Jamin Bradley

Christian-based media has come a long way over the last decade, with the TV show The Chosen probably serving as the new standard. Up until that moment, historical Christian movies usually offered us a stiff and boring portrait of Jesus.

Today I saw Light of the World, a 2D animated film about the gospel that was headed up by some former Disney animators. I went in with low expectations, especially since I felt like the 3D animated film The King of Kings that came out earlier this year fell flat. Rather than try to tell the gospel story in a way that helped modern people enter the story, The King of Kings felt like it was trying really hard to follow the gospel exactly as it was written—a worthy goal, but it can be about as dry to watch as a bad Bible study. Outside of that, they put a lot of weight on their audience connecting with a flatly-written child who was hearing the gospel story be read to him for the first time.

Light of the World, on the other hand, nailed it. As a theologian, I was deeply impressed with the way they told the gospel. None of the characters felt flat. Indeed, they had just as much personhood as the actors in The Chosen. They had emotions, personalities, and backstories. And rather than focus on relating the words of the gospel perfectly, they focused on relating the themes of the gospel perfectly. They made sure Jesus was focused on the things he was supposed to be focused on. They captured his joy and his sorrow. They kept his eyes on the least of these. They made sure to highlight how he was always doing things you didn’t expect him to do. They made the love of others the center. They did an incredible job at capturing the theology of the cross and the messiah. They chose the right parables to tell. They picked up on some parts of the gospel story that pastors often don’t even notice. And on top of all this, the pieces they made up for the story were all within the believability of the character of Jesus and the things he cared about, causing me to give them a free pass on their extra imaginings.

I went in expecting nothing, and I ended up crying a lot. It was expert animation and storytelling. My only complaint is that I wish it could have been longer because it was so good. I’m not fully sure what I mean by this, but it kind of felt like watching The Bible Project as a movie.

I think the reason it was so good is that it was made with the intention of storytelling. This is something we often miss when we read our Bibles. Sometimes we get so hung up on studying them and figuring out all the nitty-gritty details that we forget to step back and look at the whole story. As the classic saying goes, we “miss the forest for the trees.” These storytellers didn’t do that. Yes, they got to know the trees, but then they stood back a long way and were able to see the bigger picture at play.

May we approach the gospels in a similar way, for they have more to say to us than we are aware.

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