The Chosen - Generation Z Livestream: Reconciling Love and Holiness

In mid-July, the Chosen aired a two hour event in which they invited nine Gen Z’ers to binge-watch the first season episodes and then share their reactions. I don’t really know what the selection criteria were for which 20-something’s were invited. There were some commonalities but the single biggest feature is that none of them had previously watched any of the episodes and none of them shared the basic Christian faith of the producers and cast. 

Some of the life stories quickly emerged in the post-binge-ing discussions. 

• Several had been brought up in various Christian denominations but none was a practicing Christian at this time. Their reasons for leaving the church varied, but none felt connected to the church they had left, except by memory. 
• A few had had mental health issues as teenagers, at least one had contemplated suicide. Does this have common cause with the mental health epidemic in the U.S. that has resulted in young men committing mass shootings at an unprecedented rate?
• A few had experienced some form of abuse as children or teenagers. Several expressed alienation from their parents as part of that. 
• Virtually all felt that their true self was not affirmed by anyone - that everyone told them how bad they were and that they had to change to be validated.
• One revealed that she was a lesbian and that no one would accept her for that reason. 

All expressed that the depiction of Jesus in the Chosen as kind, compassionate, and welcoming appealed to them, and that it was completely different from their experience with religious people. None had apparently ever had a personal relationship with Christ in which they personally experienced His nature and character in their life.

How can the church minister to Gen Z? We cannot abandon the fundamentals of the Christian faith. Perhaps we should examine the presentation of the gospel and our description of the Christian life. 

• God is holy; that cannot change. 
• God is love, and loves us.
• God’s desire is for us to share his holiness, and we don’t measure up. (Romans 3:23)
• Our sins are ultimately self-destructive; we can listen to wisdom or learn from experience.
• God has provided a rescuer for us, Jesus Christ, who came to earth to redeem us, by dying for our sins.
• If we receive Him, Jesus will  rescue us from both the judgment for and the power and consequences of our sin. 

Where do modern churches fail to connect with most 20-Somethings?

• The typical church service consisting of the liturgy and preaching seems irrelevant and simply doesn’t connect to outsiders. The Chosen connects partly because it is so different.

• The concept that in order to be saved, one has to beat unbelievers about the head and shoulders with their sinfulness. The reason is that if a person does not confess his or her sins, God will not forgive them. The practical out-working is that the unbeliever perceives the one browbeating them to have a “holier-than-thou” attitude. Having an internal sense of their own shortcomings, this does not sound like a God of love. They are looking for love.
• The perceived irrelevance of Biblical norms and practices to modern life. Superficially, rules from two to four thousand years ago seem to have been needed in the Iron Age, but modern technology and medical advances have overcome many of the conditions these rules address or mitigate. Unspoken is the unchanging human nature, and what it takes to live together in harmony with fellow humans; the transcendent holiness of God is incomprehensible to people whose  intellectual input has been the Internet their entire lives.
• How God can love us and yet issue all of the threats and warnings in Scripture. The empowerment of the Holy Spirit to overcome all of the issues from our upbringing and intrinsic self-centeredness is seldom presented so that outsiders can understand, let alone desire it. How to receive this empowerment is even more baffling when enshrouded with religious jargon.

The Chosen shows snippets of life in which Jesus reveals Himself in love,  holiness, and power, connecting to the down and out people of the first century. But the Chosen is not a church and cannot function as one. The actors are able to portray Jesus and the Biblical characters, but do not constitute a church. Jesus established the church and He is going to return for as His bride; it is His chosen instrument to minister eternal life on a continuing basis to those who respond to Him. What might the church do?

• Follow up contact could be established, similar to the approach that the Billy Graham crusade used decades ago to establish a connection between those who responded at crusades and local churches. But the producers of The Chosen would have to be willing, and they do not typically (so far as I can tell) ask viewers to respond directly to them with statements of coming to Christ. There is a place on their app for comments, but I have no idea if there is any follow up, or it is just social media.
• Small home gatherings could leverage episodes of the Chosen in a format similar to the Alpha course. To invite “seekers” in a format similar to that of the livestream special. To watch an episode and then get their reactions, and questions, without a preset theological curriculum. To connect them to experience God directly through a medium they can relate to. And then nurture that infant faith through appropriate ministry.
• Frankly, the attitudes that believers in church exhibit need to be scrutinized. Theological depth and Scriptural exposition need to be in the context of ministry to the needs of hurting people. And Gen-Zers hurt, as described above.
• What the church cannot do is compromise on truth. Truth. Because gen-Z-ers typically reject all authority if they feel like it, they must understand that God’s kingdom is those who humbly submit to God, even if we don’t feel like it or like what He says. (We need to be clear about the difference in authority between Scripture itself, and people’s interpretation of it.)

The bottom line is that the Chosen presents an opportunity for the church to minister to Gen-Z, but  challenges must be thoughtfully addressed. Perhaps the deepest challenge is to reconcile (in theology and in practice) perfect love with perfect holiness.