The Thursday After

I’m so thankful The Chosen has been produced. Its had a profound impact on me and I don’t understand why its not showing up in my conversations with people.

One way of reading scripture is to place yourself at the scene and imagine the smell, the noise, the emotion, the hue of the light. In our modern western writing styles, we expect the writer to do this for us. Ancient writing is of a different style and so modern readers have more work to do. The Chosen has really helped me with that imagined picture.

Example 1: I really had no sense of what it meant to be occupied by the Romans. While my father lived under occupation, the closest I’ve come is a campsite that was already occupied! I truly struggled to imagine. But the Chosen helps me understand.

Example 2: I never really put together how crazy it was for Jesus in his group of 12 to have both a Zealot and a tax collector. In season 3, this is still being unpacked, and its clear its only because Jesus is so compelling that Simon the Zealot and Matthew the tax collector can figure it out.

Example 3: The healings were not clinical. These were real people whose lives were profoundly affected by their illness and insanely affected by the healing. After 2000 years, it somehow began to feel normal.

Example 4: The whole Jesus vs Pharisee thing is way more intense than I understood. There’s power struggles, honest discovery, and it seems also some religious leaders doing what they think is their job.

I can go on and on. But watching has put me on the ground there with Jesus and confronted me with what I will do. For me its a profoundly emotional experience.

So am I weird, or why am I not hearing more about The Chosen? Here’s a few musings:

• “Is that in the Bible?”. Yup, great question. I’m pretty comfortable with The Chosen mostly because Dallas Jenkins (director & producer) has taken a very transparent approach which he explains video You have questions about the chosen (11 min). Others have gone through this same journey (for example mama bear apologetics).
• In my world, people I deeply love increasingly consider the bible a quaint irrelevant document. The Chosen shows a profound and relevant Jesus that we seemed not be be able to see any more.
• Couple those two points together, and Abraham Heschel seems relevant:

“Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion—its message becomes meaningless.”

Abraham Heschel

• “I’ve heard _______ “(you can fill in the blank yourself). Just search the web for what’s wrong with the Chosen. There’s no shortage. All the flame throwing, particularly by North American Evangelicals makes me very sad. I’ve spent time chasing some of it, but in the end concluded that I should spend my time in healthier endeavors. Pick the friends you allow to speak into your ears carefully.
• God’s people had an image in their head of a Messiah. Only a minority were flexible enough to see Jesus as the Messiah when he didn’t match their expectation. This goes round and round in my head … where do I have ideas in my head the don’t match the way God is working? Watching The Chosen keeps me curious.

In the end, The Chosen has driven me back to the bible and helped love the Jesus (and the people) I find there in a whole new way. For that I am very grateful.