Should We Dramatize Jesus’s Life for Television?
00:00:00.000 | Good Monday morning, everyone.
00:00:05.600 | We have a big week on the podcast for you, and first up, our inbox is full of emails
00:00:09.880 | asking whether or not it's a good idea to dramatize Christ's life for television.
00:00:15.400 | A listener named Jim asks it this way.
00:00:18.320 | "Dear Pastor John, hello and thank you for this podcast.
00:00:20.720 | I'm wondering of the dangers and benefits of watching biblical historical fiction, particularly
00:00:26.120 | of television shows and movies about the life of Christ, of him acting and saying dramatized
00:00:30.720 | things beyond what we read in scripture."
00:00:34.200 | One anonymous man writes in to say, "Dear Pastor John, thank you for the podcast.
00:00:37.560 | It has been used by God to help me and my family here in Kazakhstan.
00:00:42.160 | I would like to know your thoughts on television shows and movies about the life of Christ.
00:00:46.040 | Are they helpful or unhelpful?
00:00:48.640 | What are your concerns?"
00:00:50.520 | And Sam, a church leader, wants to know, "The place of visuals, particularly screen dramatizations
00:00:54.640 | about the life of Christ.
00:00:56.480 | One recent show is 'beloved by many' in his church."
00:00:59.920 | And he says, "I feel it has enlivened my own walk with God and helped me imagine what
00:01:04.640 | Jesus' world could have been like.
00:01:07.520 | This has the effect of making the world of the Bible more accessible to me, but imagination
00:01:11.900 | can only take you so far.
00:01:13.580 | Can we enjoy shows like this personally, even include them in a teaching context without
00:01:17.400 | violating the second commandment?"
00:01:19.840 | And finally, another listener, Lisa, is less optimistic.
00:01:22.400 | She says television dramatizations of Christ's life, "don't sit well with me."
00:01:27.700 | As she considers Proverbs 30, verse 6, and Revelation 22, verse 18, she wonders if these
00:01:32.140 | dramas are adding to or altering Scripture, amounting to heresy.
00:01:37.200 | Pastor John, for these listeners, do you have any thoughts?
00:01:40.080 | There is no way that I can avoid this question because it touches on my life.
00:01:46.040 | Because for 25 years, and I still do it one way or the other, for 25 years, when I was
00:01:52.920 | a pastor at Bethlehem, every Christmas season, I created and read to the people in worship
00:02:00.560 | what we call Advent poems, one for each Sunday during Advent.
00:02:05.920 | The poems took about 10 minutes to read.
00:02:10.140 | They created a story built around a biblical character or biblical situation in which I
00:02:18.060 | invented persons, and I invented dialogue, and I invented circumstances that were not
00:02:25.940 | in the Bible but were intended to clarify and confirm and intensify realities that are
00:02:35.840 | in the Bible, that the Bible itself teaches.
00:02:39.500 | So the question is not abstract for me.
00:02:42.300 | The question is, was I doing something sinful?
00:02:45.820 | Was it wrong to create those poetic, imaginative expressions?
00:02:53.180 | So let me mention the safeguards that I put in place to avoid the dangers of distorting
00:03:00.360 | Scripture or replacing Scripture or diminishing the authority of Scripture, and then I'll
00:03:07.860 | give some positive reasons for why I think imaginative explanations and illustrations
00:03:16.100 | and representations of biblical truth are not only legitimate but are even encouraged
00:03:25.260 | by the Bible.
00:03:27.420 | So first, was I guilty of disobeying Proverbs 30 or 6, Revelation 22, 18, which says that
00:03:38.620 | we should not add to the words of God or to the prophecy of Scripture?
00:03:46.020 | No, I was not guilty of disobeying those Scriptures because those Scriptures forbid the presumption
00:03:56.140 | that one could add Scripture to Scripture or prophecy to prophecy.
00:04:03.440 | Those texts are not condemning explanation and elucidation and illustration and representation
00:04:12.200 | of Scripture, which make no claim in themselves to have any Scripture-level authority.
00:04:19.400 | Those texts are condemning every attempt to use words or images or representations that
00:04:27.640 | claim to be on a par with Scripture.
00:04:31.140 | In fact, I would say that the Roman Catholic Church is guilty of this error when it elevates
00:04:37.540 | the papal pronouncements ex cathedra to the level of infallible biblical authority.
00:04:44.820 | That's my first safeguard.
00:04:46.820 | Second, I made clear that the poems I was reading were not Scripture.
00:04:52.540 | I made it clear.
00:04:54.680 | They were not divinely inspired.
00:04:58.900 | They were not infallible.
00:05:01.780 | They were imaginative illustration and explanation and representation of truth that I saw in
00:05:11.780 | the biblical text.
00:05:14.000 | I made this distinction not only when reading poetry, but when preaching.
00:05:20.060 | My preaching is not Scripture.
00:05:22.100 | It is based on Scripture.
00:05:25.740 | It uses language that is not in Scripture.
00:05:29.820 | All preaching does.
00:05:30.940 | All teaching does.
00:05:32.420 | It derives any authority that it has from the degree that it faithfully represents the
00:05:39.580 | reality put forth in the Bible.
00:05:43.420 | So it is with imaginative poetry or drama, for that matter.
00:05:50.260 | Third, I promised never to create any dialogue or any character or any circumstance that
00:06:01.060 | could not have happened in view of what the Bible actually teaches.
00:06:06.380 | In other words, even though I created things that were not in the Bible, nothing I created
00:06:12.760 | contradicted what was in the Bible.
00:06:15.420 | Everything had to be possible and plausible in view of what was in the Bible.
00:06:21.620 | Nothing was allowed to call Scripture into question.
00:06:25.540 | Fourth, I made every effort to draw attention and affection to the same reality in my poems
00:06:35.600 | that I saw in the Scripture itself.
00:06:39.940 | And fifth, I never replaced expository preaching with imaginative poetry.
00:06:50.420 | In other words, I tried to make plain that God had ordained the expository preaching
00:06:56.960 | of his infallible Word as central to congregational life and as the main corporate means by which
00:07:08.260 | God protects his Word from distortion.
00:07:12.580 | Through every other form of representation, preaching stood.
00:07:19.980 | Preaching remained dominant and essential.
00:07:23.620 | And in my case, the sermon was never, not once in 33 years, intermingled with any kind
00:07:33.580 | of visual media.
00:07:35.940 | I think that's a bad practice in preaching and is usually owing to a loss of confidence
00:07:42.620 | in the preached Word to do its amazing work.
00:07:45.900 | Now, those are the safeguards that I put in place to keep from diminishing Scripture or
00:07:52.180 | distorting Scripture or replacing Scripture.
00:07:55.300 | But I think even more important is the fact that imaginative representations of biblical
00:08:03.060 | reality are warranted by Scripture itself.
00:08:09.400 | Of course, in biblical times, nobody had ever heard of movies or videos, and so nothing
00:08:17.140 | directly is said in the Bible about them.
00:08:21.780 | But short of that, pointers to imaginative representations and drama are everywhere in
00:08:32.180 | the Bible.
00:08:33.540 | First, the Bible itself uses imaginative language that creates pictures in our minds that are
00:08:43.660 | not the same as the reality being discussed, but which shed light on the reality by not
00:08:52.580 | being the reality itself.
00:08:55.340 | We call these metaphors or similes or word pictures or parables.
00:09:01.940 | For example, just listen to Jude 1, 12, and 13 describing the false teachers and the troublemakers
00:09:14.300 | in the church.
00:09:15.300 | Here it is.
00:09:17.820 | These are hidden reefs at your love feasts as they feast with you without fear, shepherds
00:09:26.100 | feeding themselves, waterless clouds swept along by winds, fruitless trees in autumn
00:09:35.500 | twice dead, uprooted, wild waves of the sea casting up the foam of their shame, wandering
00:09:43.780 | stars for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.
00:09:50.220 | That's amazing.
00:09:52.500 | He's talking about human beings, bad people who are ruining the church.
00:09:59.340 | What does he do?
00:10:00.740 | He creates pictures in our brains with words like "hidden reefs," "selfish shepherds,"
00:10:08.820 | "waterless clouds," "fruitless trees," "wild waves," "wandering stars."
00:10:17.100 | In other words, he tries to make plain one objective reality by comparing it to a very
00:10:25.540 | different reality.
00:10:28.180 | Jesus did this with parables, didn't he?
00:10:30.340 | The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, like leaven, like a treasure, like a merchant,
00:10:37.340 | like a net, like a master of a house, and on and on.
00:10:41.760 | Or consider the prophets like Zechariah.
00:10:45.040 | He sees a reality.
00:10:46.160 | He wants us to know the reality.
00:10:48.500 | How shall he help us see and savor this reality?
00:10:52.100 | He says, "I see a measuring line.
00:10:54.620 | I see a lampstand.
00:10:55.900 | I see a flying scroll.
00:10:58.460 | I see a woman in a basket."
00:11:02.140 | The Bible does this kind of thing hundreds and hundreds of times.
00:11:07.460 | It's the very nature of language to be different from the reality it points to.
00:11:15.380 | The word "love" is not the same as the reality of love.
00:11:20.700 | The word "God" is not the same as the reality of God.
00:11:24.860 | The word "salvation" is not the same as the reality of salvation.
00:11:31.200 | And once you realize that all language is pointing to reality, that the job of the preacher
00:11:39.820 | or the poet or the teacher or the parent is to help others see and savor reality, then
00:11:48.300 | you realize all the amazing and various potentials that language has.
00:11:56.500 | And then there's not just imaginative language, there is imaginative action in the Bible,
00:12:05.200 | acted-out dramas of biblical reality.
00:12:09.720 | Jeremiah was told to make yoke bars and walk around with this heavy yoke on his shoulders
00:12:18.240 | to dramatize the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar on the people.
00:12:22.260 | And Ezekiel was told by God to lie on his left side for 390 days to illustrate Israel's
00:12:30.320 | years of punishment.
00:12:32.480 | And then there's poor Isaiah.
00:12:35.640 | God said, "My servant Isaiah has walked naked and barefoot for three years as a sign and
00:12:43.720 | a portent against Egypt and Cush."
00:12:46.880 | It's Isaiah 20, verse 3.
00:12:49.800 | So my conclusion is that if we pause and ponder why the Bible itself employs so many imaginative
00:13:03.640 | means of explaining and illustrating and representing reality, we will see that the Bible itself
00:13:13.800 | offers us, one, examples of truth-clarifying, truth-intensifying drama and poetry, language,
00:13:25.480 | and two, encourages us to use language this way, and three, protects us against distorting
00:13:39.120 | or replacing or diminishing Scripture.
00:13:44.280 | Thank you for sharing those biblical dramatizations, Pastor John.
00:13:46.480 | And thank you to everyone who sent in some form of this question.
00:13:48.840 | It's really helpful to hear from you all.
00:13:51.040 | You can ask a question of your own, search our growing archive, or subscribe to the podcast,
00:13:54.440 | all at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:14:00.040 | Well when you pray, Jesus said, go into your room, shut the door, and pray to your Father
00:14:04.880 | who is in secret.
00:14:06.680 | That's Matthew 6, 6, so we should just pray alone, right?
00:14:10.480 | Wrong.
00:14:11.480 | We don't only pray in secret, we pray together.
00:14:13.880 | In fact, people are praying together all over the book of Acts, for example.
00:14:18.320 | So why do we pray together and not just alone?
00:14:21.200 | What's added when we pray together?
00:14:23.120 | And what's lost when we only pray by ourselves?
00:14:25.520 | It's an interesting question, and it's on the table on Wednesday.
00:14:29.240 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:14:30.240 | We'll see you then.
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