Why So Many Complaints About ‘The Bible’ Miniseries?

Jon Acuff, author of Stuff Christians Like and Quitter, wrote a post about History’s 10-hour miniseries, The Bible. Specifically, he wrote about the four most common complaints leveled against the miniseries.

Not long ago, I wrote about a disappointing trend I noticed among the religious right in which they were completely shifting focus away from a high-rated broadcast about the life of Jesus Christ in favor of throwing political barbs at President Obama because they felt the character of Satan looked like the president. That foolishness warranted its own post.

Of the four criticisms Acuff lampooned, one of them bugged me as well: It left out a lot.

Really? A 10-hour miniseries based on the history of Christianity couldn’t contain every detail contained in a text that covers thousands of years? This is a surprise to someone? As Acuff points out, the audiobook version of the bible runs a total of 72 hours. Anyone who wasn’t able to figure out that every scene of the Bible wasn’t going to make it into a 10-hour miniseries really needs some extra sleep.

Why is it we Christians would feel that we’d need to be spoon-fed every word of the Bible? Anyone upset at the thought that the miniseries was going to leave out something important should have stopped everything they were doing — including blogging about it — and sat down with an actual Bible to spend that time reading the whole thing. I’m sure they’d have been more satisfied.

Then, departing from Acuff’s list, I have to mention a complaint I heard someone talking about the other day: the budget for the production. Someone — I don’t remember where I heard it — whined about how they only spent $22 million on the project. Admittedly, a miniseries with a $22 million budget is a bargain. But it’s not like there were major studios lining up to back this effort. We should be glad $22 million could be put together for the project to begin with.

And as for these money managers who couldn’t resist scoffing at the bargain-basement price tag, I have to wonder how many millions of their own money they’re putting into their own, better version that’s surely going to begin production any day now.

This miniseries was designed to be an introduction to Christianity. One only needs a tiny bit of common sense to understand that. It depicted important, critical moments of what’s come to be known as “the Greatest Story Ever Told.”

If its broadcast resulted in just one, single person wanting to know more about the Christian faith, much less making a decision to follow Christ as his personal savior, how can someone put a price tag on that? We Christians are called to be “fishers of men,” to help spread the gospel.

If you’ve got a better idea to do it — and the money to make it happen, the world is waiting: let’s see what you’ve got.