Religious 'Cringe' Fest?

M.B. Mathews, "'The Chosen': I get it now"

When the blockbuster Christian TV series, "The Chosen" first came to streaming TV, I hated it.

As a pretty heavy-duty Reformed Presbyterian late-life convert to Christianity, the modern idioms, expressions, and gestures in the series almost made me gag.

I couldn't understand how some of my friends embraced it immediately. Somehow, listening actors who were playing Jesus' disciples say things like, "Where you guys going?" and "Wow, that's awesome!" after doing some fist bumps was too jarring for my sensibilities. I dropped the series like a hot potato midway into the first episode a few years back.

Then, a few weeks ago, I saw a two-hour Jordan Peterson interview of Dallas Jenkins, writer, producer, director of "The Chosen." (Three hours if you subscribe to Daily Wire Plus).

The good-looking, sharp Jenkins has a story of abject failure of a major movie project before he began writing "The Chosen." The failure was so great, it brought Jenkins to his knees, his wit's end, and to a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ. This time, Jenkins's ego was not involved. Jenkins is a deeply Christian Baptist family man who was at a spiritual rock bottom. Then something happened.

Peterson probed deeply at why Jenkins included modern jargon into the high-end, outstandingly produced series.

Jenkins was given the realization that if "The Chosen" were to follow the usual formulaic Christian movies, it would fail beyond the Christian community because the story is always the same: Someone is an angry, hostile, sick non-believer whose wife, girlfriend, sister, husband won't come to Christ. They try everything. Then they pray and a "miracle" happens and the person suddenly is a believer. The story is almost always the same. And eventually boring, even to many of us Christians who really want to see the Jesus story portrayed with some really relatable passion. Christian movies and TV shows need to be better, more interesting. This was Dallas Jenkins' realization.

In order to appeal beyond the circle of Christian believers to a wider unbelieving world, Jenkins knew he had no choice but to present "The Chosen" in modern language, with relatable characters using relatable language and expressions and reactions. After healing a crippled man's legs, Jesus makes a quiet joke about his leg. When the man gives him a blank stare, Jesus says, "Too soon?" Sorry, but that is funny once you accept "The Chosen" on its own terms.

It was important for me to understand why this series is so wildly popular while I was resenting it. What was I missing? Was I so entrenched in Pharisaic dogma that I had no room to break away and see the Messenger behind the Message?

But now I get it. "The Chosen" is Jenkins' way of carrying out the Great Commission to bring the Gospel's "good news" to everyone on the planet, knowing it can't be done the old way unless he wants another failure. Jenkins is making the actors and the language relatable by making the viewer embrace the characters in a modern language and culture without bastardizing the original message. Jenkins has managed to do this.

At first, it takes some spiritual relaxation to embrace the New Jesus, the New Apostles, the New biblical characters, but no violence is done to the original back story or characters. The underlying message is still there and is still obvious: Jesus is Messiah, Son of God, Son of Man, God incarnate. The only difference between the biblical version and Jenkins' masterpiece is that more people are going to be curious about the biblical Jesus by seeing the modern cultural Jesus, and that is what Jenkins aimed for and has clearly accomplished.

In the TV series, some events are out of order, some (non critical) characters are non-existent, one of the bald Roman praetors (Quintus) is hilariously campy, Matthew is portrayed as somewhat autistic, Jesus is often portrayed as smiling, laughing, and joking, some non-critical things are unbiblical. But what is happening here is a paradigm shift of the greatest story ever told from unrelatable to relatable – the whole reason for the biblical Jesus message. The time is now.

Jenkins has managed some production alchemy here that is good. The production values of this series are stellar. From sound, to music (a superb theme song, "Walk on the Water"), to sets, costumes, historical events, Torah, etc. Now I know why Jenkins (and the country) are happy about "The Chosen." This is a giant leap from my original opinion and I am happy to say I was wrong.

Kudos to Dallas Jenkins and to Jordan Peterson for opening a window for this viewer. I recommend new viewers roll with the Jenkins interview first, then the new presentation of the Jesus story in “The Chosen.”

Once you get into it, you may very well enjoy it.

On Building New Permission Structures...

... thru Surveillance, Normalization, and Examination

Normalization can be so Cringey!