What's Wrong with Movies about Jesus?

Now, Contending for the Faith. In this regular feature, Dave and Tom respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call. Here’s this week’s question: “Dear Dave and T.A., I’m reading T.A.’s book Showtime for the Sheep: The Church and The Passion of the Christ. It’s a good book, but I’m not sure about one thing. He more than implies that visual representations of biblical stories are contrary to what the Bible teaches. I even get the idea from the book that such attempts are forms of idolatry. I’m not sure I agree. Given that we are in a highly visual society, doesn’t it make sense to communicate the gospel to our culture in the medium that it prefers?”

Dave: Tom, that’s your book, so, you take care of that!

Tom: Well, Dave, you wrote an endorsement, so I expect a little…

Dave: Oh, my goodness…

Tom: (laughing)

Dave: Okay.

Tom: Well, there is a problem. Dave, as you know, and maybe some of our listeners—visual communication—that’s my background, so I grew up not only watching things, but my education is in film, television, and so on—so, I understand the medium fairly well, but there are a lot of things about the medium that I like and that I think can be used. But now you have to look at the Word of God. Is this the medium that can be used—visual medium—to present God’s Word, God’s truth? And I think the Bible is very clear. It’s not. And we’re going to run into trouble as we move more into the visual media.

Now, why would I say that? Well, because one thing I know about the visual media is that it’s incredibly, terribly—I won’t say absolutely—but for the most part, it is subjective. Anytime you make a choice about how you’re going to present something visually, now, if this isn’t the Spirit of God, this isn’t God’s Word, which will not return void, which “heaven and earth will pass away,” but God’s Word will not, “man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God”—you can’t do that in a visual presentation. It just can’t happen.

Dave: Well, Tom, let’s give some examples. See, there are a number of people who teach this. For example, if you want to understand what Jesus was saying—for example, when He borrowed Peter’s boat, and they pushed out a little ways, and He sat in it and talked to the people on the shore.

“What you’ve got to do, you’ve got to put yourself right in the picture. You’ve got to see it as it happened.”

Well, wait! You weren’t there. How do you see it as it happened? In fact, the Bible does not give us the rich descriptive language of a novel so that we can recreate this scene in our minds. It stays away from that because it’s interested in truth. You could have been there that day. You could have seen Jesus with your physical eyes. You could have heard everything He said with your physical ears—and missed it all! So now we’re being led down the delusionary path. “If we could just see it…if we could just get a picture of it!” Well, you have no way, number 1, of getting a picture of it because the Bible doesn’t give you any basis for that.

Tom: Right. So whoever’s presenting this has to make it up. It comes out of their imagination, it comes out of whatever they can draw upon.

Dave: Exactly. So now you’re making something up and you think that’s going to help to get the truth? No, the truth is in the words. “The word that I have spoken will judge you in that day.” We are born again by the Word of God.

So that’s one problem. You’re not going to help yourself by trying to visualize the scene. You are going to be led astray by your imagination. And the Bible has nothing good to say about imagination.

Okay, number 2: Visualizing Jesus—and, of course, this is what Richard Foster, for example, said in his book Celebration of Discipline. Or this is what Calvin Miller said in his book The Table of Inwardness. Calvin Miller says, “Oh, I…I visualize Jesus, and I just enjoy his auburn hair” and so forth. “What? You say his hair is black? Okay. Have it your way. What does it matter?” you know. “Visualize your Jesus as you see him.”

What? Then what’s the point of visualizing a Jesus who isn’t Jesus? How is this going to help you?

So, Tom, they’re being led astray. But the worst thing is that this is, as you said, idolatry. You are not to make a picture of God—not even in your mind. Every picture is first of all conceived in the mind. God is a Spirit. You don’t have a picture of Him, and you don’t have a picture of Jesus because Jesus is God. Now we’ve got someone trying to pretend that He’s God—we’ve got very serious problems.

Tom: Mm-hmm. Dave, as we’ve studied visualization—occultic visualization—this is something that, on the one hand it could be occultic. On the other hand, there are some forms of work that you can’t perform without being able to visualize to some degree—the arts, certainly, architecture, some engineers…you know, you have to have an idea in your mind…

Dave: Of course.

Tom: …if you’re going to even lay out the blueprints. So we’re not condemning visualization per se, but my point here is that there are some people that can’t visualize. They’re just not able to visualize. You say “an ice cream cone,” you know, I can see it. But other people can’t. It’s just not an ability that they have. What’s my point? Dave, so for those who can’t visualize Jesus, okay?, Mel Gibson, or other films, have given them something, an image, to connect to; to relate to. This is really the same problem of visualization.

Dave: Yeah, it’s a false image. But, Tom, let’s take it a little deeper. Remember the first book—I think there were ten books written against Seduction of Christianity, and I think the first one took us to task for what we said about visualization. They said, “Oh, no, you can’t think without pictures.” You just said, you say “cow,” you see a cow, and so forth. But wait a minute. That’s not true. What do you see when I say, “what do you see?” What do you see when I say “truth”? “Justice”? “Holiness”? See, what they are doing is they are robbing man of the ethical and moral content of language. Language says something, and it says something that pictures cannot say. You cannot have a picture of truth. You cannot have a picture of God. So, the Word of God is written in words. Now, we’re getting away from words and we’re saying, “Oh, we’ll improve upon the Word of God with pictures.” No, you’re going in the wrong direction. You’re going in the direction of error and you will be led astray.

And it’s a tragedy, Tom! We’re not just hard-nosed, narrow-minded, dogmatic fundamentalists. We’re trying to be rational and we’re trying to be biblical.