Sometimes if I’m on my own I’ll grab a frozen dinner from the grocery store. If I’m in the right mood those Hungry Man boxes always look good enough for Thanksgiving dinner. While the meals aren’t actually bad, they’re by no means Thanksgiving-ready. A frozen meal is never going to replace a home-cooked meal. (Hold that thought.)
There’s been a lot of buzz about History’s new series The Bible, especially after the first episode earned huge ratings. As The Bible has begun to unfold, I’ve found myself intrigued by some credible versions of ancient stories. I’ve always wondered just how the conquest of Jericho really played out, and the frantic pursuits through the narrow alleys of that little town, as envisioned here, gave me greater respect for the courage of those spies. What’s more, the actors actually seemed grimy and sweaty in the desert, their hair looking like it hadn’t seen shampoo in a lifetime. This goes way beyond what our Sunday school flannel-graphs ever tried to do.
Nice job.
But as I turned off my TV I found myself strangely indifferent to what I’d just seen, not even sure whether I wanted to watch the next episode. This struck me as a bit curious, given that I’ve dedicated my career to telling the story of the Bible. I can’t finish an episode of White Collar without itching to see the next one, so why my underwhelming response to the Greatest Story Ever Told?
It then struck me that the first episodes seemed to be missing something: a main character. I hadn’t seen much of God. God’s part had clearly been written in. The story opened with His act of creation, soon followed by an impressive CGI flood by His design. I saw a steady stream of supporting characters responding to the points where His lines should have been, but I didn’t sense much chemistry between the leading actors. Consider David, who manages the Bathsheba consequences without appearing to break a sweat. My relationship with God has certainly been much more run-of-the-mill than David’s, yet my ordinary prayers involve more drama than what I’ve seen in The Bible. Even Bruce Almighty had a couple good dust-ups between Bruce and Morgan Freeman’s God.
I would love for The Bible to help me imagine what it was like for Joshua to feel so blind-sided over his assignment that God had to repeatedly urge him not to be terrified. Or what it was really like for Samson to realize that his skirt-chasing had just ruined Israel’s hope for deliverance. Or what was really behind the “my-God-why-have-you-forsaken-me?” psalms of David during those years stuck in the cave. I’d love to have The Bible help me picture what it would be like to really get into it with the Almighty.
But for that to happen God would have to provide more than just a few voice-overs. The God we have in this Bible seems pretty impersonal, kind of like the Force in Star Wars. Granted, we’re still in the Old Testament and God is still shrouded behind that temple curtain. We’ll see what happens when the Word actually becomes flesh and makes His dwelling among the other characters.
Maybe a lot of the problem is the venue. The History channel was created for random events and stories. Scripture, however, doesn’t simply offer random stories. It offers one big Story. It tells of a perfect world ruined by foolish human choices. It tells of God’s tenacious love through the ages as He reclaims that which was lost, at the cost of His own life. It’s a story that involves the Creation-rattling clash between the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light. And it’s a story that points towards a happy-ever-after when the good King banishes the enemy forever and together we enjoy a feast of Biblical proportions. Maybe History would inevitably end up reducing that one great Story into a series of vignettes, inevitably masking the Main Character behind all the special effects.
All I know is that as I set my remote down on the sofa I felt a strange sense of almost. As if I’d almost experienced something really powerful. Like a frozen dinner that looked really satisfying, but could never provide more than cafeteria fare.
Leave a comment
A login account is required to leave a comment
Alternate Login
Use your social media account to login.
Login with your ReFrame account
Comments (7)
As I think about this, it strikes me that the relationship between the Biblical characters and God is much more intimate than the relationship between (say) Moses and Joshua. And it's one that involves us in an intimate way, too, because we know at least one person in the God relationship very well ourselves. Because of that, it's a particularly difficult one to tell. Think about how much harder it would be to write a story about a favorite uncle and share that story with your family, as opposed to sharing it with strangers who didn't know your uncle. Your grandma, kid sister, and other family members will all know your uncle and expect to see something of your uncle in that story, but the uncle they expect to see reflected won't actually be the same person. Throw into that mix the problem that lots of people have relationships of varying depths with God, much more so than with a human. It would be very hard to tell a story to the audience size you need for mass entertainment that got into that relationship and did it in a way I think we'd be satisfied with. Too many people expect too many different things of God, so having him as anything more than a voiceover, making him into a true, dynamic character that would resonate with everyone watching it, would be very hard to do and very upsetting if done badly.
(As a fanfic writer I have something of a relationship with the fictional characters I write. And I run into a similar problem when I look at how other fanfic authors just get "my" Faramir or Celeborn or Frodo wrong, or *gasp* how Peter Jackson completely mutilates the character. And obviously that's nothing compared to the relationship I have with God.)
That doesn't answer the problem you raise, which I think is a genuine one. But I think it also points to how utterly personal the kind of scenes you long for are, and how they have to play out at a personal level. Perhaps this is an area where we need to be writing the script for our own personal vision of those moments?
I've resisted watching, however, for the same reason I no longer want to watch the Harry Potter movies: I read the Harry Potter books before the movies came out. But now that I've seen the movies, I've gone back to the books and realized that my experience with them is not nearly so rich as it was. Events the movies left out now seem strange and disjointed when I see them in print. My formerly vivid imagination of the Hogwarts world has now been replaced with images of Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson. I honestly can't even remember how I pictured Dumbledore or Hagrid before Chris Columbus and David Yates (re)painted the picture for me. And my worry is that the same will happen with the Bible, if I let it.
Now, I'm not saying that watching this documentary is bad, or that I'm more of a purist than you for not watching, or any of that nonsense. What I am saying, though, is that we need to be careful who we allow to interpret scripture for us. The Italians have a saying: "the translator is a traitor." It sounds a lot cooler in Italian (case in point?), but the principle still holds in English: you always rob a text of something when you translate it--whether that translation is from ancient Hebrew to modern English or from the printed page to the silver screen.
Leaving God out seems like a rather glaring (intentional) omission--one that the real Bible refuses to make. So maybe this is just one of those cases where not all publicity is good publicity. Or maybe it's just another case where we resign ourselves to the reality that the movie is never as good as the Book.
Your frozen TV dinner may be a starving man's feast.
I would remind you not to be spoiled with your good fortune, and appreciate that many are starving for the word of God.
I see this series is an invitation to sit at the table with God, and to feed the soul, and inspire a desire for more.
Somehow, you missed these points, and instead complain that the food is not good enough for your already fattened heart. Is this how you live?
You really summed up some of my thinking well. I am really enjoying the retelling, but something seems to be missing and I have my trusty marked up version of the real Bible close by while I am watching.
My heart really wants this to impact our culture with the power of God as demonstrated in the bible; instead it keeps feeling like another Hollywood production.
Leave a Comment »