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, stained glass windows, and stereotypes--are two-dimensional. How he knows this, he doesn't say. But he would obviously appear to be saying also that a two-dimensional art form--the stained glass window--is the culprit in creating stereotypes of Jesus: a two-dimensional form generates two-dimensional ideas. How this assumption works with the mathematical precision Jenkins implies demands either gross overgeneralization or simplistic assumptions. But this assumption is Jenkins' first problem: he himself is depending on a two-dimensional medium--film--to break stereotypes created by another two-dimensional medium--stained glass windows. So, despite the nature of his comment, he can't mean merely a form-over-substance problem; he must mean a substance versus substance problem. This is where things start to get ugly.

Jenkins' substance differs from almost anything outside of his show--a fact that, in itself, will grant the verisimilitude of authenticity, regardless of his two-dimensional form or the fictionalization of his content. Without a doubt, Jenkins' unique substance is the "human backstory" he has created to fill the "gaps" about Jesus in the Gospel record. And this humanity will be taken as three-dimensional even when it is presented in a two-dimensional form. If this humanity that creates the third-dimension is unique to The Chosen, it follows that The Chosen is superior to both Scripture and stained glass windows in preventing two-dimensional ideas--i.e., stereotypes--about Jesus. This is especially true when both Scripture and stained glass windows fail to depict Jesus as "human."

If Scripture is just as guilty of causing stereotypes--given these "gaps"--as stained glass windows are, then it becomes clear that Jenkins' targeting of stained glass windows merely makes them a scapegoat to disguise his real agenda: an attack on the sufficiency of Scripture in bringing people to Jesus. But Jenkins is irresponsible to associate stained glass windows with the same two-dimensionality of stereotypes in the first place. His argument goes in circles here, for it would appear to Jenkins that any picture in a stained glass window is a stereotype simply because it is two-dimensional. This would include human portrayals of Jesus, but don't most artistic depictions show Him as human? After all, Jesus has a human body! And when these images are based on The Bible, is it not villainous to call them stereotypes merely because they appear in windows rather than in film? So Jenkins hops on one two-dimensional foot when he wants to devalue Scripture and he hops on the other two-dimensional foot when he wants to promote his show. Jenkins' message is clear: anything that doesn't present Jesus as "more human" is a stereotype.

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. The real reason people don't know much about Jesus is because they don't read the Bible--a medium far more ubiquitous than stained glass windows.

If Jenkins 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% Bible and 95% fiction.

So 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. 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 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." 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 portrayal of Jesus. But wouldn't it stand to reason that something as inherently beautiful as a stained glass window will be seen as "ideal"? And if that ideal inspires--as ideals do--why should that ideal also, then, be seen as a stereotype? But Jenkins would appear to say the same about Scripture. It is too "ideal" because it fails to depict Jesus' humanity to the degree that Jenkins and his fans demand. Ironically, however, if Jenkins' "ideal" portrayal of Jesus is the one that shows Him to be "more human," we still have an ideal--just one of Jenkins' choosing. Jenkins has argued himself into a corner by repeatedly dichotomizing what is idealistic and what is realistic about The Gospels' portrayal of Jesus, as if these are opposites. In doing so, he runs the risk of spouting heresies.

Jenkins 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 only we take time to watch. 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.