Christianity & Culture with Kierstyn St. John

My thoughts on “The Chosen Presents: A Blended Harmony of the Gospels”

• Kierstyn St. John of Zoetic • Season 1 • Episode 9

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The Chosen has released their own version of the gospels. It's not heretical but it's also not ideal. In this video I'm going to explain why. 

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Kierstyn St John:

The Chosen has finally done it. They released their own version of the Gospels called A Blended Harmony of the Gospels. Is it good? Is it terrible? Like many things, it's complicated. There's more to this than meets the eye, and I'm going to break it down right now.

Kierstyn St John:

Okay, so it is no secret that I am not a fan of the Chosen. Okay, I've made two other videos talking about them, about their show, in the past. A little over a year ago, I made a video criticizing them for poorly handling the pride flag controversy. You can go watch that video for more context, but basically they showed a cameraman displaying a pride flag and some other promotional footage. I then made a follow-up video talking about some of the corruption behind their finances. I've also criticized them for having Mormons, which, as an Orthodox Christian, I don't believe falls within the bounds of Orthodox Christianity. They have Mormons at very high levels in their production, like the CEO is Mormon, and so when I saw that they had a new book out called the Chosen Presents A Blended Harmony of the Gospels, I was skeptical, to say the least.

Kierstyn St John:

Right, and so I want to break down exactly what this is and my thoughts on it. First of all, what is it. Okay. So it takes the four gospels, matthew, mark, luke and John, and blends them all into one book. The text is taken directly from scripture. I believe it is the CSB, or Christian Standard Bible Translation. Instead of being broken up into chapters, though, like the Gospels normally are, it has a reading every day for 40 days where you combine all four Gospels into a devotional. Okay, it takes lines and sometimes even single words from different Gospels to make up one mostly coherent narrative.

Kierstyn St John:

So let's talk about like the good things about this first, before I just get into the criticism. So the good it is a word for word Bible translation. Like I said, it is the Christian standard Bible translation. They do not add to scripture, which I appreciate, because I don't know how many of you guys know this, but more than 90% of the chosen TV show is not directly scripture. So the devotional format is interesting. You know, baby boomers like my parents were obsessed with devotionals and my parents would read me a devotional almost every night when I was growing up and it would be like one verse and then some random guy's commentary and I will say that this book is better than that because it's actually scripture. Like your devotional for that day is all taken for scripture. So I appreciate that.

Kierstyn St John:

The point is whether the Chosen is selling this book so that more people read the Bible or to make a massive amount of money, and the reason behind that might be a little bit of both. More scripture will technically be read because of this book and likely more people will be saved or at least have a better understanding of the gospel, and that is a very, very good thing, and I don't want to minimize that. Okay, I am going to go on to give some criticisms, but I do think the fact that more scripture will be read by more people is an amazing thing. So now for the criticisms. So first of all, I'm not going to focus too much on, like, the linguistic aspect of this because it's not my area of expertise, but Mike Winger did a fantastic video about the potential contextual problems with cutting up lines of scripture and pasting them together, like taking a line from Luke and a line from John, and I have other criticisms that I'm going to add to that. Let's watch a part of his video to see what he says about it.

Mike Winger:

Okay, so we have the first sentence from Mark, but then we jump to Luke, and Luke and John is what follows next. And Luke and John are they're very different writers. I'll put that on your screen in a second. But listen, luke and John are very different writers. Luke is writing a historical narrative approach to Jesus that is very much based on eyewitness accounts. John is giving not only eyewitness accounts he does that but he also offers simple, straight revelation. So when you combine John and Luke, you have Luke who claims I'm going to give you eyewitness stuff. And then the next thing that happens on day one is John says in the beginning, before creation even happened, this is what was going on, which, of course, is not an eyewitness account. It creates conflict, perhaps where there shouldn't be, because Luke and John are different authors doing different things.

Kierstyn St John:

So the first sentence of day one which is highlighted in yellow is from Mark, what is highlighted in blue is from the Gospel Luke and what is highlighted in green is from John. Mike Winger's point here is that Luke and John are very different authors. Luke was not an apostle of Jesus. Very different authors Luke was not an apostle of Jesus. He was compiling a narrative account from other people and wrote in a very straightforward, practical, literal way. On the other hand, john the apostle John, was an apostle of Jesus. John's gospel is my favorite, but it is not straightforward. There's a ton of metaphor and symbolism and revelation. Mike Winger has a second point about this and he asks the question what does biblical inspiration mean?

Mike Winger:

What do we think inspiration means when it comes to the Bible? Do we mean that the words themselves are inspired, or do we mean the words in this order are inspired? I think we mean in this order they're inspired. And if that's the case, then while this is scripture, every word in this text is scripture, because they've been relocated, not in a malicious way, not even in a way where they're really trying to play it safe and they're trying to do good. That seems to come across as I read it. Okay, that's a real attempt to do well, but when you relocate it, I think inherently it loses some qualities that it was supposed to have that are related to inspiration. So again, I think that it becomes not a great idea.

Kierstyn St John:

Okay, so this is the last point I'll take from his video. I'll move on to my own points after this, but I thought it was an interesting one. Mike Winger is basically saying that when we say scripture is inspired, we don't just mean that every, each individual word of scripture is inspired. Okay, the words and the sentences, in the order that they are in, are inspired, and this seems obvious. Right, you could take a verse in scripture and move the words all around in the sentence, so much so that they are completely unintelligible or they say something completely different than the verse originally said, and I would argue that if you did that, those words are no longer inspired scripture. So, for example, if I took 1 Peter, 5, 7, which says cast all your anxieties on him because he cares for you, and mashed it up with Philippians 4, 6, do not be anxious for anything I could make the text say do not cast all your anxieties on him because he cares for you. So if I combine verses in a specific way, I can make them mean the opposite of what they actually say, and in that case you're messing with scripture. So that's Mike Winger's point, is that when you take a word from this gospel and a word from this gospel and a line from this gospel and you pull everything out of their context. You're messing a little bit with the inspiration of scripture, because the inspiration of scripture is not just each individual word of scripture, it's the sentences and the context of what they mean. And you might say, well, the chosen didn't do that, they didn't try to make any of the verses say anything different. That's true, but like it's a gray area and where do we draw the line? That's some of the nitty gritty linguistic stuff, um, but I want to zoom out a little bit, uh, and I'm going to be a little less charitable towards the chosen than Mike Winger was, uh, because I don't trust them. I don't trust them or their motives. To be honest, I really disliked how they responded to the Pride Flight controversy. They infamously have a lot of non-Christians working on set, not just behind the scenes, but as actors or even as people high up in the company. And so here are the reasons why I am not a big fan of this new book, a Blended Harmony of the Gospels.

Kierstyn St John:

Okay, here's the first reason. I don't like separating the Gospels off of the rest of Scripture. This is partially because so much of the Old Testament prophecy is fulfilled in the life of Christ. So I'd like to have the Old Testament with New Testament, but mainly because there are so many Christians out there who will only listen to the Gospels you know, jesus-only Christians and they ignore Paul's letters because they don't like what Paul has to say, like and this is a huge issue Paul's letters after the gospel are also inspired scripture, but they talk about some contentious issues such as homosexuality and women's roles in the church and in marriage, and so a lot of people would rather ignore Paul and only stick to the gospels, only stick to what Jesus has to say. And if you have the Gospels separated off from the rest of Scripture, this makes that easier to do. Right, it's easier to just say well, I have the Gospels, so I don't need the Old Testament and I don't need Paul's letters.

Kierstyn St John:

Okay, and that leads me into my second reason why I'm not a big fan. Will people transition from this the blended harmony of the gospels to actual scripture, like an actual Bible? And the chosen does say in the beginning of the book that it doesn't replace actual scripture, which I appreciate, but there will be people who think that this is all they need and they don't go and get an actual Bible. They just have this blended gospel of the harmony, blended harmonies of the gospel, rather, and they don't get an actual Bible. Okay, just like there are people who think that the chosen show is all they need I've heard that before People saying I was never a big fan of like reading the Bible, but I love the chosen like TV show. You know, they think it's entertaining and funny and well-made, but the chosen show is obviously not the Bible. Neither is this really. I mean, I know God can use it, but Satan can use it too, and the way that Satan would use it is to say you just need this, you don't actually need a real Bible. So that's my second reasoning for it.

Kierstyn St John:

Okay, my next reason why I'm not a giant fan of this blended harmony of the Gospels and this might be a tad nitpicky, but I don't really like the chosen presents in the title. The title says the chosen presents and then there's like a colon after that and then it says you know, the chosen presents a blended harmony of the Gospels. This feels a tad self-aggrandizing. I understand that it is marketing so that they sell more of these things. Would I ever sell a Bible that says Zoetic presents the Gospels or Kirsten St John presents the Bible. No, I would not do that. That's really weird. Okay, granted, they are a lot more prominent than Zoetik is or I am, but it's still weird.

Kierstyn St John:

Like the text too. The text the Chosen Presents is bigger on the page than a blended harmony of the Gospels. It's like big texts that says the Chosen Presents and it just, yeah, it seems a little self-aggrandizing, like does the Bible really need your help selling it? Does it need your help introducing it? Like the Chosen introduces the Bible. Like, I don't really think the Bible needs a ton of introduction. It is the most sold book in the history of the world. Okay, so that kind of rubbed me the wrong way a little bit.

Kierstyn St John:

Fourth reason it does feel like another way to just make a profit off of scripture. Okay, I'm gonna explain that this is not a new translation, because we don't really need that. Like, we have so many translations of the Bible in English. They found a creative gimmick to make a lot of money, and I said in my second video about the Chosen that this show has a lot of money. And I said in my second video about the Chosen that this show has a lot of funding behind it, millions and millions of dollars. Okay, dallas Jenkins is a very wealthy man. Okay, this is no longer the tiny little crowdfunding campaign that we donated to five years ago. They have a ton of other merch. And again, there's nothing inherently wrong with making a lot of money, although the Bible does warn about having and hoarding an obscene amount of money. And, yes, bible translators do profit off of their work. But a Bible translator like that's really really tough work. It's not like a Frankenstein, like cutting of an already existing translation, which is what this is.

Kierstyn St John:

Translating. Actual scripture is incredibly difficult work. The other thing I object to is that the book is being sold for $20, and I guess right now it's on sale for $12, but an entire ESV hardcover Bible is $6. So you can get an entire Bible for a half or even a third of the price that you can get this book. So why wouldn't you just buy a Bible Like you're going to get so much more from that too.

Kierstyn St John:

When it comes down to it, there is an attitude underneath all of this that makes me very uncomfortable. It seems that, to the chosen crew, scripture just isn't enough. This is the feeling I've always kind of gotten from the Chosen it's not entertaining enough, it's not accessible enough, it's not fast-paced enough, it's not short enough, it's not relatable enough. We need a show to make scripture better and easier for this generation. You know, we need a different type of the Bible because it's too confusing to have four separate gospels. I don't really like that.

Kierstyn St John:

This book is kind of like a Bible light. Okay, I'm tired of that. Okay, they will call it making the Bible more accessible. That's all churches have been doing for years, and how has that worked for us? I mean, christianity is in serious decline in America. You know, I've been to churches where I've seen sermon series on the Enneagram or on popular movies or on whatever else will draw people in because they don't believe that the Bible is enough, that the Bible is too difficult to understand or that it's too boring or that people are going to get tired of it.

Kierstyn St John:

I often feel that the chosen, both in their show and in this book, is trying to make the Bible better. You know, whether it's well, the Bible's just not accessible enough, so we have to do that, or the Bible's not entertaining enough, so we have to do that, and it's just to me kind of a prideful attitude. It doesn't mean that we never should make art about any of this type of stuff. We have the four gospels for a reason. We have easy to read translations. The NIV is pretty easy to understand. The NLT is, you know, not a super literal translation, but it's very easy to understand. What about the CSB, where they take all of this from? Like, we already have the CSB, we have all of those translations at the touch of a button on our phone. Okay, we can go directly to Luke and start reading that. We already have dozens of ways to make the Bible more convenient and more accessible, but maybe Jesus would want you to put in a tiny bit of work for him. Like, did you ever think of that? Like, people used to have to read the Bible off of a scroll, and that doesn't mean that we have to do that. But this idea that we have to make the Bible entertaining and convenient and fun and relationships take work. Relationships are hard and a relationship with God is no different.

Kierstyn St John:

At the end of the day, am I a fan of this book? The, you know, the Chosen Presents A Blended Harmony of the Gospels. Well, I am a fan of the Bible, but I'm a fan of the entire Bible, all of it. Um, I'm a fan of scripture and and I'm a fan of people reading the Bible and I'm a huge fan of people converting to Christianity, and if this book does that, then that's great, and I do mean that. But, like Mike Winger, I see potential dangers, pitfalls and compromises and, like I said before, I don't really trust the Chosen or any of the people behind it. It's going to be on you guys whether to buy this book or not, but we do have all of scripture, and so I would encourage you to read that instead. That's going to be it for me. Thank you and God bless.