The Idea behind The Chosen

Introduction:

Email, the Internet, smartphones, texting, social media, GPS, digital cameras--these staples of daily life were foreign to most of us two generations ago, and, if they existed at all, were initially regarded as novelties, if not downright oddities. But someone's idea found not only wings but landing gear, and here we are wondering how we ever got along without these "necessities." Whether these conveniences actually enhance the quality of our lives is another question. This much is certain: not only our means of communication but the very way we process information has been transformed by someone's "different" viewpoint that became mainstream. Such is the power of a new idea.

A New Way of Thinking about The Gospels:

Then there is Dallas Jenkins' invention, The Chosen. While it is an overstatement to say that this series has gained the popularity of the once-novel iPhone, it is safe to say that Jenkins' new idea has "invented" a way of thinking so popular that it will become almost impossible to uninvent. What is this new way of thinking?  Certainly, it is not that God's Word is communicated best when it becomes visual. It is the assumption that God's Word has left "gaps" regarding the humanity of Jesus--gaps that, if filled, will make Jesus more relatable to a metamodern culture.  And Jenkins' way of filling these "gaps" has been to invent a television series depicting Jesus through the viewpoint of His disciples. Wait, how is that new? Don't we already have four Gospels, each with a uniquely different yet divinely inspired view of Jesus composed from eyewitness accounts and primary sources? But for Jenkins, none of these four Gospels satisfies our natural curiosity regarding the humanity of Jesus. Even though it is the intent of God's Word to present the divinity of Jesus, for Jenkins, that's not the point. He believes that people will be best won to Christ if they can be convinced that He was, after all, "human."

Problems with This New Way of Thinking:

What "human" even means for Jenkins is a problem since, for the disciples, being "human" means they were filled with flaws and even stubborn sins, but for Jesus, being "human" cannot mean these things. Or has Jenkins intentionally blurred the lines? That's what we don't know, and that's why it becomes crucial to understand the influences behind the show (which we will examine in a future post). The fact that Jenkins has invented not only the concept of "gaps" but even the "viewpoint" of the disciples intended to fill those "gaps" is a problem in itself. So is his insistence that the episodes he has invented are all "plausible." The truth is, they aren't. Just one major glaring example is his choice to make Peter fish on the Sabbath, something even Jenkins' consultants said just wouldn't happen. No Jew would do that. They just wouldn't. Jenkins, however, went against the advice of his consultants and wrote this in the script anyway. https://laurarbnsn.substack.com/p/what-is-the-chosen-part-2-historical

So, Jenkins has created The Chosen on this novel idea that there are, first of all, "gaps," and that, second, these gaps can, in fact, be filled as aided--or not--by his staff without doing injustice to what's already there in Scripture. How he has come to reconcile his invention with the prohibition against adding to Scripture is a dance in itself. But the bottom line is that his content is 95% fiction by his own admission--fiction that unveils the "authentic Jesus," all while Jenkins's go-to disclaimer remains that The Chosen is "just a show." Isn't this doublethink? But because Jenkins believes his episodes to be plausible, we hear him talk about "his" Matthew or "his" Peter or "his" Mary Magdalene (whom some call his thirteenth disciple), as if he is indeed quoting from the Gospels. "We know Mary struggled with addiction; we know she was abused" and so on. Oh, you do? That's funny because the Bible never tells us these things. But that doesn't matter for Jenkins. What does matter is that his invention gets to be judged artistically as something new since it's not in the Bible and no one really knows where it's going to lead. And the fact that his public has wildly bought into it makes it feel legitimate.

That's a problem. How is his 40% unchurched audience going to become disabused of the fact that Matthew was not "on the spectrum," that Peter was not a gambler, that Mary Magdalene did not travel all over the kingdom with the Twelve, and on and on? I don't know because I stopped watching after seeing two episodes. My spirit just could not stomach any more fiction interpolated into the holy Word of God. I rejected the idea Jenkins was selling and found the only "gaps" to be his own gaps of truth. In creating The Chosen, Jenkins has implicitly marketed the idea that we can't really know what is and isn't true about these "gaps," since Jesus was human and so "must" have done these things that Jenkins has decided are true.  He must have joked; He must have laughed. For Jenkins, He must have danced at weddings and this and that--things that are nowhere on the horizon in Scripture.

But in selling this idea, Jenkins has changed the thinking of his fan club to the point that they not only agree with him that there are gaps, they also agree that we are entitled to fill these gaps ourselves, over 2000 years later--not from uninspired, albeit factual, historical sources such as Josephus and Tacitus but from the yen of our own imaginations. It is as if Jenkins has pulled a new dinosaur out of the hat by just one fossilized tooth. And yet how he woos his audience into believing that his show presents historical drama is just one more of his tricks. His content is not historical, given the simple fact that almost none of it ever happened. How much humanity is enough? People are looking for a Jesus in their own image, and the very idea that someone recently said that Jenkins had "put skin on God" is blasphemous since it is an insult to the Incarnation of Christ, Who has already come in the flesh. We don't need another Jesus to interpret Jesus to us.

Why should this idea have become so popular?  What is the enormous draw? It cannot be denied that Jenkins has created a new sensation, if not a stir. From my perspective, Jenkins has invented "oddities" and aberrations that are quickly being normalized to the point that confusion has been injected into the study of God's Word. The very fact that he is his own resource and that he does not know either his own Bible or Jewish history well enough to avoid a gaff as enormous as a disciple breaking the Sabbath is pure ignorance masquerading as film genius. Critics who analyze the episodes scene by scene contend that the script leaves much to be desired, with its own gaps and contradictions. These Jenkins habitually explains away, often with conflicting answers.

And herein lies another problem that we are supposed to take with a straight face. The "gaps" Jenkins has identified in Scripture must be huge indeed for a multi-season show to fill them with multiple episodes. Even more remarkable is Jenkins' claim that none of these multiple episodes in any way contradicts Scripture, despite the contradictions inherent in the varied ideologies behind Jenkins' staff who have written and filmed them. And at what point have we completely lost the balance between Jesus' humanity and His divinity--as if these are even separable--if the episodes "revealing" His humanity would fill many volumes beyond the four Gospels? Something just doesn't ring true in all this fiction.

When we examine the idea behind Jenkins' invention (the gaps regarding Jesus' humanity) and the influences creating the invention (a wide panel of differing opinions), we find a new idea rippling out from Jenkins' original inspiration: it would appear that any human being is somehow qualified to interpret what the humanity of Jesus looked like since, ultimately, the one qualification all Jenkins' influences have in common is that they are human. None of them claim divine inspiration. The idea that no such inspiration is required is alarming, but no one talks about the elephant in Jenkins' studio. Therefore, Jenkins' critics are left with a dilemma: they cannot discredit Jenkins' influences without uninventing the idea that every "disciple" of Jesus--then or now--has a valid "viewpoint" regarding what Jesus is like. How can you argue that they don't? So Jenkins' idea has split the very assumption of divine inspiration wide open while paying lip service to the Bible as his template.

Conclusions from Scripture:

With good reason did Peter make clear his claim, "For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty" (II Peter 1:16). Paul forbad Timothy to give heed to fables, old wives' tales, and profane and vain babblings (I Timothy 1:4; 4:7; 6:4, 20). Instead, he commanded him to give his full attention to "godly edifying which is in faith," to an exercise "unto godliness," and to "that which is committed" to his trust. Those who fail to keep infallible "gospel" truth the centerpiece of their message have "erred concerning the faith" (I Timothy 6:21). In Paul's second letter to Timothy, his warning is even stronger, "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables" (II Timothy 4:3-4).

This leaves me with one primary conclusion: Jenkins' idea in itself is based on a fallacy that is hopelessly tainted by our own culture of metamodern thinking--that objective truth doesn't exist necessarily but that my own subjective emotions can authenticate what I believe to be true. The Chosen is a metamodern invention. The fact that this thinking cannot work in a court of law points out another problem--that we process spiritual "truth" very differently than we process historical facts. As Christians, we should find it shocking that Jenkins' utter lack of historical facts in The Chosen has not prevented his claim to historical truth. It is time to cut to the chase and say outright that The Chosen is a bad invention, its irrational popularity notwithstanding. Just as the Apostle Paul identified a different god or idol on every corner of Athens, Jenkins has created a polytheistic view of Jesus that will be very, very difficult to uninvent until Jesus comes.

In a further post, we will examine in depth several of the personal influences behind The Chosen, beginning with Dallas Jenkins himself.