Season Five

[Dr. Shane]

Season Five is in theaters now.

Wow!

I will wait to start commenting on the episodes until it is released in the app.

But for those that are able to see it in the theater.

Wow!

[Dr. Shane]

Soon, I start posting comments on each episode.  Season 5 is just becoming available free on The Chosen app so I have been waiting.  Below are comments the director, Dallas Jenkins, made on Facebook.  This is good for thought and discussion.

Dallas Jenkins: (Spoiler alert) My thoughts on the Season 5 finale, particularly what happened in the Garden of Gethsemane...

You can also get some in-depth perspective in the Aftershow.

We wrote and view that whole Garden sequence through the lens of two truths:

 

1. Jesus is a human being who, like other human beings, would possibly have "end of life visions." This is a relatively common occurrence. So it's plausible for Jesus, as he is on his way to death, to experience something like this.

2. Jesus is God, Jesus is divine, and God exists in a different economy of time. A day is like 1,000 years to him and vice versa. Past, present, and future are all interchangeable with God.

So there are moments when Heaven meets earth, when the divine interacts with the human, when the supernatural connects with the natural. And I believe those moments happened often, perhaps nonstop, with Jesus.

 

So as Jesus is in deep distress as a human as we know he was in the garden, literally pleading with his father for relief and admonishing the disciples for not staying awake as he suffers; sweating so hard it was similar to drops of blood, experiencing "sorrow to the point of death"...it is also a compelling and plausible thought that, in his divinity, he is experiencing or at least thinking about moments in history related to his experience.

Moments such as a father of the faith almost sacrificing his own son... or the prophet Ezekiel communicating with God about the possibility of dry bones coming to life... or Jesus seeing Peter, James, and John as innocent children ("faith like a child" comes to mind, no?) when they weren't acting like mature believers... or Jesus' earthly father providing comfort in the midst of Jesus begging his Heavenly Father for comfort. Were those moments literally happening in the Garden in our show? Well no, not in the earthly plane--no one else would have seen them, obviously.

 

But in the heavenly plane...the eternal perspective...the divine? Jesus had been present in the past with Ezekiel, Abraham, Joseph, and the childhoods of Peter/James/John. So he was "present" with them here.

Yes...in our portrayal, Jesus was experiencing the fear, pain, and suffering of the past, present, and future. AND he was experiencing the hope and divine promise of the past, present, and future. All at once.

Is that biblical? Well, the Garden of Gethsemane narrative in scripture is actually quite short and only gives us a few hints of what Jesus was going through.

 

But it was clearly a lot, clearly enough to cause him to behave in a way we'd rarely, if ever, seen previously.

And I would fiercely contend that our Episode 8 portrayal is not only not a contradiction of the character of Jesus or the gospel accounts, but in fact a FULL capture of the character of Jesus and the gospel accounts.

I don't do the show just to be a reenactment of Bible verses. Anyone can do that, and many have. We glean very little extra from doing that, other than simply experiencing Bible verses in a different way than reading them, like we do when we sing a Bible verse as a song or hear it read to us. And there's nothing wrong with that. The Bible was perfect and beautiful and complete before The Chosen came along, and it still is.

 

But when we write songs, books, or TV shows inspired by the Bible, hopefully we can wrestle with and explore the mysteries and questions and beautiful complications the Bible introduces. Hopefully we, along with the viewer, can go beyond just a reading or re-enactment and discover a profound beauty and depth that Art can contribute to. Never as a replacement for the text, but as a supplement to or outpouring from it.

 

My love of and understanding of Scripture inspires The Chosen, and The Chosen then (hopefully) inspires further love of and understanding of Scripture.