Director Regardt van den Bergh set the plumb line. "Bruce, I believe the Lord wants us to film the reality of Jesus Christ as opposed to the 'religion' of him." Our prayer would not be, "Lord, show us how to make this look beautiful and fantastic," but rather, "Lord, show us how to make this look the way it was."

For me to play God was out of the question. But for me to explore the personality and character of Jesus, the man, was one thing I could do. My mandate was to look at the things Jesus did, the choices he made, the realities he walked in while asking the question, "What does this tell me about the kind of man Jesus was 2,000 years ago?"

Jesus was a real person living a real life. Everything around him was real as well. "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field." As he spoke these words, there had to have been babies crying, people coming and going, donkeys braying, camels doing whatever camels do, a whole mishmash of first-century activities going all around him.

When we filmed the scene of the feeding of the 5,000, what a glorious experience it was! The day was steaming hot in Morocco, where we shot much of the film, the crowd was 2,500 strong, complete with children, animals, and every other visual effect the art department could come up with. The cameras rolled and I walked through the throngs. Little ones were thrust into my embrace left and right. An old woman took my face and kissed it. A basket of loaves and fishes was laid in my hands.

After an hour, a look in the mirror showed sweat running down my neck, robes soiled from top to bottom, hair windblown. Our makeup artist took one glance and threw his arms up in surrender.

It really hit home that remarkable day. That's the way it must have been 2,000 years ago. It was real life, not always pretty. It was people, and people were poor, hungry, oppressed; emotions were running high; there was excitement, celebrating, laughter, and weeping. Field dust and mud was caked between my toes.

While we were filming, a sandal strap broke and I sat on a stump to fix it. Working this strip of leather into a fresh knot, it hit me?Jesus could raise people from the dead, he could feed thousands with a handful of scraps, he could walk across a stormy sea, yet he repaired his sandals with his own hands. I looked at the dirt under my fingernails, and thought, Jesus.

We would weave that small detail?repairing a pair of sandals?into the next shot where Jesus tells Peter to go fishing for the temple tax. Clumsy Peter, so perplexed and full of doubt with the Son of God sitting quietly in a doorway, enjoying the breeze, repairing his well-worn sandal in preparation for the journeys ahead.

I was doing my homework with great pleasure. Through it all Jesus became so intensely real, so much more tangible, so much more glorious and awesome?so much more God.

When an actor approaches a character, he grabs the script (in my case, the Gospel) and looks at what the character does, asking the question, "Why would he choose to do that, as opposed to anything else he could have done? What does it say about the character's priorities and motivations?about the character's heart?"

That made me realize something that hadn't occurred to me before: Jesus had a choice. I always had thought of Jesus just automatically blazing through his Father's will, fulfilling Scripture, doing a miracle here and there, all the way to Calvary, thank you very much.

But if anybody had a choice in life, it was the Son of the Living God. No one was forcing him to do the things he did. He chose to obey his Father every step of the way.

I looked at the Gospel story, highlighted the things Jesus did, all the time asking, "Why choose that?" in the context of the specific circumstances and human dynamics he was involved in. The final conclusion? He was a man with a whole different "why" steering his actions and governing his behavior. He was a man with one vastly different heart.