Most of us have read, heard or watched the story of Jesus plenty of times. But this new treatment comes with some new narrative wrinkles—and one or two concerns. Like The Chosen, it adds to Scripture, and those additions might be discomforting to some. But overall, Light of the World still comes with aesthetic oomph and a heart for Christ.
Those Romans are big ol’ jerks.
Everyone in Judaea knows it. Well, everyone who’s not on the Roman dole, at least. Their prefects are clueless. Their tax collectors just tax and tax and tax, sometimes making up numbers as they go. And if you can’t pay? They send in those stupid soldiers with their stupid helmets and stupid swords and stupid superior attitude. And then they drag you away. How are you supposed to pay your taxes when you’re in jail, huh? Huh?!
Thank goodness the Messiah is coming. Some say He’s already here. He’ll fix those Romans but good, that’s for sure. If He’s real, that is.
Young John has heard about the Messiah from his mom, Salome, since before he could lace up his sandals. She’d tell him and his big brother, James, about this “mighty king” who’ll come down and “make all things right again.” Sure, some of that is about repairing the rift between God and creation. But mostly it means dealing with those awful, awful Romans. Because making things right means getting rid of that big, foreign wrong.
Zebedee, John’s father, thinks that the Messiah is nothing but a fairy tale. “No one is coming to save us,” he tells his boys. “We have to keep our heads down and take care of ourselves.” And sometimes, John wonders whether his dad might be right.
He hopes not. Because those Romans sure are awful. And proof is just one fateful errand away.
The tax man is set to visit once again. And for the first time ever, Zebedee asks John to take the fish to the market—alone! He’ll need to hurry back with the money so that Zebedee can pay Rome and go on with his life.
But when John makes it to town, he encounters two people who change his life. One is a Roman soldier, whom John accidentally hits in the face with a bag of fish. The second is a carpenter—a nice enough fellow. When John finds his way home barred by sheep, the carpenter points to a spooky little alley as an alternate way to get home.
“He’s never going to make it,” a fishmonger sighs.
“I think he’ll find his way,” says the carpenter with a curious smile.
And so John does.
Light of the World is about Jesus. (Of course.) We Christians see Christ Himself as the source of all truth. So let’s acknowledge that and focus on some other characters—beginning with John.
When John arrives at the fishmonger’s stall, the monger is surprised to see him. “The father usually sends the bigger one,” he says, referring to James. “You know, the stronger one, who seems a little smarter …” But while John might not look like much to the fishmonger, we moviegoers soon see that the teen has some overlooked qualities.
He’s very kind, for starters. When he goes down the dark alley “shortcut,” for instance, John stops to give a waif a much-needed coin. He shows kindness to some of Judaea’s most hated people—Roman soldiers and tax collectors—and ultimately introduces them to Jesus. In a sweet bit of irony, he complains to his mother that nothing he does seems to help anyone, even as he helps an overturned crab right itself and scuttle on its way.
John’s creative, too, even to the point of spearheading an effort to lower a crippled man through a roof and into Jesus’ presence. But perhaps his most outstanding feature is the faith that he shows. Yes, he doubted even the existence of the Messiah at first. But once he’s convinced, John is all in—and he encourages others around him to display that same sense of belief and trust.
John’s mother, Salome, proves to be a great, faithful role model—raising John and James to love and revere God as well as teaching spiritual lessons with kindness and clarity. Zebedee is not a believer at first. But he’s also an admirable character. The very night that he tells his boys that everyone needs to take care of themselves, he sees a neighbor being dragged away by soldiers—and he goes outside to help. From that moment on, Zebedee becomes a surrogate father to the neighbor’s two boys: Andrew and Simon (later called Peter). And that proved to be a powerful example to John, too.
John the Baptist (here, typically called “the Baptizer”) gives honeycombs to the hungry. Mary, Jesus’ mother, shows kindness to a wedding party (encouraging her Son to change water into wine). She also shows a great deal of strength at the end of His mortal life. A Roman soldier named Lucius also demonstrates a great deal of faith in Jesus. He believes Christ healed his servant, even though Jesus wasn’t anywhere near him.
Light of the World is inherently spiritual and deeply Christian—from the opening slide (which quotes John 3:16) to its closing altar call (which invites Christ-curious viewers to scan a QR code and take a “New Believer Course”). It takes Christianity quite seriously.
But it is not intended to be a word-for-word recounting of the Gospel. This creative retelling unfurls the story in modern language. It takes the disciple John and turns him into a teenager (though, admittedly, the Bible never tells us how old John is). It takes liberties with how ancient Judaea looks—giving John the Baptist a near-jungle to run around in, for instance. And— à la The Chosen and House of David—it adds to the biblical narrative for its own storytelling purposes.
Most would-be moviegoers would expect and anticipate such changes, of course. But the line between what is an acceptable addition and what feels jarring varies from viewer to viewer.
Take the moment when Jesus walks on water. In the biblical narrative (the movie takes its account from Matthew 14:22-33, including Peter’s attempt to walk on water, too), Jesus feeds the 5,000, and then “immediately” tells the disciples to get onto the boat and start the journey across the Sea of Galilee without Him. Light of the World gives us a new reason for that immediacy: Temple soldiers are hot on the disciples’ trail, so Jesus tells John and the others to make a hasty getaway.
It’s not a massive departure from Scripture. But it does change the vibe of the biblical scene, Hollywoodizing the moment to make it feel more dramatic. I’d imagine that a lot of the kids in the audience wouldn’t be as familiar with the Bible as their parents. And when they decide to read the original biblical account, some might wonder where those dastardly temple guards are.
This addition bothered me. But I was pleasantly moved by another addition—this one during Jesus’ baptism.
Apart from the movie’s contemporary language, this scene closely follows the scriptural account. John the Baptist—called “the Baptizer” for most of the movie—protests. “You’re the only one who doesn’t need to be baptized!” he says. But Jesus insists that He’s simply obeying God. As Christ is submerged, we see Him in a crucifixion-like pose under water; as He stands up, the clouds break and a stylized dove descends, massive wings spread. The water around Jesus parts, and a voice comes from above: “This is my Son, whom I love and am pleased with.”
Certainly, the Bible doesn’t suggest that the waters of the Jordan River parted after Jesus’ baptism. But it allows for a beautiful visual: We see Jesus from high above, and the parting of the waters make it look like an eye—with Jesus serving as its central pupil. It feels like an intentional callback to many Old Testament verses in which people and nations are called the “apple of [God’s] eye”—a poetic illustration of something’s value and importance to our Lord. Here, the change draws us deeper into Scripture, rather than pull us farther away from it.
But even though it worked for me, it might feel like an extrabiblical distraction to others.
Many of the movie’s additions come with simple spiritual lessons, too. When John mends nets with his mother, for instance, Salome tells him that sometimes his dad could stand to trust in God a little more—and not trust so much in his own strength. “Your father believes that he’s responsible for catching the fish,” Salome tells John. “It’s just his job to cast the nets. Then we trust God to provide the fish.”
Light of the World gives us plenty of scenes that come straight from the Bible, too, from Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000 to the healing of a man lowered from the roof. The movie imagines some lesser-used biblical stories, too. We see, for instance, the faith of a Roman centurion (as chronicled in Matthew 8 and Luke 7), who begs Jesus to heal his servant. “I believe in Your authority,” he tells Jesus. “Thus if You say my servant is healed, he is healed.”
Some Pharisees are harder to convince. Nicodemus initially scoffs at Jesus’ appeal. “The only way to God is through the law,” he says. “Ritual cleansing. Temple sacrifice. The spilt blood of innocent lambs.”
Another amends Nicodemus’ point. “The only way to God is through us!” he says. But a third Pharisee says, “Or maybe [Jesus’ followers] see something we don’t.” (The priest is, ironically, nearly blind, and he almost sticks a finger in a flame as he talks.)
When the disciples witness Jesus walking on water, Andrew yells, “Ghost!”
We could go on and on and on, of course. As I say, the entire movie is deeply focused on Christian faith, and almost every moment is meant to point back to that faith. But those examples offer a broad sense of how the movie tries to go about it.
When James and John are children, Salome tells them about the Fall in the Garden. Using an imaginative animation style, we see paper-cutout-like silhouettes of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Though their blocky bodies are on full display, we see nothing critical; the bodies don’t have any real detail at all.
Weddings qualify as “romantic” content, and we do see a biblically based version of the wedding party at Cana.
Jesus’ crucifixion is shown in some detail. We don’t see nails driven into His wrists or feet, but we do glimpse the hammer and nail poised above His skin the instance before. And when the blows do come, Jesus screams. When He’s raised on the cross, a drop of blood falls from His forehead at the moment of death.
Peter takes a sword and cuts a soldier’ ear off, but the scene is not bloody or gory. The Baptizer is taken by Roman soldiers, and we later learn that he’s been killed. John’s brother, James, falls and injures his elbow.
A soldier gets hit in the face with a bag of fish. An earthquake topples plenty of walls, and it sends a gigantic decorative bit of art (designed to look like a giant coin—a reference to another biblical story) falling to the floor. Several people daydream of the day that Rome is toppled.
As children, James and John pretend to be the Messiah (or in the service of the Messiah) and thwack at imaginary Roman soldiers with imaginary weapons. We hear about Temple sacrifices and the “spilt blood of innocent lambs.” A thrown pitcher apparently hits someone off-screen (eliciting the famed Wilhelm Scream).
The parable of the Good Samaritan is told in the same construction-paper style as Salome’s recounting of the Fall: We see the traveler by the side of the road, his otherwise-featureless body covered in red marks.
The Baptizer and the teenage John must flee from some angry bees. “They do not appreciate us partaking of God’s bounty,” the Baptizer explains as he runs.
None.
The wedding party at Cana features a great deal of wine—some of which is made by Jesus Himself. (John, masquerading as a servant, refills the glasses of many guests, sometimes sending the wine spilling over the rim.)
The Bible mentions that John the Baptist ate bugs. The Baptizer in Light of the World positively loves them—which becomes a running joke between Jesus and the disciple John.
Speaking of the latter, John runs away from Roman authorities (once with the help of a kid who traps a centurion’s cape in a cart) and masquerades as a servant at a wedding. When someone calls him a traitor, a Jewish tax collector doubles the family’s tax debt on the spot.
That tax collector is, of course, Matthew. When Jesus invites Matthew to join Him later in the movie, Matthew tosses aside a bag of coins to do just that. Judas picks up those coins, though, telling John, “It’s always good to have another option. In cast things don’t go as planned.”
God rarely shows up in the way you think He will.
That line from Light of the World is true to the point of truism. Those of us who are Christians are taught that saying every Christmas; and we embrace it every Easter, too. Our faith is filled with paradox. And yet, it’s so easy to forget how radical and weird Jesus’ life and ministry would’ve felt to contemporaries. Forget fighting Rome. Let’s love those Romans instead. Or, You want a strong, conquering Messiah? How about a carpenter who washes feet? Or most especially, The immortal Son of God died. For you.
It makes me wonder—often—about the assumptions we make today regarding our Maker. When are we, like the Pharisees, so convinced of our righteousness … and only God knows how wrong we might be.
This creative retelling of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus (as seen through the eyes of an unexpectedly young John) drives home those paradoxes in new and imaginative ways. It presents the Good News with artistry and humor. It talks at the level of a child’s eye, but without dumbing down the underlying truth and theology behind it.
Light of the World comes with its own paradoxes, too. You might, for instance, look at the movie and think of it as a throwback: Its 2D animation style harkens back most especially to 1998’s Prince of Egypt. But in a 21st-century world awash in computer-augmented 3D films, Light of the World feels fresh and new. And, according to the movie’s own website, its animation style comes with purpose, too. “It contains all the subtle flaws we’ve come to call ‘human,’” the side reads. “To us, it’s a fitting way to express our love and adoration to Jesus—the only unflawed person to ever walk the earth.”
Viewers may find flaws in the movie. The informality that Jesus is treated with may strike a few as disrespectful. The liberties the creators take with the biblical text might be liberties too far for some Christians. And certainly, the youthful John does not always set the best example for the young viewers watching him on screen.
But there’s heart in this art, and it beats for Jesus. The makers of Light of the World clearly want their creation to reflect their Creator—and to inspire young Christians not just for a few weeks in theaters, but for months and years and decades to come.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
