The Young Messiah
was recently released and is the latest in bible based movies. It portrays Jesus
as a seven year old boy who has not learned that he is the Son of God or what
his purpose in life is yet. It has gotten great reviews and people generally
seem to like the movie. Is it worth seeing?
If you have a well formed understanding of your faith and
can separate fact from entertainment you will probably do ok seeing this movie.
If your theology changes every time you watch something on TV you might want to
avoid this movie.
This movie is well acted and well filmed and is
entertaining. As a movie goes it is a good movie. As a source of Christian
instruction it is horrible. It is worse than horrible. It is heresy. Heresy is
any belief or opinion contrary to orthodox religious doctrine. The heresy in
this movie is that Jesus did not know who he was until his mother sat him down
and told him. He was just a normal human kid living a normal human life until
Mary told him he was God. This is contrary to Catholic doctrine.
This movie wrestles with one of the great mysteries of
Christianity, the dual nature of Jesus. Most of the popular heresies in
Christian history have revolved around this subject. To begin to have some sort
of understanding on this we have to first start by understanding the difference
between a person and a nature.
A person is a unique entity or being. There are only three
types of persons – divine, angelic, and human. A divine person is God and we
have three in one, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. More correctly stated we have
the Father, the Word, and the Holy Breath. From the Father came the Breath and
one word was uttered – Jesus.
An angelic person is a completely spiritual being created
with full knowledge to be servants and messengers of God. These are the angels
and the fallen angels or the demons.
Last in the pecking order we have the human person who is an
incarnated spirit. We are not spirits trapped in flesh who get released when we
die. Nor do we become angels. We are spirits joined with flesh and we will have
physical bodies for eternity after the final judgment.
Jesus is not a human person. Jesus is solely a divine
person. When we say that Jesus is fully human and fully divine we are speaking
of his nature or the essence of his being. The second person of the Trinity
took on a human nature when the Word became flesh. It is this dual nature that has confounded
people since Jesus came on the scene. Something cannot be 100% one thing and
100% another. That is if we view nature as a physical substance. Think of
nature to be more like light.
Imagine for a moment a room with a box in the middle of it.
On the left is a bright red light. On the right is a bright blue light. When we
turn on just the red light the box turns red. When we turn on just the blue
light the box turns blue. When we turn on both lights an interesting thing
occurs. When we view the box from the left the box is red. When we view the box
from the right the box is blue. When we view the box from the middle where both
lights are shinning on it equally the box is purple. The box is 100% red and
100% blue at the same time. The red light does not displace the blue light and
the blue does not displace the red. They exist equally.
The red light represents Christ’s divine nature. The blue
represents his human nature. There are times where Jesus’ divine nature shines
through, like when he is healing or forgiving sins. There are times when Jesus’
human nature shines through, like when he laments in the garden of Gethsemane.
Most of the time in scripture we see the two natures shining together.
Equally as difficult to understand is what knowledge Jesus had
during his time on earth. Some believe that as a divine person he was
omnipotent and had all of the same knowledge as the Father. Others believe the
exact opposite; that Jesus only knew what he was taught. We can cherry pick
individual scripture passages that will support either belief.
I believe that, like with his dual nature, Jesus had dual knowledge.
Jesus is a divine person and knew his divinity. He and the Father were one.
Jesus knew who he was, what he was, and why he was here. Yet, Jesus could not
tell you whether or not it would rain the next day. When Jesus became incarnate
he became like us in all things except sin. He set aside his omnipotence and
was obliged to know only that which the Father revealed to him. He had to learn
human things the way a human does. He was not born knowing how to speak, to
feed or dress himself. He had to learn to go to the bathroom.
Think for a moment of all of the knowledge that God posses
as being contained in one book. This book represents the tree of life from the
story of the Garden of Eden. God told man not to open the book. We did and we
fell. When Jesus became man he closed the book and handed it to his Father. Jesus
then only read the pages that his Father gave him to read and not one word
more. From the very beginning Jesus had the divine knowledge of who he was and
only the human knowledge he learned or was given for a specific task.
The major heresy in The
Young Messiah is that Jesus did not know who he was until he was told by
his mother. He was also able to create and restore life at seven. It makes for
a good movie but does not reflect the teaching passed down through the
centuries by the Church Jesus founded.
So what is the danger in it? It’s only a movie right? Unfortunately
people these days believe what they see on a screen, whether that be from the
internet on a computer screen, a non-Christian documentary on the T.V., or a
religious based movie on the big screen. In the days of the eleven second
attention span people learn through the images that enter through the eyes. And
the devil knows this all too well.
How do you get a dog to take a pill? Usually you wrap it in
a piece of cheese or some peanut butter and give it to them. They swallow the
pill with the prize. Satan uses this same trick with us. He takes something
morally corrosive and wraps it in gooey goodness. Take a heresy and wrap it up
in a good film about the god boy and people will eat it up. Wasn’t it just
darling the way he made doves out of clay and brought them to life? See, he had
the power to resurrect people even when he was that young. Once you get someone
walking down the wrong road it becomes easy to slowly wind that road completely
away from God without the wanderer ever knowing the better.
We are instructed to avoid the near occasion of sin. We are
to avoid those places that make it easier for us to fall into sin. Going to a
movie such as this one with a questionable understanding of your faith puts you
in the near occasion of sin. It should be avoided. If you are well founded in
your faith and can see this as nothing more than entertainment then by all
means go enjoy.
My heart is full because the tomb is empty.
