Hey, my friend. This is Matt. This is the 10 minute Bible Hour podcast, and we've talked before a little bit about this idea of corruption in fantasy writing and even science fiction.

Anytime you get into that realm and you read the really sophisticated good stuff, there will almost always be this theme of the hero or the

heroes or somebody you care about being tempted by something. And that temptation, it's almost like

it's radiation or something. It's corrupting to the soul. And the longer you're exposed to that thing that you lust for and long

for, the more it weakens your resistance. You lose your resolve. You lose your sense of clarity.

And then certain characters in these kinds of stories will buckle and break. They'll give

into madness. Their whole character

will change. Whereas at first, that temptation, when they encountered it, they were like,

yeah, not for me. They do okay at first, but it wears them down. And so there's this additional

theme in not just storytelling, but even in, you know, video games and table games and things like that, of one aspect of a complex character being their resistance to corruption, their ability to be exposed to temptation a lot and somehow not be worn down, broken down by that over time,

until eventually they break.

Obviously, this theme is most pronounced and most well known from the Lord of the Rings

and even the Hobbit and Tolkien's universe in general.

I mean, because the whole idea is you've got this ring of great power that is massively corrupting.

And somehow it's the simple little country folk who like a gardening and smoking pipeweed,

who are the ones who can resist that temptation the best,

and particularly this one character who is Frodo, who's the guy you're rooting for

throughout the whole thing. But it's so easy when you're watching those kind of stories from a

distance to see people start to be exposed to that corrupting radiation and for you to watch.

I'm like, no, lady, don't fall for it. You're my hero. Come on, resist. No, dude, don't do that.

What about all the kids? You're protecting the kids if you do that. They won't have a protector.

Don't do it. Don't fall. It's so easy when I'm not the one who's about to get the payoff of whatever the pleasure or reward is from giving

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