In The Last Battle,
C.S. Lewis profoundly described the effectiveness of mixing truth with
deception: “And then [Jill] understood
the devilish cunning of the enemies’ plan.
By mixing a little truth with it they had made their lie far stronger." It is an unfortunate parallel, but one that
readily came to mind after seeing Christopher Spencer’s Son of God—a movie that kept the story juuuust close enough to the
biblical account to be misleading.
The movie started out promisingly enough with the prologue
from the Gospel of John. “In the
beginning was the Word...” Good
start. Then, just two sentences in, it
started to take some creative liberties.
“He was in the Garden with Adam and Eve…He was with Abraham…He was with
Moses…” Well, potentially problematic, but true. It caught me off guard, but given the fact
that Christ is in the whole Bible (both
New and Old Testaments) and given the constraints of a two-hour movie, I
actually thought this wasn’t the worst way to introduce the concept.[1] (This is one positive thing that can be said about
the film: it had no qualms about asserting Jesus’ divinity.) Unfortunately the modifications didn’t stop
there. Oh, they didn’t stop there.
The striking parables and questions Jesus asked in the
Gospels were turned into bald statements, essentially robbing them of their
power. Imperatives like, “Come follow
me” were turned into pleas from a needy Jesus begging Peter for an audience saying,
“Give me an hour and I will give you a whole new life.” One of the greatest and most well-known verses
in the whole Bible (John 3:16) was quoted, but truncated to leave out the line,
“that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” That’s a pretty important omission![2] Perhaps even more egregious was Jesus’
statement on the Great Commandment. Just
as a reminder, the greatest commandment according to the Bible is to love the Lord
with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your
strength; the second is like it: love
your neighbor as yourself. (Mark 12:29-31) According to Spencer’s Jesus, however, “The most important thing is that you
should love your neighbor as yourself.” That
sure sounds biblical, but it’s
not. By changing just a few words, it
actually teaches the opposite of what the Bible says, putting people before
God. Because it sounds close enough,
however, it can easily be overlooked.
In addition to paraphrases and misquotes, there were also a
ton of flat-out fabrications. This could
be understandable if they had been necessary for transition scenes, or if the
source material had a lack of dialogue from which to draw, but neither was the
case here. Whole scenes were constructed
around conversations never recorded in the Bible, often running directly
counter to the messages the Bible does present. Statements like, “He gives people a second
chance” and “I’m giving you the chance to change your life” ran rampant throughout
the film. The problem? That’s not the biblical reason for why Christ
came. Jesus did not come to give us a
second chance to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and have our best life
now. He came to save us—something we can never do ourselves no matter how many
chances we get. Furthermore, the
“changed life” of a Christian is a life of self-denial and persecution that
comes from being a follower of Jesus. (Luke 9:23) It is not just a way out of the dead-end job
of a first-century Palestinian fisherman.
This second-chance gospel tragically dominated the film, while real
Gospel was almost completely neglected.[3]
The film took poetic license not only with the dialogue, but
also with key events. In what I found to
be the most disturbing scene in the entire film—the Last Supper—Jesus essentially
forced Judas to betray him. (If you’ve
ever seen Saving Private Ryan, think
the slow chest-stabbing scene but instead of a Nazi with a knife, it’s Jesus committing
the act with a piece of bread.) The setting
and parts of the story came from the pages of Scripture, but the sickening
climax absolutely did not. Once again there
was just enough truth mixed in to muddy the waters and confuse those not
entirely familiar with the text, all while implanting a horribly repulsive
image of Jesus in our heads.
There were many other issues I had with the film, but a few
more worth briefly mentioning here. The
Pharisees’ plot to have Jesus arrested was changed and attributed to their
concern for his being a disturber of the peace, rather than a blasphemer who
claimed to be God. (The brutality of
their Roman overseers was played up throughout the film in order to highlight
this aspect.) The actual teachings of
Christ were few and far between, and the miracles had a magic trick-like
quality to them, especially the raising of Lazarus.[4]
There was also a strong Roman Catholic theme running throughout the film, liberally
adding non-biblical dialogue and events that unapologetically set up Peter as
the first pope, endorsed transubstantiation, and highlighted his mother
Mary. (I mention this not to offend my
friends of Roman persuasion, but to simply point out the fact that there was a
clear agenda presented in the film which is not found in the pages of
Scripture.)
All that said, there were a few very powerful moments in Son of God. These moments were not,
however, the bloody depiction of the cross or the visualizations of the
miracles of Jesus. Rather, the most
powerful moments were those very few in which the Bible was directly quoted
without alteration. The three minutes of
the Word of God plainly spoken did more to stir my heart than the other two
hours and fifteen minutes of mediocre CGI, Colgate Jesus, and “relevant” changes
to the biblical text. It’s almost like the Bible didn't need
dramatization in order to be powerful…
In the end, I can’t say I was really surprised. Hollywood did what Hollywood does—made a
lousy movie with a Jesus that would sell tickets. They changed his words, his appearance, and
his purpose, yet still we flock to the theater with the hope that “Maybe this
time they’ll get it less wrong.” The
cycle would not be so bad if it weren't for the fact that every time we do this
we put a false image of Christ in our heads and drink down a gallon of lies
mixed with only a few drops of biblical truth.
Though you might be savvy enough to pick up on the inconsistencies, what
about your children, your non-believing friends, and new believers? Is it worth the risk?
There’s only one place we can go that has all the
excitement, all the beauty, and most importantly, all the truth of the story of
Jesus without any of the added junk. It has the added benefit of being cheaper and more
interactive too! This weekend, instead
of heading to the theater, may I suggest spending a family night at home with a
big bowl of popcorn in front of your Bible? It
sounds cliché, but this is definitely one of those cases where the book is WAY
better than the movie.
[1] It
was, however, certainly not without its problems.
[2]
Instead, Jesus turned to Nicodemus and told him
to believe and have eternal life.
[3] Just in case you don't know, the Gospel says that if you trust in Christ (and Christ alone, not your own good deeds) YOU ARE FORGIVEN because of Jesus' finished work (not your own). FORGIVEN. PAID-IN-FULL. Past tense. Done. Finished. Email me. We'll talk.
[4] Minus
having a dead guy named Lazarus who gets raised, this depiction is almost
completely different from the biblical narrative.
