Posted on 02/26/2004 10:06:37 AM PST by Pyro7480
Last week, I wrote a preamble column about Mel Gibson's new movie, The Passion of the Christ. I said that I was extraordinarily optimistic. In fact, I have never before wanted to enjoy a movie so much.
But I was wrong. Oh, how wrong I was.
I love God and Jesus with all my heart, but for the life of me I cannot embrace this film.
Forgive me if I cause offence, but I have to be honest.
This is some pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic blood cult. It is populated with medieval-type caricatures, screaming out of context, laughing at suffering.
Everyone is gruesome and grotesque, apart from a handful of people such as the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene and the apostle John. Mary, by the way, is hardly off of the screen, when in fact she is seldom mentioned in the Gospel accounts.
Herod is some cross-dressing lunatic, the Pharisee leaders, some of the brightest men of the age, are all obscene brutes and the Roman soldiers and the mob resemble crazed gargoyles.
No, no, no! The point has been completely missed. Hate me if you like, but please listen. The point is this:
We would have crucified Him. We would crucify Him. You, me, us. We'd smile, be tolerant and loving, do the right thing as we see it, and crucify Him. Then go home to hug our children and talk about how bad the world had become.
Evil seduces and beguiles. It is frequently attractive. If it was as ugly as director Gibson has portrayed, Jesus would not have had to die in agony. And agony is what it was.
Modern Christians have tended to play down the blood and gore of the Messiah's death. But Gibson compensates to such an extreme that he gives us a virtual fetish.
Indeed, the scene where a Roman soldier plunges his spear into Christ's side is, I am sorry, almost like something out of Monty Python. The soldier and those around him shower in the water and blood that cascades out of Yeshua's body.
I suppose we should not be surprised. Gibson made Braveheart and The Patriot, with all of their disembowelings, throat cuttings and, of course, massive historical absurdities. Somehow I thought he'd be more sophisticated with something this important.
The shame of it all is that we know more about what really happened 2000 years ago now than we have done since shortly after the events actually took place. We think in nuance and truth. Not Gibson. Nor does he appear to have read any of the books written in the past 50 years that make the Gospel story so believable, so fleshy and, thus, so convincing.
One example: Barabas. He was a Zealot leader, possibly a local aristocrat. We read our Hebrew and Greek, know about Essenes, Sadducees and Jewish life and culture. We understand. Yet here he is portrayed as a dribbling psychotic. As are most of the Jews in the movie.
So, is it anti-Semitic? Not really. Jews are generally shown as hideous, stupid and barbaric, but then so are the Romans.
Apart from Pontius Pilate, who is here compassion embodied. The thing is, he was a notorious killer who crucified thousands of people without a second thought.
Movie-making requires subtlety, and The Passion is relentlessly violent and nasty. There is no rhythm, no chance for light and purpose and meaning to shine through.
Yes, meaning. More than pain and suffering, so much more.
The flashbacks seem, with one touching exception depicting Jesus as a child, to be mere attempts to push Catholic eucharistic theology onto the audience.
There are vile moments, resembling outtakes from some remake of The Exorcist. A mob of Jewish children morph into tiny devils with murderous faces. Maggots eat away at a dead mule. Satan creeps around, worms crawling up his nose, carrying a perverse baby with hairy back and adult features. None of this is Scriptural, of course. It is also so, well, so anti-humanity.
I wanted majesty and pathos but was given clumsiness and thumping. Yet God's grace and His love still surround me.
If the movie works for you, I am happy. For me, it is prayer, Bible and a dwelling in a God-given imagination that this hyped Hollywood product can never rival.
Michael Coren is a Toronto-based writer and broadcaster. He can be emailed at info@michaelcoren.com and his web site is michaelcoren.com.
True, forgot his body was already dead from the Romans point of view..
btw, the sword was also a fullfilling of scripture(prophecy)(i.e. a blessing in several ways)...
LIKE YOU COULD KILL the son of GOD... LoL...
One of the ultimate messages of the Passion of Christ.
NOBODY DIES... everybody spends eternity somewhere...
Proving that we are not here for a spritual experience but for a human one... the spirit will live on...
Is God cool or WHAT!.?..
There are EXPERTS and then there are 'experts'.....
Isaiah 291. Woe to you, Ariel, Ariel, the city where David settled! Add year to year and let your cycle of festivals go on.
2. Yet I will besiege Ariel; she will mourn and lament, she will be to me like an altar hearth.
3. I will encamp against you all around; I will encircle you with towers and set up my siege works against you.
4. Brought low, you will speak from the ground; your speech will mumble out of the dust. Your voice will come ghostlike from the earth; out of the dust your speech will whisper.
5. But your many enemies will become like fine dust, the ruthless hordes like blown chaff. Suddenly, in an instant,
6. the LORD Almighty will come with thunder and earthquake and great noise, with windstorm and tempest and flames of a devouring fire.
7. Then the hordes of all the nations that fight against Ariel, that attack her and her fortress and besiege her, will be as it is with a dream, with a vision in the night--
8. as when a hungry man dreams that he is eating, but he awakens, and his hunger remains; as when a thirsty man dreams that he is drinking, but he awakens faint, with his thirst unquenched. So will it be with the hordes of all the nations that fight against Mount Zion.
9. Be stunned and amazed, blind yourselves and be sightless; be drunk, but not from wine, stagger, but not from beer.
10. The LORD has brought over you a deep sleep: He has sealed your eyes (the prophets); he has covered your heads (the seers).
11. For you this whole vision is nothing but words sealed in a scroll. And if you give the scroll to someone who can read, and say to him, "Read this, please," he will answer, "I can't; it is sealed."
12. Or if you give the scroll to someone who cannot read, and say, "Read this, please," he will answer, "I don't know how to read."
13. The Lord says: "These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.
14. Therefore once more I will astound these people with wonder upon wonder; the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."
"The rest of your allegations, especially the implication of poisoning,..."
No allegations. History.
As for the "poisoning" please note I was careful to parenthesize it as follows: (Some claim he was poisoned?). What does that mean to you?
It is obvious your "fair amount of research" on the Jesuits didn't get past the apologits stage.
I respect your desire to drop the subject and only felt it necessary to defend myself against your spurious charges. If, however, you wish information concerning the suppression and/or expulsion of the Jesuits over the years and in predominately Roman Catholic countries, I'd be happy to supply you with references.
In the meanwhile you could possibly gain some enlightenment The Catholic Encyclopedia Unless, of course, you consider it to be a source of anti-Catholic propaganda.
"Blessed is he who finds no occasion of stumbling in me" - Jesus Christ
I got it immediately and realized that some folks do not 'get' Jesus' parables, so they, too, have to be instructed another way so that the point is made.
The 'snake' seen may not 'mean' anything to a newbie, but there IS a gut reaction to snakes, built into humans, and even the most unlearned among us has undoubtably encountered an Adam&Eve picture with the 'snake' entwined around the tree.
Maybe the scene was for THEM: not us.....
That's not Christianity
That's true in a lot of things. The girls want to do someting only because the boys are doing it. They start doing it. The boys stop doing it.
Taken to an extreme you end up with a generation of boys who never become men, and a generation of very unhappy women.
She was at the cross. Pretty big part of the Passion there.
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