Tension can be good:

I spent a considerable bit of time recently shopping for a movie to use on a date night with my lovely wife.  Weeding out all the choices that are too this or too that, doesn't leave a large selection.  I'm certainly open to your suggestions, but I digress; that's not the purpose of this piece.

One of the things I noticed as I looked at the plot summaries, especially of the older flicks, is that many of them are built around the tension that exists when one finds a romantic interest in someone other than the person in whom they ought to have such an interest.  In plainer terms:  "I'm married to, engaged to, going steady with, Bob (or Suzie), but I'm falling in love with Jane (or Bill)."  Sometimes this conflict is developed through comedy, and in other presentations it leads to tragedy in the fullest sense.  I'm wondering, though, when the pull that the viewer needs to feel in order for the plot to work will no longer be present.  Is the device becoming like the elastic in an over-used garment?  You can pull on it, but it doesn't pull back.

The stress that such plot lines depend on is dependent on certain qualities in the viewer: 

• Marriage is a special, even sacred, relationship.
• Sexual activity should have some relationship to love.
• People ought to keep their promises, and
• In general tell the truth.
• To use another human being for one's own advancement is wrong.

In other words the elastic is the watcher's commitment to a basic system of morality.  I see that basic morality being drained from our culture at large.

I don't figure that a plot-line built on the debate of whether whale oil or beef tallow was the best fuel for lighting homes would gain much traction in our electrified world.  

I'm wondering whether we are rapidly headed to a place where stories that depend on what one ought to do, will be meaningless, because most people will have concluded that other than to do what pleases me at the moment there is really nothing that I ought to do.

It's STTA, but add in Matthew 5:13-16 & think about it some more. 

You can find out here about how Jesus changes hearts.