Redeeming Love Does a Disservice to Hosea and to Girls

Spoiler Alert: This text incorporates spoilers for the movie Redeeming Love.

As a younger girl, rising up in an early 2000’s Christian dwelling, I heard the praises of Francine Rivers’ 1997 novel, Redeeming Love. I used to be even given a replica of the ebook for my fifteenth birthday. The thrill surrounding its characteristic movie adaptation was palpable in Christian ladies’s small teams. The ebook is entertaining and a beautiful romance story, to make certain.

As a teen, rising up within the “I’m not single, I’m relationship Jesus!” youth group tradition, it was simply one other story that made me really feel uncomfortable with seeing my Lord and Savior and the Almighty God as a romantic love curiosity. Now, as an grownup girl watching the movie adaptation of Redeeming Love,¹ I can see and articulate the issues with the story and, particularly, with how the visible interpretation was dealt with. Redeeming Love perpetuates a skewed model of romantic love whereas concurrently misrepresenting the true redemptive love of God that’s proven to us within the Bible. 

We should first perceive the Biblical story that impressed the novel and discern precisely what that Previous Testomony story is instructing about God. The understanding of Hosea as merely the ebook within the Bible the place God instructs a person to marry a prostitute is deceptive. In Douglas Stuart’s Biblical commentary on the ebook of Hosea,² he breaks the passage down into components and appears on the context in addition to the unique Hebrew. Stuart surmises that the outline of the “prostituting girl” is to not be understood within the literal sense of her having the occupation of a prostitute. In keeping with Stuart, “‘Prostitute’ would seem in Hebrew as both ЛЛТ or ГШ 1 ЛИЖ.” On this passage, the phrase getting used is a plural summary which isn’t usually used to discuss with the occupation itself. God didn’t instruct Hosea to marry an precise prostitute, however merely to marry an Israelite girl. 

Right now and within the context of the remainder of the ebook of Hosea, Israel has turned so removed from God that every one the residents are individuals in unfaithfulness to the covenant. The general message of the ebook of Hosea is supposed to mirror the connection between Israel and God. Subsequently, Stuart argues, “​​Prostitution is Hosea’s most typical metaphor for the covenant infidelity that provoked Yahweh’s wrath towards Israel, and the time period is utilized in that sense all through the ebook.” On the finish of all of this we see that God nonetheless loves and cares for Israel as His individuals, regardless of their disobedience.

Hosea’s relationship with a girl who has been untrue to God and the connection along with his kids who’re born of an untrue girl (no matter whether or not she was actually sexually promiscuous) is a logo of God and His ache over being betrayed by His individuals. Finally, we see how terribly Israel has damaged their covenant with God and the way He so wishes for His individuals to show from their wickedness and commit themselves to Him. Within the Bible, Hosea and his household are a mirrored image of God and Israel, however Hosea will not be appearing as if he himself is God.

In Redeeming Love, nonetheless, the allusion is such that the main man Michael Hosea (Tom Lewis) is meant to be displaying what God’s love appears like—a redeeming love. This meshing of godly love with romantic love is the place the difficulty lies throughout the story. It’s the utilization of Michael as a Christ-figure that causes this novel to do a disservice to the Biblical story of Hosea. 

The male lead, “Michael Hosea” first sees “Angel” (Abigail Cowen), as she’s identified for many of the story, and is straight away drawn to her magnificence. It is just after having the sight of her that he determines that God is telling him that she is The One for him to wed. Within the movie adaptation, we aren’t granted the expertise of the voice of God chatting with Michael as we’re within the ebook. Within the movie, we see him go to the chapel and pray, asking for a spouse. He then arrives on the town, sees Angel, and proclaims, “That’s the woman.” 

A key subject with the movie is that they made the choice to maintain the film from an outsider’s perspective. Within the novel, it’s written within the third particular person, however we’re at the very least aware of Angel’s ideas and emotions about her circumstances in addition to Michael’s feelings. The movie closes the viewers off from Angel and thus, we solely know her with reference to how others view her. The route of the movie clearly makes use of “the male gaze,” emphasizing Angel’s magnificence by fashionable male requirements. 

When Michael and Angel first meet, she is totally nude. With excellent, voluminous, lengthy hair in beachy waves with an ever-so-trendy center half, she is exhibited to the viewers. She walks across the room fully bare with solely a strategic prop placement and her lengthy extensions holding the pictures from being full-frontal. Angel finally covers with a gown as Michael eagerly tells her he’s going to marry her. It isn’t a query, however an announcement. They’ve had no significant dialog and he is aware of nothing of her character, however he’s going to marry her. 

After we are given perception into Angel and her previous, we’re hit with each traumatic expertise attainable throughout the span of lower than thirty minutes. The movie takes no time to deal with these delicate topics with care and compassion: the viewers is subjected to her back-to-back trauma. The quantity of display time and a spotlight being paid to the abuse endured by Angel feels exploitative, sensationalized, reminding me of the sadistic remedy in different movies that show wicked human struggling as fodder for leisure. 

All this culminates within the brutal beating of Angel to near-death, just for Michael to suggest to her as she is barely aware. She responds with, “Certain,” and Michael whisks her out of the brothel. This was not Angel agreeing to a wedding, it was an act of survival—simply as every part else she has achieved. Angel has been taken from one state of affairs of males dictating her life to a different the place she is simply as a lot an object and commodity as she was earlier than. Solely this time, serving as a kind of ethical and religious undertaking of a love-struck Christian boy.

Angel even has a line that calls out precisely this subject when she says, “I’m not enjoying into your marriage-slave fantasy.” That’s exactly the way it comes throughout: a person so infatuated by the sight of this lovely girl that he feels compelled to save lots of her and rehabilitate her like a wounded fawn. Michael is continually telling Angel what she will be able to and can’t do and attempting to reframe her identification. It’s a portrait of a male fantasy. 

Michael tells her his plans for her and begins molding her into the great, respectable girl he wishes her to be. As soon as Angel has confirmed herself, Michael rewards her by telling her they’re prepared for intercourse. This intercourse scene is rather like any intercourse scene in any secular film directed by a male director. It as soon as once more focuses on Angel and her physique, lingering on exposing her naked determine. By no means as soon as is Michael proven as connecting along with her on this intimate second besides to satiate his personal lust that he has been projecting onto her for the final hour and a half.

There’s a glimmer of hope within the third act of the movie. Angel finds out who she is aside from Michael, makes an sincere dwelling for herself, and even escapes her first and most terrifying abuser totally on her personal. However then, Angel comes again to see Michael, and tells him she loves him and needs to be married to him completely. Michael’s response is, “I’ve at all times cherished you. Welcome dwelling,” whereas the music “Rescue” by Lauren Daigle performs, illuminating the allegory we’re presupposed to be seeing right here as soon as once more. Michael has a relentless love for Angel and is welcoming her dwelling with open arms, similar to God, proper? 

Conflating the relentless, unconditional love of God in a literalistic method with the romantic love of a person and girl is in the end dangerous. It’s much more dangerous to ladies to see a person who’s manipulative and self-centered introduced because the savior of the story. The love of God displayed in Hosea is unconditional, however the romance in Redeeming Love is conditional and centered on what Michael wishes.

Footnotes

1. Redeeming Love. DJ Caruso, Common Photos, 2022. ↩︎
2.  Stuart, Douglas. Hosea-Jonah, Quantity 31, HarperCollins Christian Publishing, 2014. ProQuest E book Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/liberty/element.motion?docID=5397258.
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