Luke Parker, a contestant on the “Bachelorette,” who got booted last season from the show after he promoted a biblical view on premarital sex, said he did not realize that he was being cast as the show’s villain until it was too late.
This past week, Parker appeared on the Youtube channel “Paul and Morgan, a faith-based show that gives advice on life, love, and dating.
“I really didn’t know I was being portrayed as the villain,” Parker said. “I’m [a] pretty naive kind of guy. It didn’t – it took until Latvia, and that’s kind of where I knew it. I’m the villain.”
Every season of “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette” has a villain. Whether it’s crafted by the producers, or they simply cast a controversial character to specifically drama, there’s routinely one person singled out as the driving force of friction and conflict of the show.
According to Parker, he was that guy and did not realize it until it was too late.
While talking with Paul and Morgan he shared that he finally started to see what the producers were up to because of how they were “asking me these types of questions, like why are they trying to get me to say stuff like this. And then it started making sense. I started connecting the dots.”
Hannah Brown, the ‘Bachelorette,’ also a professing Christian, was expressive about her faith in the show as well.
Parker says Brown told him she wanted a husband who had a strong relationship with God like she did, and someone who would put God first.
Parker recalled the moment that Hannah had told him these things saying, “it’s imperative that [her future husband] has a strong relationship with God, and we’re talking about our relationship with God and how important it is to us and I’m thinking wow this [relationship] gonna work.”
“And then, you know, [we] speed it up and we get to share each other’s testimonies later in the season and then she comes home [for] the Hometown [date episode],” he described.
“She gets to meet my family first. She gets to come to my church and meet my Sunday school community group. And I get to share a little bit of my story, my testimony with the community group, and then she comes up shares a brief story of her testimony and she goes as far to say, ‘Listen everyone, don’t judge me for the Fantasy Suites because I do not plan on using them for sex. I plan on using them for conversation — to further the relationship,'” he added. “So I’m thinking, ‘Oh, great.”
Later in the show, the fantasy suites and the topic of purity came up again between the two.
“So, let’s talk about sex and how the marriage bed should be kept pure,” Parker said as he tried to explain how God had changed his views on purity. “I had an encounter with God. I was in the shower and God was speaking to me. I realized that I wasn’t the man that I wanted to be. And I’ve been working on being the husband that I want to be for my future wife.”
“I have had sex, and, honestly, Jesus still loves me,” Brown responded, which would go on to be her trademark phrase on television.
In response to his views on premarital sex, Brown eliminated Parker, calling him prideful.
“Guess what? Sex might be a sin out of marriage, [but] pride is a sin, too, and I feel like this is like a pride thing,” Brown said. “I feel like I’ve finally gotten clarity on you, and I do not want you to be my husband.”
Although the show only showed the blowup between Parker and Brown, Parker insisted that the two had a more in-depth conversation about purity that was not shown on national television.
“I laid out a few brief scriptures with her [then said] I’m going to abstain from sex for marriage because that’s what best is for me. And she goes as far as to say, ‘Luke I share the exact same heart and the exact same convictions as you. We’re on the same page.’ So in my mind, I’m like we’re good,” Parker explained.
Despite Brown sleeping with other contestants while on the show, Parker still “wanted to be with her at that moment, and I knew that she had done this regardless of the details.”
“I was just like, with the conversations that we’ve had that [didn’t] air, she’s telling me that she wants to [abstain]. So I’m thinking if she’s living this life and on this [other] path, then she’s making a mistake and I need to go say, ‘Hey look, like, you’re making a big mistake, like, you can’t send me home, like, I need some clarity here or some closure.'”
Ultimately, Parker was kicked off the show, but it wasn’t without a personal lesson being taken away. He shared with Paul and Morgan that even though the script was edited, he was and still is learning about “pride in a way I didn’t even know.”