“Little Foxes have lived in all times, in all places. This family happened to live in the deep south in the year 1900.” — Prologue to THE LITTLE FOXES.
A few weeks ago my wife and I watched the 1941 film The Little Foxes with the always delightful Teresa Wright. The title comes from the Bible:
Catch the foxes for us,
The little foxes that spoil the vines.
For our vines have tender grapes. (Song of Solomon 2:15)
The same passage also inspired the title of the 1945 unrelated film Our Vines Have Tender Grapes with a different worldview perspective that counters and serves as a remedy to the outcome of Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes.
Both stories are about families and legacies, the fifth point in the covenant model, and the ability to extend dominion.
Using Classic Movies to Teach the Christian Worldview
In this talk, Gary DeMar makes the point that classic movies are excellent teaching tools for a Christian worldview—for children and adults. Classic movies are often heavily dialogue-based, which provides a necessary counterpoint to the visually stimulating and soundbite-driven modern method of moviemaking. Real life is about real conversations, and classic movies provide a great virtual training ground for thinking and living in the real world of ideas and consequences. Also includes illustrated PDF ebook that helps to reinforce and explain the concepts discussed in the lecture.
Buy NowEvery generation faces the same problem: How does it transfer what’s been accomplished in one generation to the next generation and beyond? In The Little Foxes, it was by hook or crook. One reviewer wrote:
One of the most caustic, and yet, exceptionally engaging films ever made, THE LITTLE FOXES (1941) is the story of a family torn apart by greed. It features Bette Davis in one of the most villainous roles of her career, and exceptional performances by a host of first-rate supporting actors.
Our Vines Have Tender Grapes is “about a Norwegian immigrant farmer in Wisconsin, Martinius Jacobson (Edward G. Robinson), his wife Bruna (Agnes Moorehead) and their seven-year-old daughter Selma (Margaret O’Brien), who is often bedeviled by her playmate and five-year-old cousin Arnold (Jackie ‘Butch’ Jenkins). Martinius simply wants to work his land and be a loving husband and father to his family.”
There are many little foxes that can spoil the vines and affect the legacy of a worldview. The most insidious “little foxes” began with the sexual revolution. It’s become more than free and uninhibited sex, although it was that. Today, sex has been redefined in numerous ways that end up being legacy killers.
First, having few or no children will literally kill off a family’s legacy. You don’t need to have a Dugger-size family, but size does matter. It’s great to see young couples in our church having so many children. It makes me hopeful. While my wife and I only had two sons, we have nine grandchildren.
Second, I was sad to read about a Hollywood family embracing their child’s “gender” transition.
Gabrielle Union {one of the biggest supporters of abortion from Hollywood] and Dwyane Wade were the pictures of proud parents when recently, their 13-year-old daughter Zaya had a one-on-one Zoom with none other than Michelle Obama. “We were all bawling!” recalls Union, 48. “She was so amazing and dynamic, and to be able to hold your own with Michelle Obama, it was so impactful.”
Zaya has been impactful in more ways than one since she came out as transgender last year, a positive voice for youths living their authentic lives. (People)
This is sick. It’s a form of self-malediction, a self-curse that this family wants to spread to vulnerable and impressionable young people. “Authentic lives”? I don’t think so. Nothing could be more unauthentic that the self-mutilation of a person’s future.
Ellen Page is another example of self-malediction, literally cutting off her future. Here’s how Wikipedia describes her: “Elliot Page (formerly Ellen Page; born February 21, 1987) is a Canadian actor and producer.” First, she came out as a lesbian and then as transgender. Like Union’s child, Page is celebrated as a role model for young people. Then in March 2021, “Page became the first openly trans man to appear on the cover of Time magazine.” She’s had “top surgery,” the surgical removal of her breasts.
Here’s the payoff as described by a liberal who understands the implications of his own worldview:
[F]or the past 30 years or so, conservatives — particularly those of the right-wing red-state Christian strain — have been out-breeding liberals by a margin of at least 20 percent, if not far more…. One theory goes like this: Libs are generally more socially conscious and hence tend to actually give a modicum of thought to what it means to pop out a brood of children in this modern overstuffed age. Also, many other liberal bohos [Bohemians] are (admittedly) happy selfish suckwads who want all the modern booty for themselves and won’t want to give up the Ducati [motorcycle] and the plasma [television] and the biannual trip to Cinque Terre [Five Lands on the Italian Riviera] for the sake of a pod of rug rats and 15 grand a year (each) for private kindergarten. Translation: Libs just aren’t procreating like they could/should be.[1]
Childlessness, abortion, homosexuality, and now sexual mutilation are hallmarks of the destructive worldview of the Left.
Here’s something from Vogue UK:
Is having a child an act of environmental vandalism or an investment in the future? Is it possible to live an ecologically responsible life while adding yet another person to our overstretched planet? Can I get away with it if I just never learn to drive, never get a dog and keep wearing the same three pairs of jeans for the rest of my life?… While gestating my son, and probably every day since, I have wondered whether having children is, in itself, an ecologically sound or unsound decision.
Josh Barro said what I was thinking: “These people are completely insane..”
How is the Left countering these extremes of self-malediction? Education. Conservatives continue to send their “tender grapes” to indoctrination centers to be reprogrammed by the foxes. Stop it. Get your children out of our nation’s propaganda centers. Education is not free if your children’s minds are being stolen and reshaped to adopt the modern self-destructive worldview. Most parents cannot counter 12 years or more of nearly daily indoctrination by people who hate your worldview and want it swept into the dust bin of history.
Thinking Straight in a Crooked World
Gary DeMar shows the power of biblical thinking and the desperate need for it in the church today. Thinking Straight in a Crooked World is designed to identify the bends in the road of ideas and repair them with biblical, straight thinking.
Buy Now[1]Mark Morford, “When Liberals Rule the World: Stats say the GOP is dying. But red-staters are breeding like drunken ferrets. Who wins?,” SFGate (March 28, 2007).