The Chosen: Breaking Stereotypes and Stained Glass Windows, Part I

When Dallas Jenkins utters one of his most frequent comments--that he wants to break stereotypes of Jesus as "statues and stained glass windows"--he is saying that all three--people's ideas of Jesus, stereotypes, and stained glass windows--are merely two-dimensional. He wants people to see Jesus as three-dimensional, which will happen when they see his show. What he doesn't say is that his show also uses a medium that is two-dimensional, so, despite the nature of his comment, he can't mean a merely form-over-substance problem. If Jenkins really believes that seeing the Jesus of his show will break stereotypes about Him, then it follows that he also must believe that almost anything outside of his show is guilty of causing stereotypes about Jesus. In fact, for Jenkins, what that translates into is that anything that doesn't present Jesus as "more human" is a stereotype. Unfortunately for Jenkins' theology, this includes not only stained glass windows or those cultural images of Jesus that may, at least in some cultures, seem ubiquitous but also meaningless; it also includes The Bible itself. Jenkins has said over and over that The Bible has "gaps" in the record about Jesus' humanity. These gaps, supposedly representing the missing "third" dimension, would appear to be as culpable in contributing to stereotypical ideas about Jesus as stained glass windows are. After all, most stained glass windows depict scenes from The Bible.

All this sounds very strange if you think about it. If it is true that our culture entertains stereotypical ideas about Jesus or that they see Him as two-dimensional, it does not follow that stained glass windows in any way are the cause. Most people aren't gazing from week to week at stained glass windows. So Jenkins' analogy is a nonstarter for me. There is another two-dimensional medium that could quite arguably be guilty of generating stereotypes of who Jesus is, and that would be Jenkins' favorite medium--of course, film itself. But I don't hear Jenkins criticizing film for perpetuating either stereotypical or merely two-dimensional ideas about Jesus. Jenkins hasn't touched the bottom of this swamp yet, and when he does, he will be in over his head, for the real reason people don't know much about Jesus is because they don't read the Bibles that are far more ubiquitous in their lives than any stained glass window.

If Jenkins really wants to break stereotypes about Jesus, he should launch a new Bible-reading campaign. Instead, he has chosen to make a multi-season television series about The Bible that uses only 5% of The Bible and 95% fiction. So, to Jenkins, the cure for stereotypes is to fill people's minds with fiction. But they won't know it's fiction when they meet that fiction in the two-dimensional medium of film, especially if they don't know their Bibles well enough to know that almost none of that stuff is in there. Even the stuff that is in there has been so overworked that it is barely recognizable as anything Biblical. It is, however, indeed quite recognizable as postmodern stereotypes, but we won't talk about that.

Is your brain hurting yet? None of this makes one iota of sense, but, of course, it doesn't have to. Jenkins' ends justify his means, and if his audience is raving over his show--and they are, all over the world--then he doesn't have to explain his fallacies. He just has to keep crowing that they work. And they do. They work as well as propaganda has always worked. People have essentially stopped thinking critically about their faith and have simply started enjoying it. To be fair, that in itself is a gross generalization, for there are numerous reports of people who have just now started reading their Bibles because of Jenkins' show, and we don't any of us have to explain why. Jenkins had piqued their interest. But it is a fair rebuttal to his claim to expect those who are now reading The Bible to be bothered by the unending changes Jenkins has made. And if they aren't, why not? But Jenkins makes these two apparently unfalsifiable claims: that his humanized Jesus is "authentic" and that his fiction is "plausible."

What Jenkins doesn't do is define his terms. His show is no more authentic than the navy blue braided belt I had years ago that said "genuine simulated leather" on the inside. And his episodes are no more plausible than a medieval stained glass window that depicts Jesus emerging from a rose. No doubt, to a medieval audience enamored with the supernatural and also with spontaneous generation, that seemed highly plausible. So we are back to a form-over-substance debate, after all. Jenkins is indeed rejecting, along with stained glass windows and stereotypes for their two-dimensionality, anything that presents too idealized a picture of Jesus, and this would apparently of necessity include The Bible because of the gaps in its human stories about Jesus. Jenkins repeatedly dichotomizes what is idealistic and what is realistic as if these are opposites. He has yet to embrace the paradox that Jesus is the realistic ideal in every fiber of His being. The fact that everything Jesus did in The Gospels was human doesn't seem to occur to Jenkins. He wants more, and he is positive his audience wants more.

But he won't call any of this new fiction "extrabiblical" material because, if there is anything he has thought through well, it is that his show doesn't pretend to be The Bible--which is exactly how he justifies adding to it without getting in trouble. Except that Jenkins has already gotten himself into a heap of trouble, but he keeps popping right up out of the rubble from all the stained glass windows and stereotypes he is breaking. But if we pull even one shard of stained glass from the scrapheap and hold it up to the sun, we begin to put the thousand-piece puzzle back together. Not only is it not true that Jenkins' fiction is either plausible or authentic, idealized portrayals of Jesus are not unrealistic and stained glass windows don't generate stereotypes even when or though they contain "idealized" depictions of Jesus. If we take the time to actually look through a stained glass window, we might be as enchanted as we once were when we first watched a movie.

The changing light creates a movie of its own, if we only are watching. And, as it turns out, the experience of watching this changing light come and go through an iconic depiction of Jesus as the Shepherd or the Teacher or the Crucified Lord or the Judge or the Coming King isn't stereotypical at all. In fact, it is breathtaking. Gazing up at 10:00 of a fresh, sunny August morning in the nave of Cologne Cathedral proved one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life, memorable over three decades later. The light itself, streaming in through a panoply of the windows, intersected in space as if to form a cross of rays, linking the tangible with the intangible in ways medieval artisans felt in the design of their sacred imaginations. It is the modern inability to perceive the exalted view of beauty in worship that proves its own blindness, falsely labeling as a stereotype that which is in actuality not only an archetype but a true work of art.

Have we lost not only our Bible knowledge as a culture but also the upward look of our faith that feeds the soul's thirst for spiritual transcendence? Maybe if we had more "stained glass windows" to look up to, rather than fastening our eyes on the dull screen, we might find that we don't need anything "relatable" at all. What we need is a touch of the remarkable--a touch that comes only from the Holy Spirit as evidenced in His Word. But Jenkins will be one of the last ones to notice as he writes yet another plausible, authentic, but fictionalized script for his show. If God's Word is found, as he says, to include "gaps" so wide that it requires a seven-season series of at least eight episodes apiece to fill them--95% of which is pure fiction, then it would appear that it is God's Word rather than Jenkins' show that contains only 5% truth.