I’ve written about the Chosen before (see The Chosen). I started out liking the show but after season 3 I had problems with it, and now, I’ve had to watch season 4 as part of a Church thing (not because I wanted to).

And I think I now have a better idea of what I think about it than before, and I am more sure that season 3 was not just a fluke. Season 4 was already on shaky ground, but after the death of Raymah, and subsequent alterations they made to match that, it has completely derailed from scripture.

Even where the Word says that Jesus lost none of His followers. [See John 16 and 17:6-12 especially vs. 12.]

I think the Chosen has a real problem with certain parts of the Bible, and the Faith of Christianity and I’m going to detail why in 10 points.

So let’s do this thing:

1. Sometimes it’s more risky to show miracles then it is to show tragedy.

Actually, it’s always more risky.

It’s a strange truth about human beings, we find it easier to accept bad things happen, then good things.

The easiest way to prove this is to ask yourself how your expectations are effected by a positive or negative outcome of any situation.

When something ends badly, and the same situation repeats itself again, is your first thought to expect it to go wrong? Or do you clear the board and have no expectations?

And conversely, even if it goes well, do you still think it will go badly the third time? Or, at least, are you just as worried about it?

How many good experiences does it take to cancel out a negative one?

And how many negative experiences does it take to ruin something for you?

The problem is that many people treat God like this.

When I looked at the controversy around Season 4’s killing off of Raymah, (who was not a biblical character to begin with, so I guess they thought they could get away with it) the most common defense fans made of the decision was that it was a good risk to take in storytelling, and that it was good to depict that God does not always answer prayers.

Which is a rather presumptuous statement. How do we know that God does not always answer prayers? The answer may simply be one we did not understand.

It is true that we don’t always get what we want.

Therefore, according to the writers, it’s okay to change the Word of God, as long as it makes a point that is not found in scripture, but is a common teaching of the modern church.

The Chosen writers claim they are not changing the Word of God, that they are simply depicting the story.

What I find interesting about this claim is that it’s like they think as long as they are not writing the words into the physical Bible, they are not changing the Word of God.

Did they forget that the stories of Jesus were originally passed down through oral tradition, just like every other religion’s stories. The Gospels were not written for a few decades after Jesus died. (Probably they were written because many of the first Disciples had died and so there were less people who could tell eye witness accounts of it, and the writers of the Gospels realized they needed a record of it.)

But for the first 20-4o years, all we knew about Jesus was by word of mouth. And that was enough.

So it was crucial that they told it accurately.

And the writers of the Chosen also seem to ignore that most of Jesus’ teachings were in story form: Parables, and that changing the words Jesus used would change the parable’s meaning.

Not to mention how often both Jesus, and other prophets used visual teaching aids to make their point. Temples, rocks, trees, dust, etc.

So yeah, the Bible has always been passed down through oral and visual means, not just the written word, and if you change it in spoken or visual depiction, which a TV show would be, you are still changing the word of God.

Words are spoken before they are written aren’t they? If you change what God said in what you speak, performance or otherwise, you are changing his Word. Like a false prophet would not give accurate prophecies.

This is not to say nothing the chosen has done has ever not been good. They do show some things as they happened, and that is going to have power, no matter how mutilated the rest of the show is…

But that does not excuse it.

The thing is, even if the imitation has some power, the unfiltered word of God always has more power than a paraphrase. The real thing is always better. And this is true of all things.

You’ve seen copies of great art, or remakes of movies, even when they are good, do they ever hit you quite the same way the first one did? No…there’s a freshness in originality that moves us more than imitating it does, no matter how well we do it.

Knock off brands are never as good as name brand food, or clothing, or medicine, or anything.

Iconic things are iconic for a reason.

2. The Pride of Assuming we can make God’s point better than He can.

The disturbing thing about people’s justifying changing the Word of God because it’s more ‘realistic” is that it’s very arrogant to assume we just know what God thinks about things.

Tragedy is real, I’m not the type to ignore that.

But the whole story of the Bible is about how God will overcome all evil in the world, including the evil of loss.

So it was important that Jesus overcome all evilest he was faced with, in His time on Earth.

The only time Jesus ever failed was when it depended on people’s free will to accept him. Which healing and resurrection do not. That is a different matter.

But when it came stopping to the things that plague our world, Jesus never failed to do that. You won’t find one story incident of Jesus saying no to someone who asked for healing, or failing to resurrect anyone he wanted to.

In fact, it’s kind of surprising that Jesus never once said no…almost like it wasn’t about worthiness.

(BTW, Jesus raised at least 3 people from the dead. The Chosen and most other depictions of the Gospels leave out the widow’s son for some reason.)

What I find odious about what the the writers of the Chosen are doing is that they are using the Word of God, which God meant for His own purpose when He had it recorded and told tho the world, to instead teach a message of their own.

It really wouldn’t matter in the least if they are right or not about they way God sees loss. I think it’s not really as simple as they made it out to be.

People like to act as if there is only one reason anyone ever dies, but the Bible actually teaches clearly that there are many reasons someone can die. Sometimes it’s sin, sometimes it’s just their time, sometimes it’s evil on someone’s part, and sometimes it’s so that God can do a miracle (which is the most rare, but happens.)

Or some may give up their life willingly as an act of sacrifice.

God seems to see death as a complex issue, and since, to us, it certainly is complicated to experience loss, I’m glad the Bible does not give a generic answer to the problem. That would be kind of silly. And show it was not a true faith.

That said, the Chosen has no business trying to simplify it either into something so packaged and vague that you can’t ever say for sure if it’s legitimate or not.

The reason for not raising Raymah from the dead given is that “it’s not her time.”

But, God no where in the entire Bible, not just the Gospel, says that it’s not someone’s time to be resurrected. That reason never comes up, there’s not that many cases of resurrection in the Bible, but none of them contain that.

God also, to my knowledge (and I did look it up to be sure), never even says that there is a set time for people to be raised to life, aside from the final ressurrection, which is of a different kind.

So they are making this up as way to explain to people why they do not get what they want.

Because, you know, so many of us ask for resurrections on a regular basis…

Yeah, I’ve never asked for that.

Making the lesson about resurrection is suck a presumption because it’s a mystery even in the Bible why and how God does it.

Now the message bout not all prayer being answered (at least right away) could be addressed, but it should have been around something that the Bible addresses itself, not something that we have no authority to speak on. Because, we really don’t. We don’t know the rules. We shouldn’t presume to know God’s reasons for things when He does not outright give them to us.

Do you think I’m being a snob? But God says in His word: “My ways are Higher than your ways, and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts.” [Isaiah 55:9]

I’m showing the respect to God that I think He deserves.

And I don’t set up my own wisdom to be the authority on God’s ways. I only know that by His own Word, which He gave us to judge by, this does not line up.

And that should really have won the argument right there. That anyone can even still supports this is telling about how little anyone in our cultural respects the Bible anymore.

There are a few people who agree with me, but, they seem to be in the minority, even out of the Christian audience.

3. Our own lack of faith is being used to justify this writing decision.

Because we find it hard to believe in miracles we don’t see everyday, that makes it okay to say Jesus would not have always done them…because that sounds too good to be true.

Newsflash: Jesus is supposed to sound too good to be true. That’s how we know He was God in the flesh. If he wants limited the way a man is limited, we’d know he was just a prophet, which is what the Muslims believe.

But we believe He was God, so you cannot limit Him like a man.

Case in point: When Jesus cast a demon out of a boy his disciples couldn’t cast out, He was able to do it easily, He had more authority that His disciples who He said would need to have prayed more, and fasted, in some versions, to do it.

Almost like Jesus, the one who gave them authority, inherently has more authority than them. Who is greater? The one who bestows authority? Or the one it’s bestowed on?

Heck, even Disney’s Aladdin got this right. “The [genie] gave you your power, he can take it away.”

4. The Chosen plays it safe.

While it has no problem putting in things that out right contradict scripture, the Chosen also is omitting everything in the Gospel that would actually be difficult for the moderm audience.

As I said, it’s astonishingly easy for people to accept tragedy. As evidenced by how many people accepted Raymah’s death, and who are showing disgust with those of us who think it was wrong to write it in.

But strangely, the topics Jesus taught on that would really be a problem for our modern culture, they have been omitted from the entire show.

I kept expecting them to start including more stories and sermons, but they haven’t.

Like Jesus’ teaching on marriage, it would not be popular now, so they omitted it.

They omitted His teaching on any and all political issues, which He didn’t cover a lot, but did a few times.

They omitted His teaching on hell entirely, which does not surprise me. Most people do when they cover the Gospels.

The omitted His teaching on many other things, his parables of the talents, the poor stewards, the last days, the servants, the straight and narrow way to life…anything that might make anyone uncomfortable.

By contrast, teachings about forgiveness and acceptance of differences never really bother that many people. There are some who think it’s too lenient, but in our culture, for the most part, it’s approved of to preach acceptance and forgiveness.

And those are important, and undoubtedly the best parts of the Chosen, when they do focus on it. But they waste so much time on things that never happened, and they don’t cover many things that did.

Jesus did so, so much more than what they’ve shown.

And you may say: “Well they don’t have the budget to show all of those things.”

I’m aware they don’t. No one could…but it would take less budget to pay for people to just sit and talk, which most of the preaching would be, or to show parables, when they are very simple stories, than it would to pay for all these action scenes that were never real.

And to me, it’s disrespectful, it’s like saying Jesus didn’t do enough things worth talking about for them to cover, they have to add all this stuff He never did, to make it more interesting…because the Gospel was not interesting enough already.

And yes, it may not interest everyone…but if people are watching the show to learn about Jesus…then they need to learn about Jesus.

But the story is supposed to be about his followers!

The show says it’s about the lives of the people He called…but what were they learning?

Peter said Jesus had the words of life?

If we’re going to show the disciple’s lives, it’s imperative that we show what they were really hearing and experiencing, not making up stuff that never happened to them.

(FYI, they were never stoned either. The attempt was made on Jesus, alone, but, He escaped, and none of the disciples were injured at any point. That was all a flat out lie.)

And I don’t object to then the how just covers them having fun with each other, or having asides that do world building. There’s nothing wrong with that, but you can stay within the realm of possibility based on the Gospels, without committing heresy and blasphemy by portraying Jesus incorrectly.

And it is, whatever they say, incorrect. If you cut out all the hard things Jesus taught, like about divorce, and hell, and judgment…then you cut out part of Jesus…and that cuts out some of the power of His message and life.

And without the full power of it, what are we basing our lives on?

5. What this twisting of the story is really doing:

I hope that all this is not intentional on the writers’ part…

But unfortunately, I kind of think it is.

I don’t see how it couldn’t be. They are studying the Bible to write this show, they know what they are doing is not biblical. They know it’s changing the events of the Bible to suit a more ‘dramatic narrative.”

But they are also changing it so that it matches more their image of God.

Someone who is patient.

Someone who confronts people who are judgmental, the pharisees, but only for the reasons we are okay with. Like objecting to healing.

Never for the reason that we don’t like, like think they know God better than Jesus did…

Wow…something that might actually make us question the writing of the show.

I mean, clearly, the writers of the Chosen just understand Jesus better than us. They’re doing all this research…you know, with non-Christian scholars (look it up), to really understand what the founder of our faith was all about.

And they clearly leave out half of what He taught (if not more) because they just understand what we need to see about Jesus, more than we do.

And heck, they know most people no longer read the Bible or care what it says, so they’ll get away with it.

And that’s not exploiting the ignorance of the population, and the gullibility of new Christians who don’t know better yet, in order to make money…Since they run this thing on donations.

And of course, us all subscribing to it on our streaming platforms….

I mean, there’s no ulterior motive here at all.

(I notice they also left out Jesus’ teaching about money for the most part….though they do represent greed as a bad thing…I think. But more sympathetically than other sins.)

6. What this show represents is False Gospel.

And people being okay with it because they think it’s a better story show two things:

a. We have fallen very far off track in the Western church and our love of scripture. We don’t love it anymore, we’re embarrassed by it. Because all of it does not fit pop culture. So, changing it is for the best in our eyes.

b. People do not really understand the beauty and wisdom of the Gospels.

I’m a simple woman in one way only: If I say I believe the Bible, I mean I believe all of it. Even the parts I don’t like, the parts that confuse me, and the parts that seem hard.

Because, I accept that I am not all knowing. That God has always seemed difficult to understand to all poeple, in all times…but that is not unusual in life.

All the most real and beautiful things in life are hard to understand.

Love is.

Great art is.

Wisdom that really works for life is.

Life itself, with all its complex functions, is hard to understand.

So is the biological life we experience, and the natural world, they are hard to understand.

Even the things that are unpleasant have a purpose, and thousands of years ago we did know what many of them were, but we do now.

Why should God be any different? How could He be? He made the other things.

So yes, I don’t understand it all…but I don’t need to.

I accept God’s real because I have seen Him work in my life and the lives other, and I know He is real and true. so I can accept what I don’t know.

Not being able to do this, either on in a show,or in real life, seems to show a lack of faith to me.

Also a lack of sincerity.

If it it’s so hard to believe that Jesus was as powerful as He was, but that in our lives, we don’t get everything that we want…well…

Tough.

7: A response to these issues

See, our loss does not make it okay to scoff at someone else’s blessing. No more in the modern day than it did 2000+ years ago.

Just as Peter asked if John would die for his faith, as Jesus warned Peter he would, and Jesus said ” What is that to you? You follow me.”

See, John did not die for his faith, he was the only one who did not.

Peter picked the right one, I guess.

John was exiled,but, he died of old age.

Would it really have made Peter feel better if he knew John would die also?

Is someone else sharing our suffering necessary for us to bear it?

I think not. I think that’s selfish.

And Jesus told Peter He wouldn’t answer that.

And that the same for us, I think.

No, we do not all get the same miracles… We all get our own. However many we get.

And more than we like realize, since we’re not privy to all things that could be trying to harm us in our lives.

But, that does not mean we should presume to know why.

Jesus didn’t explain Himself.

I think that it did not need to be explained.

God knows the allotment of suffering we all will get.

Yeah, it’s disproportionate…but, what in life is ever in equal amounts to all people’?

Never in nature, only humans ever try to give everyone the same amount, and how often does that backfire as we realize that not everyone can have the same amount.

Two people can eat two different amounts of the same food.

Some people can’t even eat some foods.

We’re not all ready for the same thing. We’re not able to do the same things.

People who lose people in their lives now and feel the need to project that into the Gospel to feel validated…well, they are playing a dangerous game.

Both the writers, and often the fans.

I can’t stress this enough: THE GOSPEL IS NOT A VEHICLE FOR YOUR PERSONAL PROBLEMS AND YOUR ATTEMPTS TO RECONCILE THEM WITH YOUR CONCEPT OF GOD.

You learn from the Gospel, you do not use it to promote your own solutions to things that are not officially in the faith. Not as if they are doctrine, anyway.

Do we really need something so pathetic as needing to think Jesus let people die who were following him, in order to feel better about our suffering?

As if we’re the same as those people?

We’re not in the same time and place they were.

Some times just have more protection then others.

(Though, in my life, I’ve heard probably hundreds of stories by now of people being held, and even of being resurrected a few times and either I assume every single person was lying, even ones I know personally to be honest people, or, I assume that God still–shock–does miracles.)

I don’t see this as an issue.

And I don’t think they needed to waste our time with lies, just to push some half baked doctrine.

There are some passage in the Bible about prayers not being answered right away, but they are for more than one reason.

It can be lack of persistence. It can be the prayer is delayed by evil forces in the world (see Daniel). Or it can be God says no…but that’s rarely the reason given (to David and Paul are two of the only examples I can think of, for different reasons). Usually, it’s just not the right time.

8. Is everything in the show bad?

I don’t want to go that far. I might make the error of sinning in the opposite way if I do.

Being too judgmental and eager to quench any good the show may do, is not a good attitude to have.

But I must point out some things.

I rarely hear this taught on (only by John Bevere, actually), but not all good things are necessarily God.

At least, they may seem good, but that doesn’t mean they are good.

See, often poeple can start with a good message, or good deed, but do it only to do a worse evil.

Like how a child predator will use affirmation and rewards to lure a child in…but then do unspeakable;e things to them.

And if you think that’s painting it too strong, the word says that Jesus compared twisting His word and causing people to stumble, to misleading and sinning against children, and said it would be better to be drowned with a heavy stone, then to do something like that.

So if Jesus takes false teaching that seriously, then I think we probably should not be so flippant about how media is treating it.

Media like the Chosen takes some good things from the Bible, and dangles it in front of the Christian audience, who are starved of it, because the World tends to mock us and tear us down in entertainment.

So we’re desperate already.

And then they mix in their own twist on it, just when we’re not looking, and start threading it with things that really did happen or are really Biblical, we may not even notice.

The devil loves to use Scripture out of context, He tempted Jesus that way in the wilderness, so why not us?

[Another thing the Chosen constantly does is take the stories of Jesus out of the context he spoke them in, rendering the meaning utterly different. Just recently they did this with the story of the final judgement of the Sheep and the Goats. They made it seem like he was teaching this to explain the idea of the coming kingdom, but He told that story as a warning to His followers, not to correct misconceptions about him. He did address those at other times, but that’s not where this teaching fits into the Bible. It had nothing to do with Mary and the oil. It took place a few days before that on the mount of Olives, and there were no pharisees present, just him and His Disciples, which Matthew 24:3 makes a point of making clear. They ruined the moment of Mary’s anointing just for more e’em impact…but I thought it took away the emotional impact to mix it up with the politics.]

9. What is the Chosen even really about?

I challenge you all to look very carefully at what the message of the Chosen has really become.

Consistently, it is only a message from the most flimsy parts of Christianity (by which I mean, they are making it unbalanced), and hardly even Christianity anymore.

It does focus on the healing and kindness of Jesus to a few people, yes, but, it ignores the main thing He taught.

That His real purpose was to teach us how to follow God the best way, which has not been covered at all by the show.

Not how to pray, how to worship, how to fast, none of the things Jesus said about serving God.

Not even his speech about loving the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength”

None of His new teachings about being closer to the Father. Like “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.

But Jesus’ whole ministry was to reconcile us to the father.

His healings were part of that. Since physical and demonic ailments often are a hindrance to being close to God. (Also He was compassionate. It can be more than one thing.)

Since all that is gone, the show is very superficial.

It centers around what Jesus did for his disciple, and what He didn’t do…that’s it.

It’s not about God’s glory. It’s not about Jesus’ heart for His father, or His passion for His name.

They have no had the Temple Cleansing scene yet, I’ve heard that they will in season 5.

The issue is that, with the way they wrote this, they are going to make it look as if Jesus did these things just to anger the Pharisees. And the temple cleansing is Him adding to that.

But that was not why Jesus did it, at least, we’re given no hint that it was. It was Him showing zeal for Gods’ house, not to anger the Pharisees.

They take away huge parts of Jesus’ character, and by existence, His Disciples.

It’s not okay to ignore that they were real people.

Jesus is not just an idea you get to use to show whatever side of Him you are comfortable with.

He is His own person, and you should show Him in His own words and deeds.

Who can explain God better than Himself? And who can possibly hope to undrstand Him but Him?

So how can we think changing Jesus, in any way, is acceptable.

I don’t think they need to show ever sin thing He did, but what they do who’s should be what He did, and what He was like, not what we think He should be like.

A if we could ever know that, apreit form Him.

AS C. Lesis wrote, we shold pray to God “not to WAht I think Thou art, but what what Thou knowest Thyself to be.” IF w’re to be really honest about it.

10. My conclusion about the show

Boldly, I think no Christian should support what the Chosen is doing.

The good they have done, I question how good it really can be.

How can showing people a fake version of Jesus really help them?

Yes it may get them to read their bible…

But the thing is, that doesn’t help them, if in doing it, it has taught them to read it looking for the version of Jesus they’re seeing on the screen.

To read it with a bias, and filter out what they don’t like.

And if you think a show could not do that…then you don’t understand psychology. Because media does that all the time to us, and we’re lucky if we’re at least aware of it.

Movies try to make us feel most things are the way they show them, and it’s convincing.

Bad enough they corrupt sex, family, dreams, and art, but, you stay away from my Lord and Savior, you liars.

People will always try to twist Jesus to suit them.

But I must say, I’ve never seen anyone do it so openly, and gt so little flack for it from even Christians.

Yes, skeptics often praise watering down Jesus because they don’t like Him the way He is, but I expect that. Though it annoys me.

But those of us who are supposed to love Him, if we don’t really love Him, as He is…What are we even doing?

Why call yourself a Christian if you don’t like Christ?

No one seems interested in answering these questions who supports this show…

But I still have to keep asking them. I can’t afford to let myself be hypnotized by fancy special effects and decent acting to accept things that are not true.

And no one else should either. You have a responsibility to crack open your bible and find out if this show is right or not.

And not to just to look for it to confirm what you’re seeing, but really, really look.

And sorry to the writers , but any real perusal of the Gospel will show clearly that Jesus is not like what they are showing.

At times, yes, He may be something like it…but never as cut and dried as they want. Never as non-confrontational, or non-controversial.

It’s His teaching that still offends us to this day that gives us a real taste of what it was like to follow him.

And they should cover it, or they should shut up about it, because Jesus does not need you to show only part of who He is to the world. The world can do that itself.

It’s our business to show all of Jesus, as much as we can, since we are entrusted with the spirit and knowledge of Him to do this.

And throwing that away, frankly, makes me wonder if the chosen writers ever really had it to begin with.

But that’s not for me to say. I only wonder how much they can love God, if they would not even show God in the most simple way we have, His word is as simple as it gets, every other experience of God is harder to endure than that, so if you can’t even get that right…

Well, I don’t know. God knows their hearts. Maybe they are sincere.

But it looks bad.

And even if they were, it doesn’t make right, only makes them seem more sympethic.

That said, I urge you all to be careful about this show. Even approving of it partially is still sending a message to the world that we really, honest;y, don’t care that much about our Bible.

And they may like that…

That’s exatly why we shouldn’t be doing it.

Untit next time, stay Honest–Natasha.