Here’s the latest from the crossroads of faith, media & culture: 08/29/22

A big week for Kathie Lee Gifford. The four-time Emmy winner, screenwriter and bestselling author’s latest book The God of the Way (W Publishing) releases tomorrow (8/30) and her film The Way  debuts as a Fathom Event in theaters on Thursday (9/1). Our conversation follows the trailer.

JWK: So, you have a lot going on – with both a book and a movie coming out in the same week.

Kathie Lee Gifford: So many things in life are never originally planned that way. I had hoped to release the film The Way right around Easter time of this past year – but, as with so many projects people have had, Covid changed the world in so many different ways (for such things as) people getting married like my children or finishing up a project like The Way, this film I’ve been writing for four years. So, it turned out that it looked like the best thing was going to be release them both at pretty much the same time. So, that’s happening now.

The genesis of the project is The Way which is four oratorios based on the success and the powerful reaction that continues to this day of three and a half years ago (when) I released The God Who Sees, my first short film that Nicole C. Mullen and I wrote together. I directed her and I produced it with the National Symphony Orchestra players, shot it in Israel and released it on the day that I left The Today Show on April 7th back in 2019.

KLG:  (It) had an incredible reaction (that) sort of confirmed in my heart that this is the work that I’m supposed to continue to do until the Lord takes me home. (That is to) keep telling these magnificent epic Bible stories in a way that they’ve never been told before which is through oratorio which is a very, very old musical term – a classical term, basically – for something that’s symphonic in nature but also includes narrations. It’s storytelling set to music.

So, the first one was so successful that I wrote three more with different friends and composer friends but the same National Symphony orchestra and then I ended up being the narrator on the whole thing just to give some consistency to the whole thing so that all four joined together to do this story basically from the dawn of creation, through the Old Testament, through the New Testament all the way up to Jesus‘ direction to His disciples to “get in the boat and meet Me on the other side.” That particular story I end it with because it’s a call to the Church today to go to the other side just as Jesus made his disciples understand that that’s exactly where were called to.

We so misunderstand The Bible because we’re not Middle Easterners. Middle Easterners wrote The Bible for Middle Easterners and we try to apply our western sensibility to it – I’ve talked about this in the past – and apply it to understanding God’s Word and it doesn’t work. We have to understand cultural relativity in the Scriptures and geopolitical relativity at the time in order to understand the full import and gravitas of the actual Scriptures themselves. So, what I try to do is tell these stories.

…It’s just kind of fascinating to me and so thrilling that Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. He’s still calling us to go the other side where, yes, it might be terrifying, yes, it might be unusual or out of our comfort zone and by that I mostly mean our church family and where we worship and how we worship and what we think is acceptable to God. We gotta leave all of that behind and say I will follow the Lord wherever He leads me because  because I know He will be with me and I know I can trust Him.

This is how the Gospel spread. It was not because they just stayed in their church. It’s because through persecution they had to spread out. They had to keep going and when they did the Gospel and the Good News went with them and more and more and more the world was evangelized for the Truth of Christ.

So, the (reason) why I’m working so hard at this point in my life still is the film The Way. It tells those kinds of stories. The first oratorio is called The God of the How and When which is basically how God is a God of His promises and he keeps them…The second one is called The God of His Word because the Word did become flesh and dwell among us and it talks about how the world changed…It’s the story of how ever since Creation God has longed to redeem humankind and bring everyone back to Beit Abba which the Father’s house. So, that tells the story of Jesus coming to the Earth in human form. It talks about how He’s transformed the world through loving us and teaching us through His parables and calling twelve disciples to follow Him and learn from Him and then what He did for women. He was the most radical feminist the world has ever seen or ever will see and, ultimately, it ends with how He transformed the world through His miracles – culminating in the greatest miracle of them all, His Resurrection.

JWK: How are the book and the movie related?

KLG: The book came out of the movie. Once the movie was in progress, I said to my publisher “This movie is going to need a companion book.” They are in support of one another. I would prefer people see the film first and then get the book…It just goes deeper as (co-author Rabbi Jason Sobel)… takes you at least ten layers deeper into what the Word of God actually says what the stories actually mean.

JWK: This is your second book collaboration with Rabbi Sobel. You also worked on The Rock, the Road and the Rabbi with him.  How did that relationship develop?

KLG: Through a mutual friend…She said “You have never heard teaching like this, Kathie. You have got to meet him.” He eventually did come to New York. He came to The Today Show during Christmas season…(We met and he) regaled me about the true truth of the rabbinic understanding and the geopolitical understanding of how the very first Nativity came to be. Jesus was not born in a stable. That’s not true. Jesus was not born in December. We know that because there are no shepherds in the field during that time. It’s the rainy season. So, all these things that  are just ignored by the Western Church drive me crazy, John! I want people to know the truth because that’s what sets us free! Jesus was born nine months later during the Festival of Sukkot which is the Festival of Shelter, the Festival of Trumpets or Tabernacles. It’s got different names but when the Jews celebrate God’s provision for them, when they came out of slavery in Egypt and were wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, it was a prototype for the Messiah.

JWK: I was kinda aware that the date we celebrate Christmas is more or less sort of a random guess – but I actually wasn’t aware that we really know when Jesus was born. Are you saying that we do have an idea as to the time of year?

KLG: It’s the Winter Solstice. It’s a pagan holiday, the Winter Solstice that so much of it is based on.

JWK: As I understand it, in the old days they used to put the Christian holidays directly where the pagan holidays were to kinda override them.

KLG: Yeah – but in the process they diluted the power of them. Tell the real story!

JWK: I haven’t read the book but I find it surprising that a rabbi would take part in what what appears to be a Christian focused book. How did the two of you come together to do this?

KLG: First of all, just what you said, John, is concerning to me because it is not Christian focused. It is biblical focused. For years, for centuries, Christians have felt like the Old Testament belonged to the Jews and the New Testament belongs to us. That could not be further from the truth. It’s Satan’s greatest lie. We are ONE story – ONE magnificent love story – of God’s provision for His creation.

It started with the calling of a nation – Abram and Sarai – in (what is now) Iraq…and it goes all the way through to the Book of Revelation and beyond (to) John in the New Testament…It’s all one testimony of God’s faithfulness all the way through. We’ve got to stop all these myths – like Jesus was a carpenter. He was not a carpenter! Bad translation. Jesus was a stonemason! There was no buildable wood in Israel first century A.D. We have to learn these things in order to understand what Scripture says.  So, it’s not based in “Christianity.” First of all, followers of Jesus were not called Christians, which in Greek means “little Christs” (until) long after Jesus was gone. They were called The Way. People who believed in Jesus at that time were Jews who had come to an understanding that “This is the Messiah that we have just put to death!” But He is resurrected just as the Scripture said He would be. It was a Jewish story! It continues to be a Jewish story! We are, as Gentiles, grafted into the Jewish story…

When people start studying rabbinically…their whole understanding of Scripture is transformed. Their lives are transformed. A fire gets lit in their gut to know what The Bible really says and then the world changes. The world changes when the leaders’ hearts change. We have to share what we’ve learned. I am not a biblical scholar but I studied with the best scholars in the world and, as a result, I try to share what they shared with me.

So, the movie The Way had to happen in its entirety, its fullness. Then we started writing the book. It’s not a curriculum. We have that coming along too. That’ll be out in the fall – in October, I believe. But this is a companion learning tool so that people that watch the movie are gonna go “Wait a minute! I wanna know more…I am devoted to sharing with people the truth that I have learned along the way.

The fact that The Rock, the Road and the Rabbi became a publishing phenomenon well into the 700,000 area of books and CDs and all of that sold. It’s just miraculous to me. It encourages me that people truly do have a desire to know truth and go deeper than what we’ve been taught. People are hungry.

JWK: In terms of basic life lessons, what is it you hope people take from the book and the movie?

KLG: I want people to take from the book and the movie that The Bible is not some 5,000-year-old dead book. It is alive and active and cuts to the bone and the marrow, down to our stem cells. It is the most alive thing on the planet to this day…I want them to come away – if they’re believers – with a newfound power in their life and a newfound fire to understand Scripture and follow Jesus. And, if they’re new to all of this, I want them to come to know that God loves them and has spent millennia after millennia seeking to find them (and) that they will be found and they will be redeemed by the power of the Holy Spirit.

John W. Kennedy is a writer, producer and media development consultant specializing in television and movie projects that uphold positive timeless values, including trust in God.