Posted on 03/18/2004 6:40:27 AM PST by logos
It took ten days from the time "The Passion of the Christ" opened in theaters throughout the country before I was able to get in to see it for myself. I could have gone alone and gotten in earlier, but because I wanted to go with a group from my church it took a little longer to buy a sufficient number of tickets on the same day to accommodate all of us. Consequently, I had almost a full year to read all the reviews of the movie, many of which were written by people who hadn't yet seen the film, and I was aware of the on-going controversy surrounding Mel Gibson's movie.
I had developed a sneaking suspicion that there was a common element in all the reviews panning the movie, and once I saw it for myself, I became convinced of it. "The Passion of the Christ" is first and foremost a love story, but not the warm and fuzzy love of our post-modern world. This is a story of divine love, but because divine love is so often misunderstood in today's world of Biblical illiteracy, it is a story that creates for some a profound fear of its message.
All those negative reviews, whether they rang the alarm bells of anti-Semitic hatred, or excessive gore and violence, or even of homophobia, were written on the basic premise that "God is love". And, according to all these reviewers, a God of love simply could not - and would not - be rightly served by Mr. Gibson's documentary (for that's what it truly is) concerning the arrest, trial and death of Jesus. Unfortunately, "God is love" is a bromide, a truncated and limiting description of a God without power, a God without purpose, a God no one in his right mind would want to worship. One can only say "God is love" as the opening phrase of a complex, compound sentence for it to have any meaning.
God is love constrained by justice; God is also justice tempered by love.
If you can understand that more complicated description of God (and no word description of God will ever do Him complete justice), you can begin to understand the true message, not only of "The Passion of the Christ", but also of the gospels themselves.
And to the God of justice/love there are only two legitimate reactions: one of love responding to love; and one of fear of God's judgment. The love of God expressed through the passion of Christ is not restricted to only those who are already Christians, nor is the fear of God's justice felt only among those thought to be outside the Christian faith. The overriding effect of Gibson's movie is that it holds up a mirror in which each viewer is able to see the state of his own soul, and that sudden, shocking picture each individual sees of himself generates either love or fear of a God that is as much justice as He is love.
The frightening thing about "The Passion of the Christ" for some people is the fact that each person takes out of it precisely what that person took into it. One who is receptive to the idea of a God of both love and justice recognizes immediately his own guilt for what is done to Jesus in those last agonizing hours on earth. I betrayed Him. I denied Him. I arrested Him. I found him "guilty". I turned Him over to be scourged. I sentenced Him to death on a cross. I placed the thorns on His head. I drove the nails into His hands and feet. I raised His body up on that cross. I pierced His side with a sword. I killed Him.
It was my sin, and the sin of all humanity, that demanded God's justice. And it is God's love that exacted that justice - for me - from Him. For me, and millions like me, "The Passion of the Christ" is a divine love story.
There are those, however, for whom the very idea of sin is repugnant. They have been fooled into believing that if there is a God at all, it's a God who loves us for what we are instead of what He insists that we would be. These are the people, both inside the church and out, who find fault in Gibson's movie where there is no fault.
Let's take their charges one at a time. First, that this movie is "anti-Semitic". They say that all the evil in the movie, or most of it, anyway, is done by Jews, and caricaturized Jews, at that, but it simply isn't so. To be sure there are Jews who do evil things in this movie taken from the gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but with the one exception of Pilate's wife, all the "good" people in the movie are also Jews - Jesus Himself; Mary His mother; all those in the crowds who scream for the torture to stop; the woman who rushes to give him a drink of cool water; and others. This is hardly a picture painted to show all the Jews in the world as evil beasts.
The most often stated complaint of anti-Semitism, however, contrasts the blatant evil of the high priest Caiaphas, a Jew, against the kindly words and demeanor of Pilate, the Roman governor. We readily see the hatred and open vindictiveness of Caiaphas, a man determined to maintain his power and authority, which Jesus very much threatened, but they fail to see the evil of Pilate's cowardice. Pilate determined that Jesus was innocent of any criminal charge, and he had the authority to set Him free. Yet, because he was a coward unable to withstand the anger of the mob or the possible ire of Rome if a riot broke out, he condemned an innocent man to a horrible, agonizing death. Yes, he agonized over his decision, he fretted that he was doing the wrong thing, but in the crunch he decided in favor of his own well-being and against the life of one who had done no wrong. This is the evil of cowardice and it is just as pernicious as the evil of blatant hatred.
We don't see this evil in the movie, though, because we see it so often in daily life ... in the bureaucrat, for example, who insists on enforcing some picayune rule instead of doing what is right in a particular human situation ... in ourselves as we turn our heads and walk silently by as some injustice is done on the streets of our town to a fellow citizen. The only people who will see anti-Semitism in this movie are those who want to see it, or those who find it in themselves before they enter the theater.
The second charge against "The Passion of the Christ" is that it is excessively violent, and too gory for even modern standards of cinema entertainment. I would agree that the violent whipping Jesus receives at the hands of the Roman soldiers is gory, bloody, excruciatingly horrible, even excessive by any standard. At the same time, there is no question that it is also historically accurate. Roman soldiers administered beatings such as the one depicted in the movie all the time; in that sense, there is nothing unusual about the beating inflicted on Jesus. I would not take a young child to see this movie. But is the complaint really about excessive violence?
Where were all the complaints about other recent excessively violent movies? Why no outrage over "Kill Bill"? Where were all these people who are overly concerned about the public's sensibility when one of the main characters in "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" shot and killed a chef simply because he had been served a perfect steak, and such an event could not be allowed to ever happen again? Are these critics of "The Passion of the Christ" telling us that motiveless, senseless violence is okay, but that violence for a reason is "excessive"? Or is it the motive behind the violence in "The Passion of the Christ" that they can't abide?
In addition, the movie makes it clear that Jesus could have avoided all the pain to come - had He wanted to do that. He could have stopped the proceeding at any point He decided He'd had enough, whether during the scourging, on the way to the cross, or even once on the cross itself. Even if this were only some new kind of horror flick, and nothing more, anyone who is able to see and talk to Satan and resist his temptations would have the power to walk away from the pain to come as a thing simply logical to the plot. But of course, this film is much more than some new kind of scary movie.
To accept the message of this movie, and of the gospels of the Bible at the same time, is to accept the idea that there is a God, and not only does He exist, He is sovereign, He is all-powerful, and that He will not be denied His will in all things. It is to accept the idea that there is a God of justice who demands that our debt for sin be paid; it is to accept that this same God has such a love for His human creation that He will exact this debt from Himself, in the person of Jesus, His Son incarnate. To accept the message of this movie, conveyed so forcefully through the violence done to Jesus, is to accept the fact that we are finite, sinful creatures of a loving, yet demanding, creator God. I contend that those who criticize this movie for its excessive violence are really denying the motive behind the violence, and not the violence itself.
Then, after seeing the movie for myself, I read a review that complained of its homophobia. Now, I must admit I wasn't looking to see if Gibson has slipped any anti-homosexual scenes into the movie while I wasn't looking; even so, on reflection it just wasn't there. It seems that one reviewer saw all this homophobia in the one scene where Jesus is taken before Herod, and that this homophobia is expressed in the overly made up and painted face of Herod and in the fact that one of the members of his harem was male.
Here again, I think that the only way one will find homophobia in this movie, and particularly in the one scene with Herod, is to go in looking for such things in the first place. History tells us that Herod was cruel, vain and despotic; a man who had John the Baptist beheaded rather than suffer personal humiliation for not keeping a foolish promise made in public. He was a man who the Bible tells us had hundreds, if not thousands, of infants killed at the mere threat of a potential usurper to his throne. It is not at all difficult to imagine him as someone hedonistic to the core, and seeing him in make-up simply fit the mental picture I had already had of him from history. Was he also a homosexual? I haven't the faintest idea, nor do I care, since it makes no difference to the message of the move in the least.
As to the man in Herod's harem, if I thought anything at all of his presence there, it would have been that he must have been a eunuch, which would have been historically plausible. And besides, aren't we supposed to be unable to identify homosexuals merely by looking at them? Even if I had seen him as a homosexual, though, I cannot imagine I would have walked out thinking, "Gibson made this movie to denigrate and humiliate homosexuals!" This is a movie about the sin of humanity and the love of God, and the act of reconciliation that bridges the gap between them. There are untold numbers of sinful acts that could have been depicted; what difference does it make which?
Other, lesser complaints were made about this film, the most prominent of which is that it isn't Biblically accurate when it depicts Satan's presence with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Granted, this appearance is not reported in any of the gospels. On the other hand, we are told that after Satan had tempted Jesus in the wilderness, to no avail, he departed from Him to wait for a "more opportune time". Is Satan in the garden with Jesus Biblically accurate? No. Is it a plausible use of poetic license? Yes. Did it detract from the accuracy of the message conveyed throughout the movie? Not at all.
In the final analysis I am comforted by all the controversy about "The Passion of the Christ". Jesus told us, "Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. For from now on in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law." (Luke 12:51-53) If every reviewer said the same things about this movie, either in a positive or a negative vein, I would know that Gibson got it all wrong. Because it is now obvious that this movie speaks in love to some and induces fear in others, it must be true to the original script.
My recommendation would be this: if you know who and Whose you are, definitely go experience this once-in-a-lifetime event; it will strengthen your faith. If you're not afraid of what you will see in the mirror held up before you by this movie, go see it. If you've already judged "The Passion of the Christ" without seeing it, don't bother going to the theater; like it must have been 2,000 years ago to look Christ in the face, you will be unable to avoid the truth in His gaze from the screen. You may not like that truth, you may not agree that it is the truth, you may want to sidestep His truth at all costs, but however you react to it, His truth, once known, is relentless. The gospel heard (or seen, in this case) is a decision made. There are no "maybes" allowed.
It's that kind of a movie; one simply must talk about it...
Well said, logos. The misunderstanding of this basic truth is at the root of most all the confusion I have encountered regarding the nature of God and His ways.
;^)
Absolutely. It is this misunderstanding of divine love that I find at the root of almost all the negative reactions to this film. We do, indeed, live in a Biblically illiterate society.
So true.
Because of other commitments I've only been to see it once, but I will definitely go again before Good Friday.
The reason, of course, is that you're right. That's why one should really find a knowledgeable editor before letting anything out into the public square.
Oh, well, I'll fix that on the re-write.
And here's the real nasty thing: the truth is, it was worse.
Dan
Much worse. I just found this...
A Review from a Biomedical Engineering Perspective
It's .pdf so it takes awhile to load - and it's long - but it shows that Gibson was indeed temperate in his depiction.
Believe me, you're among the last to find out.
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