Joel Osteen’s New “Mary” Movie on Netflix is a Non-Starter

A survival thriller type film that vastly misses the mark…

New to Netflix this month is the film “Mary”, written to appeal to all denominations and all religious traditions. Producer Joel Osteen (Pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas), consulted Christian, Jewish, and Muslim leaders when producing the film.

Read that again and let it sink in for a minute…

Like a vapid Osteen sermon, “Mary” misses the biblical mark, and it is apparent the producers didn’t even try. In the film’s attempt to gain a wider audience, it fails to deliver anything spiritually substantive.

Osteen pimps the movie by promising that you’ll “See Mary like you’ve never seen

her before.” The Bible doesn’t tell us much about Mary. But her character opens the film with, “You may think you know my story. Trust me, you don’t.”

Really?

Where did they find some special knowledge unavailable to anyone else for over 2000 years? … like when Mary goes to the city to explain herself to Joseph, and she is nearly stoned by a mob, but Joseph helps her escape?

John, in the very last chapter of the New Testament, tells us this…

I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this scroll: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this scroll. 19 And if anyone takes words away from this scroll of prophecy, God will take away from that person any share in the tree of life and in the Holy City, which are described in this scroll. (Revelation 22:18-19)

Director of “Mary,” D.J. Caruso, said, “The world needs to see Mary, and they need to see her in a new light. My goal was to see if I could present Mary in a beautiful way, in a way that a younger audience could see her and relate to her as not just this beautiful, iconic holy mother, but as a young girl who had to make sacrifices and struggle and deal with things that a lot of the contemporary youth are dealing with today.”

Trust me, kids today do not have to contend with the things that Mary had to deal with in first-century Israel, including seeing her son suffering a brutal death on the cross. That’s because they are not Biblically literate enough to see falsehood when they encounter it.

Another off-kilter comment in the movie comes when her cousin Elizabeth tells her, “Trust the strength inside of you.” That sounds more like something you’d hear in a sugar-syrupy Joel Osteen sermon.

We have no strength inside ourselves… any true strength we do have comes from the Holy Spirit.

The film has received mixed reviews from critics. Ronak Kotecha of The Times of India rated the film three out of five stars, writing that it "falls short in its quest to be truly divine". He noted that “The screenplay felt restrained and underwhelming, contrary to what one would expect from a religious epic. He commended the performances of Noa Cohen and Anthony Hopkins, but noted, “The supporting cast's performances were constrained by the script's lack of dimensionality with regards to their characters.”

Strangely, the film’s antisemitic critics fault Osteen for the one thing he did get right… casting a Jewish woman, Noa Cohen, as Mary, the mother of Christ.

What would have made them happy?

Perhaps a rank feminist, woke, antisemitic gentile college girl?

Watch it if you will… but do so with discernment…

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