Posted on 03/09/2004 5:04:23 AM PST by Celtjew Libertarian
From all I'm reading, the central question surrounding Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ is whether or not Gibson is portraying the Jews as responsible for the death of Jesus and whether or not this is anti-Semitism. I have a different question, if you'll pardon it coming from a non-Christian who's not seen the movie and isn't terribly familiar with the Christian Bible: So what?
I understand history. I understand that blaming Jews for the death of Jesus was a cause of anti-Semitism in the past. Heck, my grandparents and great-grandparents came to America, fleeing that mindset. I understand that there are still nutcases around -- perhaps entire nutty societies, though not in the U.S. -- who hold this to be the case and say that today's Jews are responsible for what happened almost two-thousand years ago.
But I also understand that this is the United States. This is a nation founded on the belief in the individual. An American cannot legally be punished for the actions of their family (the one exception being parents sometimes being held responsible for the acts of minor children). What a parent does is not held against their children.
By that bedrock belief, to hold the Jews of today responsible for whatever was done by the Jews of Jesus's time -- and even then, by those relatively few Jews who called for Jesus's death (Jews were already rather widely dispersed through the Roman Empire at that time, even if the Diaspora had not yet occurred) -- is un-American. More than blaming children for the actions of parents, it is blaming people of today for what their potential fifty-plus-times-great-grandparents may or may not have done and said. It goes against the American belief of individual responsibility.
Again: So what? Those worried that Gibson's move is anti-Semitic could easily say, "Maybe the Jews killed Jesus. Maybe they didn't. But no one can be held responsible for what occurred two-thousand years ago." But they don't. Why not?
Take a look at the politics of most of the critics. They're on the political left. And among the views held on the political left is support of affirmative action. Many on the left support slave reparations. Many blame American actions for the acts of 9/11.
In short, most of the left believe in collective guilt. They may not call it that, but penalizing members of certain groups and rewarding others for misdeeds in the past is collective guilt. The left holds individuals guilty for the acts of their ancestors. The time span may be compressed, but the American left has the same anti-individualist mindset that murdered Jews, claiming they were responsible for the death of Jesus.
For the left to confront the possibility that Jews -- not THE Jews, but some Jews -- may have been complicit in the death of Jesus would require them to say that there is no such thing as collective guilt. For a political mindset that has its policies grounded in this same collective guilt, this is an impossible thing to do. Thus, they must attack the movie.
So what? So that.
The scriptures are replete with the evidence that the death of Jesus was volitional and purposeful. Neither the Jews nor the Romans were even able to lay hands upon Him until the appointed time. He died for the sin of ALL mankind for ALL time in ALL ages.
This fixation on "who killed Jesus" points to our continued belief that somehow we have something to do with the eternal plan of God. How arrogant of little man.
Pretty simple formula.
What goes in, comes out.
Most foreign countries do not have a problem, for the few that do, I see no change whatsoever.
This was accented in the film.
I still have a problem with all the children in the theatre. Reading about it is OK for children, seeing it is quite another thing.
Take a look at the politics of most of the critics. They're on the political left. And among the views held on the political left is support of affirmative action. Many on the left support slave reparations. Many blame American actions for the acts of 9/11.Leftism can best be understood as the political implications of the perspective of journalism.In short, most of the left believe in collective guilt. They may not call it that, but penalizing members of certain groups and rewarding others for misdeeds in the past is collective guilt.
Given a free, competitive journalism whose profits depend critically on circulation (if expenses are 90% of revenue, a 10% increase in revenue would double your profit), journalism should be expected to be dominated by the most facile and demagogic reporting--it's only natural.
And collective guilt is precisely a facile and demagogic excuse for lovingly retelling stories of past evils. A natural topic for cheap excitement. And as the example of reparations for slavery illustrates, the collective to which guilt is assigned need not exclude the target audience; the putatively guilty find it impossible to ignore the accusation.
So naturally, collective guilt is a component of the perspective of journalism--and the politician who sails down the propaganda wind of (so-called "objective") journalism--the leftist--is attracted to collective-guilt mongering. Link to this thread on the leftist perspective of journalism.
Whatever may be said about the ministry of Jesus, it seems beyond dispute that, at least for a short time, he succeeded in exciting the public imagination, to the point where a popular uprising might well have been fomented. Under the circumstances, can anyone blame the leading Jews (or any Jew at all, for that matter) for wanting him out of the way?
There's a lot more implied than shown in this movie... except for parts of the flaying scene, most of the violence is off-camera.
Compare this movie to something like, say... Aliens, with creatures exploding peoples' stomachs on-camera - you start to realize that this movie isn't all that violent compared to a LOT of what comes out of our movie industry. I think the "too violent" cries are mostly people who don't realize how much they were fooled by great production and camera work.
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