Choosing the Chosen

When I was a boy I hated the “Jesus movies” of the 60’s, 50’s and 40’s. Each and every one of them portrayed Jesus as always speaking in a breathy monotone with all the charisma of a bank examiner who just doubled his dosage of Prozac. This was not how Jesus was when He walked the earth – and the simplest layman could confirm that for himself. Jesus started a movement that swept the world. He inspired workmen to give up their jobs and follow Him exclusively. He took a nation of people groaning under the oppression of both Roman and often Jewish authorities and filled them with new, joyful hope and determination. Whatever else He was, Jesus was powerfully charismatic.

When those depictions had Him do anything substantive other than just drone on, they portrayed Him as a somber, gloomy Gus type personality. And yet children loved Him – so much so that He had to rebuke His disciples from preventing children from coming to Him. Have you ever known children to flock to anyone who did not exude joy? Perhaps this ‘Jesus’ appealed to somber types who were ostentatious about their piety, but these depictions bore little resemblance to the historical Jesus of the Gospels.

I was disappointed when one of my favorite magazines, Crisis, recently published a similarly warped view of Christ by Leila Miller, an otherwise sound writer on the practical application of Catholic doctrine in our daily lives. Her article was a critique of the popular streaming series, The Chosen. Unfortunately, she is incorrect in many of her facts, faulty in logic, and treats her own interpretations of the Gospel as settled doctrine.

She starts by comparing the Christ of this series to the hippy, dippy, buddy “Christs” that ‘70s artists often imagined. Miller insists that this series only shows Christ as a man, with nothing of His Divine Nature. That proposition alone made me wonder how closely she watched the series. The series surely fleshes out Jesus’ human nature, but His Divine nature and power is ever present throughout. It made me think her real objection is that it shows Christ with a human nature at all. Christ is the hypostatic union of both a human and a Divine nature. To deny either one is heresy. This is not the ‘buddy Christ’ of the ‘70s. It is, though, the brother Christ of the Scriptures.

Miller posits that this series is a Protestant-Mormon presentation of a false Christ. The only Mormons involved work for Angel Studios, which played a major role in distributing the series, but neither funded it nor worked in its development. Sheesh…this is a big reach, like suggesting St. John Paul was actually Eastern Orthodox because he sometimes collaborated with them. It also does not address the reality that while Protestant Dallas Jenkins is the creative driver of the series, he consults with various Protestant denominations, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox to get it as right as possible without it degenerating into a rah-rah section for any particular Church or denomination.

Miller’s proposition here is so wildly false it is hard to believe it is the work of an otherwise solid researcher. Miller goes on to accuse the creators of admitting that it is a fictionalized Gospel with fictionalized characters. Of course it is – as every artistic, cinematic depiction of Christ has ever been. What she neglects to note is that the series creators stated upfront that they would stay true to the Gospels and that the fictional material would be only in the holes where continuity lies – and none would be contrary to the Gospels. As someone who has watched every episode of the first three seasons, the creators have lived their initial commitment well. This comment, both in what it says and what it does not say, can only be polemical.

Miller complains that Mary, the Mother of Christ, is not beautiful enough for her taste. When first viewing the series, I was struck that the actress who portrays Mary resembles a young Mother Teresa. But surely Miller knows that, contrary to our superficial understanding of beauty, our glorified bodies will mirror the beauty of our souls. The physical and spiritual will be entirely in harmony. What one’s physical appearance is on earth has little to do with what their actual beauty is.

Most astonishingly, Miller does not give a single doctrinal reason for her objections. She assumes that her interpretations are the only licit interpretations possible – and so are doctrinal. That is a straw man argument that even straw men would shrink from. She complains that Christ is depicted arguing with John the Baptist at one point – and Jesus would never have done that. For crying out loud, Jesus is often found arguing with His own apostles, so why would He not have argued with John? Yes, He is the final word but that did NOT prevent discussions/arguments from cropping up.

The only moment I had when I felt some real discomfort was when the show depicted Jesus wrestling with what He was going to say at the Sermon on the Mount. He is God. He knew what to say. And yet, it is possible that while He knew all things in His Divine nature, He chose, as a matter of discipline, to only take recourse to His human nature in composing it. That is not how I think it happened, but it is not outside the bounds of licit speculation.

It seems to me that Miller’s chief objection is that the artistic depiction of Christ in The Chosen does not mesh with her own imagining of a somber, martial Christ Pantocrator. That, surely, is an authentic aspect of Christ – an aspect that is ignored by too many moderns. But it does not capture the fullness of Christ, certainly not the Brother Christ that is equally an important aspect. I’ll take the whole Christ, not just the aspects of His personality that are amenable to me.

I have long said that each and every one of us is going to find that some things are not as we imagined they were in these difficult times. In the Book of Job, Job’s pious friends spent the whole book defending God against Job’s complaints – and condemning Job for maligning God. In the end God told those pious friends that, “you have not spoken rightly of Me as has My servant Job.” God was so angry He would not even accept their prayers for forgiveness, insisting, instead that they go to Job and ask Him to pray for them. What those pious friends were actually defending was not God, but their own interpretation of what God should be. Miller’s misconceived rant was not persuasive – and the elements in it that were downright wrong cause me to question her honesty. As I said, though, she has done a lot of good work elsewhere. I am going to presume this was just an overwrought tirade because, like Job’s pious friends, her lifelong presumptions are challenged by it.

As for me, along with The Passion of the Christ, I consider The Chosen as one of the two finest artistic depictions of Christ in my lifetime.