The Chosen: Breaking Stereotypes and Stained Glass Windows, Part I
Updated: 13 hours ago
Defining the Problem
When Dallas Jenkins utters one of his most frequent comments--that he wants The Chosen to break stereotypes of Jesus as "statues and stained glass windows"--he is forcing a false association among disparate entities and diminishing all three as merely two-dimensional, thus voicing stereotypes of his own. His high-sounding aim at breaking all three would, of course, assume that all three need to be broken because they are not only "stiff" but false.
Suppose we begin with stained glass windows. What entitles Jenkins to believe that these iconic works of art have created stereotypes about Jesus? Shouldn't he first prove that the ideas they generate are indeed stereotypes? But that is exactly where the real problem begins. Jenkins would appear to take for granted the idea that anyone who has not yet seen his show retains stereotypical ideas about Jesus. If this is true, stained glass windows are not the problem at all; they are merely the scapegoat for those historic ideas about Jesus that pass from generation to generation.
But scapegoat or culprit, Jenkins' attack makes an artistic analysis of the stained glass window fair game. If these two-dimensional art forms are to be blamed as causing stereotypes about Jesus, then we have a form issue, not a substance issue. Windows would create stereotypes simply because they are two-dimensional, not because the content they contain is stereotypical. But for Jenkins, the effect is also the cause: the idealization inherent in the window's art form creates content that seems surreal. What Jenkins does not seem to realize is that the window's form is not a limitation but an illumination and that this illumination is going to lend an otherworldly glow to any subject found therein. If he is going to equate the ethereal with the stereotypical, his argument is shallow indeed. The two-dimensionality of the window can hardly be said to be stereotypical when its very function is to transcend finite reality.
And yet here Jenkins' hand removes the glove: he would appear to be saying that the window is the primary culprit in creating stereotypes of Jesus as if it goes without saying that a two-dimensional form generates two-dimensional ideas. The very idea that both a window and a stereotype can be broken shows, of course, that neither is flexible or resilient--but possesses exactly the same limitations that people's ideas of Jesus have. Enter Jenkins' fix: The Chosen, which turns Jesus into a moving picture rather than a glass window and thereby breaks the stereotypes of Him that stiff stained glass windows generate.
But this assumption points to Jenkins' worst problem: he is depending on a two-dimensional medium--film--to break stereotypes supposedly 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 without contradicting himself. He must mean a substance versus substance problem, and this is where things start to get ugly.
Originality Versus Authenticity
Jenkins' substance differs from almost anything outside of his show--a fact that in itself grants the verisimilitude of authenticity, regardless of The Chosen's two-dimensional form or the fictionalization of its 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 we can be sure that this humanity will be taken as three-dimensional, even when it is presented in a two-dimensional form.
If this humanity that is unique to The Chosen creates a perceived third-dimension, it follows that, for Jenkins, The Chosen is superior to both Scripture and stained glass windows in preventing the formation of two-dimensional ideas (stereotypes) about Jesus. Why? Precisely because this two-dimensional form of film has introduced substance that is taken to contain three-dimensional authenticity. Why? Because two-dimensional form (film) has met three-dimensional substance: humanity. The logic would go that human portrayals of Jesus in film not only break but also prevent stereotypes.
Jenkins' Glass-House Problem
If Scripture is just as guilty of causing stereotypes--given these human "gaps"--as stained glass windows are, then Jenkins is targeting stained glass windows merely by association with the "stiffness" of Jesus resulting from minimal "human" narratives in Scripture. His stone-throwing at stained glass windows ricochets off his scapegoated target to land on his real target: Scripture itself. But he dare not say so; thus, all this effort to say the opposite, all while hoping that his show becomes the way people perceive Jesus from now on.
This seems tantamount to attacking the sufficiency of Scripture in bringing people to Jesus. If this sufficiency seems to hang or fall on readers' ability to perceive Jesus as human when they cannot, then-- without The Chosen--Jesus remains a stereotype. So it isn't really the fault of stained glass windows at all; it is the fault of the gaps in those windows--or, rather, the gaps about Jesus' humanity in the divine revelation of Scripture. Those gaps are the source of stereotypes about Jesus.
All this sounds very strange. The real reason people don't know much about Jesus is because they don't read the Bible. 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--by his own admission. 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. 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.
Breaking Stereotypes about Stereotypes
And as propaganda would have it, logical and ethical appeals to faith in Jesus have been replaced by emotional appeals--and these appeals by their very nature appear to break stereotypes because they "move" us in ways that stereotypes can't. People have essentially stopped thinking critically about their faith and have simply started enjoying it. But Jenkins has fed his audience a whole new line of cultural stereotypes that feel authentic because they are not only recognizable but visual in ways that stained glass windows are not.
So Jenkins is breaking stained-glass (or traditional) stereotypes of Jesus by generating his own fiction. If he were to define his terms as the rest of us must do, he would see how preposterous his claims really are. Just because they seem unfalsifiable doesn't mean they aren't false. 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. For that matter, a medieval audience enamored with the supernatural and also with spontaneous generation might perceive that image as far more plausible than, for example, the image of Jesus dancing like a commoner at a wedding.
Idealism as a Stereotype
Jenkins is rejecting the form of stained glass windows and the substance of stereotypes--not only because of their supposed two-dimensionality but because any form or substance that presents too idealized and too traditional a portrayal of Jesus evidently creates stereotypes. Jenkins' real target isn't stereotypes but history. This is the giant window he aims to break. And here, both the window and the stereotype share an eerie commonality: both have persisted from the historic past into the present day and have done their damage by generating ideals that Jenkins does not find "real."
Wouldn't it stand to reason that a form as inherently beautiful as a stained glass window will transform any substance into an "ideal"? And if ideal substance meets ideal form, why should that ideal marriage then be seen as a stereotype? It won't. So Jenkins camouflages his aim, only to face his biggest problem yet: to make us fall out of love with the ideal, the historical, and the familiar as if none of this is real or believable.
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 not only jams his own logic; he runs the risk of spouting heresies. 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 was human doesn't seem to occur to Jenkins. He thinks that anything that doesn't present Jesus as "more human" is a stereotype.
This is, of course, all extremely dangerous theologically, but Jenkins keeps popping right up out of the rubble from all the two-dimensional stained glass windows and stereotypes he is breaking--all while embracing his own two-dimensional show. 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.
And 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. 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. It is breathtaking. Isn't that why the image was made into a stained glass window in the first place?
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 windows, intersected in space as if to form a cross, visible but untouchable, linking the tangible world 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.
The Relatability of Transcendence
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, fictionalized script for his albeit two-dimensional 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.
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