from January 13, 2023
Have you ever known anyone who couldn’t keep “watch” and “warning” straight? They were never sure when to run to the closet or when to just be prepared. “Watch,” to them, means something closer to “watch out, there’s a tornado coming” than “just keep an eye and ear to the news because conditions are favorable for tornados.”
Well, I’d classify this as a watch and not a warning – be wary, but you don’t have to hide in the hall closet yet.
Mel Gibson, Francine Rivers, and whoever is leading the way on The Chosen are among the many who have taken creative license when it comes to writing stories or movies about the backstories of events and people in the Bible. We understand creative license – it gives the writer freedom to imagine, to suppose possibilities, to fabricate where facts or reports are lacking.
And, I suppose, it gives us things to think about. This practice might even make the events and people seem more real to us because we get to consider, even if only for a moment, what might have been.
However, there are dangers to this creative license when it comes to adding to the Bible. For example, there’s a warning at the end of Revelation 22 not to add to or take away from the Bible. Oh, I realize that Mel Gibson doesn’t think of himself as adding to the Bible. In fact, I’m guessing he’d vehemently deny such a charge. But if our engaging with these works causes us to reimagine the people or events according to the creative license taken by these authors, then we might be in danger of adding to Scripture.
There are, of course, at least with Gibson’s movie and The Chosen, second commandment issues at stake, but that’s another article for another day.
Perhaps better, let me remind you of a favorite verse – Deuteronomy 29:29. What comfort to know that the secret things belong to the Lord! But the “secret things” are the very curiosities we seek to satisfy by reading modern works that take creative liberties to invent a background that may or may not be true but that certainly God has, in his perfect infinite wisdom, chosen not to reveal to us. In other words, if we let Francine Rivers inform our understanding of Hosea (which, by the way, she misses by a mile), then we are suggesting that what God revealed (see the rest of Deuteronomy 29:29) is somehow inadequate or insufficient.
Or, as in the case of Redeeming Love, the focus is on an aspect of the story that is merely an aspect of a larger story and not the focus of Hosea. Rivers has Michael Hosea setting his desires on Angel before even knowing who she is. That’s not at all how the prophet Hosea operated. And the two only diverge more from there.
I think this is what I dislike about these works – they lead us to believe that what God actually told us wasn’t sufficient, that we need more, that it would be better for us if we made up a backstory or filled in the gaps with possibilities. The creative license required to make the books and movies interesting simultaneously puts us in danger of diminishing what God has chosen to reveal.
We have to make sure that Scripture drives our understanding of and confidence in these modern works and not the other way around. They should not be determining our view of the Bible. God’s revelation is sufficient for our salvation, for our spiritual growth, for equipping us for service in His Kingdom and nothing that shows up on the New York Times bestseller list or that Hollywood can produce can add to what the Creator of heaven and earth has said in His Word.
The next time you want to read a fiction work that purports to be about the Bible or to illustrate events from Scripture, be on your guard and watch how these works influence your understanding of God’s revelation.