason and I have always been the minority among our friends when it comes to refraining from watching filthy shows (and female pastors and reformed teaching, among other things.) But we believe that the more you watch sinful things on TV, the more those sinful things seem to be okay. The reality is that those things are abominations to God; they are very serious. It's wrong of God's people to treat them lightly, just as it's wrong of us to treat the sin in our own lives lightly.
Instead of filling our minds with filth, we are to fill our minds with the things of Christ.
“Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable — if there is any moral excellence and if there is any praise — dwell on these things.” Philippians 4:8
I have never written a review of a show before, but I wanted to post about this show because I was very disappointed that Netflix ruined it by adding unnecessary, sinful things. Why I thought that they would produce a clean show is beyond me! Friends, let's all be careful of what we allow into our minds. This is especially true when it comes to our children; their minds are innocent and completely impressionable.
So let's all make sure that what we're allowing in our homes is glorifying and honoring to our Lord.