Why I Didn’t Love Redeeming Love

Last week I was visiting my daughter, and she invited me to see a movie with her “Young Life girls”—a group of high school girls she mentors as a Young Life leader. The film was Redeeming Love, a movie based upon a book I’d read umpteen years ago along with every other Christian woman on the planet. Though it is ostensibly a modern retelling of the story of Hosea and Gomer from the Bible, to most of us at the time, it was a safe, approved of, and perhaps even edifying romance novel (romance novels being one of those things you have to give up when you become a Christian).

I confess I don’t remember too much about the book, other than it took place in an old West town during the California gold rush where a handsome, virtuous farmer pursued and married the town’s most beautiful (of course) prostitute. I don’t remember how I felt about the book, whether I liked it or not. I thought the writing by Francine Rivers was decent and the ending a little cheesy, but otherwise, it made little impression.

The movie is a whole other enchilada.

First, there is the sex. I mean, two fairly graphic, prolonged, and unnecessary sex scenes that had our high school girls giggling and my daughter and I utterly mortified. Did we really take a bunch of high school girls to a Christian movie to witness this? Well, at least the two characters involved are married. There’s also plenty of partial nudity, pedophilia, incest, abortion, murder, lynching, and assorted violence to go around—pretty edgy stuff for a Christian movie. I’m not knocking that as long as it serves the story. Some of it does, but a lot of it doesn’t.

The movie itself has some admirable production qualities and good acting. The two main stars are likable and believable, and the supporting cast is up to par. It strains realism at times—how is it that Michael Hosea, who is referred to as a “dirt farmer,” has enough money to buy several sessions with the most expensive prostitute in town, outbidding every single miner? He runs his farm all by himself, with no farmhands, no neighbors, and the town twenty miles away, yet his house is neat as a pin, his clothes are always clean, his hair perfectly coiffed, and he owns a horse that in today’s market would cost about $50,000. Did I mention that he cooks too? When he asks God to give him a wife, and God apparently points him to Angel, he doesn’t bat an eye, doesn’t question, doesn’t try to talk God out of it, except for a quip to his dog, “next time when I ask God for a wife I’ll be more specific.”

But I quibble.

The bigger problem is the theme of redemption and its relationship to Hosea. Hosea is not a romantic story by any means. It’s God’s dramatization of Israel’s faithlessness. He says it straight out in chapter one: 

'When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord .” ' Hosea 1:2 (ESV)

God doesn’t mince words. Commentaries suggest that Gomer, Hosea’s new wife, was most likely a temple prostitute in the temple of Baal. She proceeds to have some children, and God instructs Hosea to give them names like “No Mercy” and “Not My People” to drive home the point. But He also declares His ultimate faithfulness and forgiveness:

'and I will sow her for myself in the land. 

And I will have mercy on No Mercy, 

and I will say to Not My People, 

‘You are my people’; 

and he shall say, ‘You are my God.’”' Hosea 2:23 (ESV)

In Hosea 3, Gomer has run off with another man, clearly a willful act. God tells Hosea to go get her and redeem her, literally.

'And the Lord said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.” So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a lethech of barley. And I said to her, “You must dwell as mine for many days. You shall not play the whore, or belong to another man; so will I also be to you.” ' Hosea 3:1-3

The message is that God’s redeeming love is vast but conditional. Forgiveness is not free. We were bought at a price. Hosea paid fifteen shekels and some barley. Jesus paid with His life.

That message is diluted in the film because Angel, unlike Gomer, is more of a victim than a sinner. Sold into sex slavery as a child, abused by a range of men, including her own father, she is trapped in a life she clearly hates. Every time she runs away from Michael (which is two times too many), it is not because she wants to return to her old life, but because she feels unworthy of being his wife. That may be a good story in and of itself, but it isn’t the story of Hosea and Gomer. 

Moreover, because of the allegorical nature of the movie, Michael isn’t allowed to be a real person. He’s the movie’s picture of Jesus, an iconic figure of perfection. He has no flaws. Humiliations and struggles roll off his back like water. Aside from one short scene where Angel glimpses him weeping, he remains stoic, always forgiving, always loving. He seems to love Angel from day one. When I read Hosea 3, I don’t get the sense that Hosea felt the same way about Gomer. He committed to her because the Lord told him to. That’s true faith. Hard love.

Add to this the “miraculous” ending, and what could have been an interesting and gritty movie descends into the golden-hued Cheez Whiz of most Christian films. We don’t know how Gomer and Hosea turned out—the rest of the Book of Hosea is a prophecy about Israel. Did they fall in love? Did Gomer remain faithful forever? If we are to judge from the history of Israel in the rest of the Bible, I’d guess probably not. 

Gina Detwiler is the author of the YA Supernatural series Forlorn and the co-author of the middle-grade fantasy series The Prince Warriors with Priscilla Shirer. She’s also written The Ultimate Bible Character Guide for LifeWay.