Is The Chosen Series a Holy Nope??

Is The Chosen a holy nope? I ask the holy nope followers, the holy nope-ers, if the hit TV series The Chosen is worthy of a nope. Now I got the full spectrum of responses that you would expect when asking that question.

It's a bit of a controversial topic, so I want to offer my thoughts. For me, The Chosen is a holy nope. Let me explain. I'm going to be disregarding all of the questionable things associated with the show, cast, and director.

There's a lot of stuff out there that seems a bit suspect. So I'm going to focus on this point. It is a holy nope because The Chosen is a violation of the Second Commandment. Exodus 24 and 5 says,. One may respond in protest to this and say, I'm not worshipping the image of Jesus that is in The Chosen.

Well, it has been debated much whether the commandment prohibits merely the worshipping of such man-made images or the making of them as well. My position is the latter to a certain extent, but my opinion will settle no debate.

How Images Shape Our Thinking About Jonah

Let me submit the argument another way. We should be reminded that images are powerful for the formulation of our thinking. When we are reading something or we are thinking about something, our brain searches the databanks to find images to associate with the words.

Put a picture, for example, Jonah, the prophet Jonah, inside the belly of the fish. Many of us might see him sitting there as if in a large, damp, barrel-shaped room with the ribcage of the fish working as the arched ceiling beams of that room.

Maybe there is water up to his ankles. There is light because we can see him. Usually, it's the light of a lantern or a candle. Now, if what you have always envisioned is similar to this, you probably know if you stop and think about it that that's actually not what the inside of a fish's stomach is like.

That's not how it is in the guts of a fish. Does this image come from the text? No, of course not. It comes from Pinocchio. Some of you watched it as a child and still those images have shaped your thinking for decades, not allowing you to realize that Jonah actually died when he was swallowed by that fish.

This was true of me. It never clicked for me because of the influence of that image that I saw as a child. Like, if you think about it, you get swallowed by a fish. You're inside of his guts for three days.

Like, you're not breathing. You know, you're not writing letters back home. You're dead. Now, imagine what impact it can have on your worship to consume hours upon hours of watching an actor portray Jesus Christ.

Eventually, it will become very difficult to read the Gospels and not picture that actor when you think about Jesus or when you hear of him in a sermon or when you sing of him in a song. This is a violation of the second commandment.

Herman Bavinck on Mental Images of God

Herman Bavinck, he said, On a par with this worship of images is the creating of mental images of God according to one's own inclination. Rather than being according to God's word, these ideals and idols of God are formed according to a subject's own ideas and according to the likeness of creatures, formed as the objects of our worship.

This constitutes serving God in a manner other than he wills, a manner other than in Christ. Such images, including mental images, representations, imaginations, fantasies of God, and divine matters are prohibited.

Therefore, whether you believe the second commandment in Exodus 20 prohibits the visual man-made portrayal of any member of the Trinity or not, you end up in the same place as those who make an image and use it for worship.

It's simply a mental image rather than a physical one. And I don't know about you, but I don't want that guy's face in my mind when I'm trying to worship Jesus. I have not and cannot watch it myself, and I would admonish others to approach with extreme caution.

I don't believe it's an issue to bite and devour one another over, and I hope that these brief thoughts are helpful to some. Let me know in the comments what do you think about the chosen in light of the second commandment in Exodus 20.