Putting the baby to bed
I want to put this baby to bed—for once and for always for me personally. You do as you will. This is a Romans 14 moment, where I suggest to you as a reader that you make up your own mind before the Lord with an honest heart. You answer to Him and not to me. We help each other, but only in face-to-face relationship do we have any authority of the Lord with regard to each other. It's like being a parent—that is—we need to parent our own kids; God gave them to us, not to others. So, we parent already, but we don't think we can go next door and start parenting other people's kids. It's not right and we know it.
Facebook and other internet social media operates a lot like an arena of people thinking we have the right to parent others, telling them what to do without investing in their lives honestly, lovingly, and face-to-face. We like to believe our opinions trump everything and—by God—we're gonna tell everyone else what's on our mind, whether it helps them or not! And if they refuse to hear, then—by God—we're gonna verbally tongue-lash them with every bitter, foul, vitriolic word we can think of. We'll drive folks to anger and to such discouragement that they commit suicide or attack each other physically. We've collectively lost our minds and demons are laughing their heads off at us as we blindly destroy each other and ourselves. It's sickening.
That road to hell is paved with what again?
I am writing this article because I have now personally seen one too many of these "memes" on Facebook. People blathering on in raw emotional diatribes about how evil the series The Chosen is. And now Jesus Revolution has been added to the mix because of the guy playing Jesus.
I will do my best to not let my hot-headedness leak out into my words as I am writing this paper. Nevertheless—it's time to put my own two-cents into the hat and try to do so with some cool-headedness and thoughtfulness. Even some honesty would be nice on my own part. Again—you have your thoughts. Here are mine.
The "meme" ...
The thoughts presented in this "meme" are so incoherent it is difficult to know which one to point out first, but let's start with the obvious and most trivial one of all: The misspelling of the word Revolution as "resolution". It's like someone was so anger-blinded and in such a hurry to post this that they didn't bother spell-checking their own work. I've done it myself in times past. It's not pretty and it's not something to be proud of—that is—being emotionally wound up and in a hurry to spew my own bile at other people that I don't bother checking my own work. It's disgusting.
In the 1980s, I was a very young adult (16-26 years old), but I can still remember the apoplectic emotional hand-wringing that went on about the Satanists over at Proctor & Gamble. The claim was that P&G had put a demonic logo on a tube of toothpaste! You would have thought that the antichrist had appeared and the false prophet was going turn people using Crest toothpaste with that symbol on it into Satan-worshiping, going-to-hell, apostates. It was mind-numbingly stupid. Here's the offending logo:
The controversy blew up so quickly that today we'd call it viral. We didn't even know what that term meant back then, but it forced P&G to remove the logo, reinvent it, and then drive on. I wonder how much toothpaste was returned to the factories to be squirted out and then repackaged in new tubes. It's just ridiculous. But what is even more ridiculous? It was "Christians" leading the charge, like a deranged emotional pack of hounds running down a fox or rabbit. And for what? Really—what? Think about it.
Meanwhile—back at the meme ...
I will skip the tripe at the top of the meme—the whole "Free Masons" nonsense and go to the bottom: MAN'S PERVERTED INTERPRETATIONS OF THE GOSPEL. Let us begin here.
My hope is that you will see right off the top that this is an assertion in search of evidence to back it up. The meme-maker wants you to believe what he says without any evidence for it. One poster of this meme wanted to link Galatians 1:8-9 as the scriptural backgrounder for the meme:
But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.
Well now—Paul wrote it twice, so this must be bad, right? It is! For what Paul is saying, it is bad, which is why he doubles-down on the matter using the same phrases twice. But does this mean that the meme-maker is right in his assertion and that the person posting the meme and linking in Paul's warning is presenting you with a coherent, accurate, thoughtful, reasoned, and truthful warning? Let's consider that.
Man's interpretation of ...
There is a minority group of Christians who identify as King James Only. What does that mean? It means—from their point of view, not only is the Word of God the only basis for life and living in Christ, but the King James AV1611 is the only version anointed by God, providentially given by God, and the only version to have His authority living within its paper and ink. Some of these folks will go so far as to tell you that you are anathema for reading any other book whatsoever. For example: If you're reading this, then by their estimation—you're going to hell! Heathen!
The extreme position of this makes sense to them in their mental and emotional world. Does the above mean that they are going to hell? Not Christians? Not saved (however you define that in your theology)? Of course not. Nevertheless—let's back that train up a little and put the average Christian in the United States in our crosshairs and see what we can see.
Most of us in the US are English speakers. There are others, of course: Spanish being a major one, but not the only other choice. The vast majority of us depend on translators to take scripture in original texts of Hebrew, Greek, and Aramiac and translate that into English or whatever our native tongue (language) is. Now—let's have a think, shall we?
What is the process of translating Hebrew, Greek, or Aramaic into perhaps English? What does that process look like? Does God come down from heaven, take over the translator, putting him in an open-eyed trance and then English words start pouring through his pen or keyboard? Does he come back to himself at the end of the trance and say, "Oh, lookie here ... wow ... that's really neat! I have a God-inspired, God-breathed translation because the Holy Spirit took control of me and robotically moved my fingers to create that new translation!"? Is that what happens? We know this is a ridiculous notion.
As of this writing, there are about 450 English translations. On top of that, there are about 704 translations into languages other than English. The New Testament alone has been translated into more than 1,551 languages. This doesn't include fragments used for any number of purposes beyond creating bibles. All together, we may have more than 2,000 translations in various languages floating around the world. From here, we need to start asking questions.
- - Do all the translations theologically agree with each other? Why or why not?
- - Are all or any of these translations God-breathed? How do you know? Upon what do you base your conclusion or opinion?
- - Do any of these translations contain translation, copy, or other errors in handling of the text?
- - Is it your job in life to be the Bible Police? How will you enforce whatever you think is right? Does God work less through one translation or another? How so? In what way?
I am hoping that my point is starting to become clear: The more we look and the more we ask, the less sure we become. We are overwhelmed by a mountain of information to sort through. So—let's put a fine point on the pencil, shall we?
Every translation from one language to another bears the imprint and filter of the theology, beliefs, worldview, and opinions of the translator. There are no exceptions. The English bible that you read or even hold in your hands is the product of another man's mind. You don't know that man. You don't know his life and times. You have no clue about his theology and worldview and you don't know how that has leaked into, shaped, and otherwise defined his word choices, phrasing, and assembly of what you hold in your hands. You don't know. You simply don't know. Stop pretending like you do.
The video film series entitled The Chosen and the movie called Jesus Revolution are simply another stab at interpreting, presenting, and telling of the bible story. To date—I have yet to encounter a single person who can point out any portion of The Chosen that is out of sync with the scripture as found in the Gospels. Yes—there are some literary and story-telling liberties that have been taken with the story-telling flow to help tell the story. Therefore, I am left with a challenge to you:
POINT OUT THE FLAWS OF "ANOTHER GOSPEL".
Cecil B. DeMille
I was literally raised watching the 10 Commandments. Even at the time of its making there were those who attacked the movie on one side (calling it demon inspired) and others who sang its praise as the best thing ever done. So, here we are: sixty some years later on. Which one of us is posting memes emotionally screeching about how the 10 Commandments movie is leading people into a devils fiery end? Anyone? Can you spot the memes? If you can, are they any less ridiculous than the one at the top of this article?
Tearing down the 10 Commandments and the errors of it is so simple and easy to do. Do you think you can do the same with The Chosen? How about the movie, Jesus Revolution? If you can, please share with the class your prognostications for the Chicken Little Sky is Falling Doom and Gloom coming from it? I don't see you making any movies or shows that are better? I don't see you crowd-funding your way to gospel shows that are better? Are you? Or are you just a keyboard warrior on the hunt for the next thing to gripe about and emotionally stir the mud in your brothers eye?
Breaking it all down
Even a little thoughtful research and honest thinking makes me back way up from the weeds and look at the picture again. It prods me into wanting to sit with the thing and really understand. More importantly, it begs me to ask: What's going on here? What's the emotion about? Who is pulling those strings? Who is starting the memes and fanning them through Facebook? Is there demon in there trying to stop people from doing something? What something is the demon afraid of?
Personally, I am not asking anyone to put on horse-blinders and just accept anything that comes along. On the contrary: I am of a mind to take off the horse-blinders of emotionally triggered social media memes and start asking serious questions. More than that—I'd like to see Christians start becoming dedicated disciples who actually study the word of God with an honest mind and heart. Doing so includes deeply questioning what we've been taught and have accepted (literally) as "gospel truth". Do you actually believe that when you stand before the Lord that He's going to listen to: "My Pastor told me this was true!" and you get to escape unchallenged? Yeah—you pastors, teachers, and preachers out there will be held to account for what you preached and taught. That's true. But those who listen to you have their own accounting to do. As do I!
The Spirit of Christ is in each disciple. Our loyalty is to Him. Our love to Him and also to each other in sober honest hard work of sorting out this story of what God is doing and has done. I am not about to put my responsibility to the Lord in your hands and neither ought you to put yours in mine. We can fellowship. We can gather. We can talk, discuss, work, labor, help, love, serve, support, encourage, and all sorts of good things. Yet—at the end of the matter, Jesus is our personal Lord and King. I choose to treat Him as such in my life and encourage you to do whatever is in your heart before Him.
I am done with bashing on The Chosen and Jesus Revolution as though the sky is falling because of them. I see help. I see good things. I see the Lord's hand at work to the saving and rescuing of souls from the adversaries that attack us from the darkness of the unseen realms. That's what I choose. That's what I see. I leave it to you to stand before the Lord on your own two feet. I will help where I can and as the Lord directs.