The Jesus of The Chosen, Part I

An "Authentic" Jesus?

In a show designed to entertain, I think it is fair to ask whether this purpose also applies to its presentation of Jesus. If it does, Jenkins has created a new Jesus, for the Jesus of Scripture does not entertain. But Jenkins cannot deny that The Chosen fans find his presentation of Jesus entertaining. They commonly report that they didn't know Jesus was "like that." Like what? Wouldn't that imply a new Jesus? Jenkins would say "no" because Jesus was always "like that." We just didn't see Him that way because His humanity is generally "left out" of The Gospels--except, for example, in scenes such as His temptation in the wilderness, which Jenkins intentionally leaves out of his show. For Jenkins, the real question is not whether he has created a "new" Jesus but whether he has presented an "authentic" Jesus. Jenkins maintains that he has, for he equates humanity with authenticity.

Jenkins considers himself capable of decoding what "being human" must have looked like for Jesus, since Jesus had to have experienced all the same situations that human beings experience, with all the corresponding emotions. Tell Jenkins it's not as simple as that--that this assumption sounds too pat, too textbook, too stereotypical even for a mere human being. Or point out that Jenkins' presentation of Jesus is almost exclusively fictitious, and he will counter that it is nonetheless both "plausible" and authentic. How anything fictitious can also be authentic is not only an "elephant in the room" question, it is a mind game of shameless gaslighting. But not for Jenkins. He has everything figured out--not only the endless complexities of the human psyche, but that psyche as embedded in divinity. Listen to him toss around the term "hypostatic union" with a cavalier abandon foreign to any true theologian and scratch your head at his presumption.

Then point out to Jenkins that even eyewitnesses to Christ's Person could not describe or define Him without the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit and that Jenkins has no such inspiration and that he has no right to tamper with The Gospel record, and he will double down and claim that he serves to please God alone. He doesn't care what his critics think, (even when those critics are conservative, godly Bible scholars). Jenkins' martyr complex will manifest itself, and his fans will jump to his defense, for Jenkins firmly believes that God has endorsed his show--commands against tinkering with Scripture notwithstanding--since for Jenkins and his fans, an understanding of the humanity of Jesus is what makes Him approachable as an "authentic" human being.

A "Human" Jesus?

For Jenkins, this "authentic" humanity equates to a portrayal of Jesus' "human emotions." Lest we misstate Jenkins' wording or misread his intentions, here is how he responded in an interview with LiveMint’s Sounak Mukhopadhyay regarding the show's purpose to humanize Biblical figures while "respecting" The Gospels: "It's difficult, but I do believe we can find enough in the gospels and in Jewish history to understand that Jesus would have had the full range of human emotions and personality. Our goal is to never do anything that seems implausible, anything that contradicts the character and intentions of Jesus and the gospels. But, we absolutely believe that stained glass windows and statues don't fully capture who Jesus was, and we believe depicting a Jesus who dances with friends, laughs at jokes, and feels all the human emotions is the authentic Jesus."

There is certainly a lot here to address, but I would like to know first of all what Jenkins means by saying, "Jesus would have had the full range of human emotions." He doesn't define what he means by "human emotions." In truth, only some emotions can be dubbed as strictly "human" emotions--and Jesus would not have felt any of these--fear, pride, lust, guilt, shame, and selfishness--because these emotions result from sin. All other emotions could properly be referred to as "divine emotions" as given to us by God Himself, Who created us in His image--love, joy, peace, courage, honor, self-sacrifice. Even the capacity to grieve or to feel jealousy, anger, and hatred for sin comes from God, who feels all of these things without sin. We could not even commune with our Creator without sharing in His "divine" emotions. So, if Jenkins assumes that all emotions are unique to human beings, his thinking is grossly simplistic. And if he thinks that Jesus did not, therefore, feel emotion until He became human, he is hardly a thinker whom we should take seriously.

Time would fail to catalogue all the emotions the Preincarnate Son of God felt as the Angel of the Lord in rescuing, protecting, and directing His own, not to mention the rich love the Son enjoyed with His Heavenly Father before time began. I cannot understand how Jenkins could miss this, unless, of course, Jenkins himself sees God the Father and God the Son as "statues" or as "stained glass windows." But how would that be possible if Jenkins has read his Bible? But Jenkins seems not only to imply that Jesus did not feel emotion before He became human, he seems to believe that, once Jesus became human, His "human" emotions somehow took precedence over all other aspects of His nature.  How else could Jenkins believe an emotional portrayal of Jesus to be "the authentic Jesus"?

Problems and Contradictions:

Jenkins' premise poses multiple problems, but the most glaring is his intentional--not to mention, fictitious--overemphasis on Jesus' human nature in a heresy known as the kenosis theory, which focuses on Jesus' human emotions at the expense of His Deity. Jenkins would deny that he is doing anything heretical, even while at the same time doubling down on his mission to portray his "humanized" Jesus--a portrayal which we understand he invariably insists is the "authentic" Jesus. We could here point out that this is one of the few points on which Jenkins remains consistent, amid all his other backpedaling when he finds himself embroiled in theological controversy. This is, after all, the thesis of his show in a nutshell. But, not only is any isolation of Jesus' emotions from the totality of His nature superficial, the separation of His emotions themselves into categories such as "human" or even "divine" is impossible, betraying gross ignorance of basic reality. Why, then, does Jenkins insist on referring to Jesus' "human emotions"?

It is not unkind to conclude that Jenkins has assigned himself an impossible task redundant with misnomers and bloopers. Not only can Jenkins not assign uniquely human emotions to Jesus without portraying Him as sinning, he cannot even portray any of Jesus' sinless emotions as being merely "human." It seems patently obvious that any emotion Jesus is capable of feeling would be felt in the totality of His nature as fully human and fully divine--and with an unadulterated purity, richness, and spiritual dimension utterly impossible for any human being to comprehend, much less to portray. Even if it were possible to identify any of Jesus' emotions as being specifically "human," we still could not truly "relate" to them, for we do not know what it is to experience our God-given emotions without alloy since the Fall.

It seems juvenilely trite even to speak, therefore, of Jesus' "human" emotions, as if we could--or would even want to--"halve" His emotions into "human" and "divine" compartments. But, supposing such a dichotomous separation were possible even analytically, the portrayed result would be anything but "authentic." Having a sinful mortal presume to act out any of Jesus' emotions would result in an immediate and immeasurable reduction of meaning for all the reasons previously mentioned. This is why I do not believe anyone can portray Jesus in any film or live pageantry. Some do not believe He should even be portrayed in art. We might ironically argue that precisely here is where we need our holy imagination--to see with the eyes of our spirit what no mortal can present visually.

What we don't understand about film is that, by attempting to make the intangible tangible or the spiritual visual, we have produced a "mass" or "standard" one-size-fits-all sensory simulation of truth that everyone simultaneously is supposed to accept as real--what British Romantic poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, called in literature the "willing suspension of disbelief." But when we read, we cannot rely on our literal five senses but only upon our imagination of them, and the engaging of our God-given imagination through the God-given power of language touches the eyes and ears of our spirit in ways mere visual presentations never can. For this reason, people often joke that the book is better than the movie, and it is--and all the more so when that Book is the inspired Word of God.

While those who do not enjoy reading might argue that people who lived in those times were allowed to "see" what was going on, we could legitimately counter that they saw the reality, not a simulation. Therefore, the truth element is not lost in "translation." Although there is certainly no replacement for being there, recorded language--and certainly when divinely inspired--possesses powers that reconstructed images do not have. The paradox seems to be that we can engage our own imagination through language, but we cannot borrow someone else's imagination through film. Perhaps this is because, in visual presentations, nothing is demanded of us, and we therefore may or may not respond, for all the power of drama assumed. And yet, even when the power of drama does seem to be felt, caution is in order because how do we know why people are responding? Are they responding out of mere emotion, having had their senses stimulated, or are they responding with the mind and spirit, having had their consciences awakened? Certainly, we cannot turn the complexities of this mystery into a black-and-white process, but we know that drama carries unique dangers inherent in its seeming advantages.

For Jenkins, this entire process is not a simulation of historical truth but an invention based on his own presuppositions. His episodes are pure imagination, so he is not bound by fidelity to the truth in any scenes of his own making. Ultimately, then, real power does not reside in anyone's imagination but only in the truth, whether presented in language or in image. We can imagine all we please, but we can't make any of our imaginations true. Certainly, every culture has imagined its own Jesus, and with what degree of accuracy or validity, only God's Word and eternity can reveal. But, for all Jenkins' quips about cultures viewing Jesus as a "statue" or as a "stained glass window," Jenkins himself seems to be guilty of turning Jesus into a stock character--perhaps the quintessential maverick--whose emotions can easily be invented simply because He is human.

Jenkins does not seem to understand the Incarnation, nor would he even appear to want to understand it because, if he did, there would be no "need" for his show. In his patronizing mission to make Jesus real to the masses--in fact, Jenkins' Facebook page even sports the question, "Did I turn Jesus into a rock star?" https://www.facebook.com/DallasJenkinsOfficial/videos/dallas-regrets-this-one-thing-season-finale-reaction/512739177222661/?locale=ms_MY--Jenkins would appear to entertain a "Savior" complex by "saving" people from an otherwise "flat" or one-dimensional concept of Jesus. This is the same "Savior" complex Uzza indulged when steadying the Ark of the Covenant, and it is the same "Savior" complex Eugene Peterson entertained when wanting to paraphrase the Bible into language that his congregation would find "fresh and vital." But God did not appoint any of these men to do the work of the Holy Spirit or to rescue Him or His Word from otherwise certain disaster. God's Word is not like Solomon's ax that becomes dull with use (Ecclesiastes 10:10). It is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword (Hebrews 4:12).

While Uzza met his fate immediately, all those like him who patronize or minimize the power of God's Word will give an account not only of their "good" intentions but especially of their misguided inventions and interventions. At the very least, Dallas Jenkins needs to understand that the power of Christ's Incarnation, like the power of God's Word, does not require his self-appointed interpretation or self-congratulatory intervention. If there is any lack of understanding or any misperception of Christ, it is because of willful blindness resulting from any culture's gross decadence and disobedience. And presenting a cultural "Jesus" who caters to this depravity will not solve the problem. Without a doubt, Jenkins fails to understand that it requires, not the separation of Jesus' humanity from His divinity to embrace His authenticity, but the express Incarnation of divinity with humanity to show us who Jesus is authentically. Without Jesus' divinity, we wouldn't even care about His humanity, for it would not be sinless and perfect. This is the most elementary fact to believe if we even believe in Jesus at all.

Conclusions:

Dallas Jenkins reminds me of Victor Frankenstein, who presumed that, if he had the right knowledge of all the components of the human body, he could recreate one. He found his "material" by robbing graveyards at night, but what he created was a monster with no likeness whatsoever to the miracle of human creation. And his monster was a monster because he created him in his own image, according to his own knowledge and understanding. I don't know what Jenkins has created, but if he has tampered with creating another Jesus, we know this much: Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light (II Corinthians 11:14). Jenkins' Jesus may very well be no monster but only a "beautiful" deception whom we find "relatable" because that's who we really are.

Select Sources:

Come and See, https://www.comeandseefoundation.org/  

LiveMint, https://www.livemint.com/entertainment/dallas-jenkins-on-the-chosen-we-re-showing-a-jesus-who-dances-with-friends-laughs-at-jokes-and-feels-human-emotions-11744184587731.html