Posted on 03/10/2004 2:42:00 PM PST by ambrose
The big five losers from 'The Passion'
SHMULEY BOTEACH Mar. 10, 2004
Rather than being a wild triumph for Christianity, The Passion of the Christ has created a long list of losers. Here are the top five:
1. Christian conservatives whose ability to protest violence in Hollywood films has now been severely compromised.
The Christian community in the US earned my abiding respect for serving as the foremost guardians of the morality of the American nation. There are literally hundreds of Christian organizations in the US devoted to enforcing standards of decency in Hollywood, strengthening marriage, and teaching young teens to abstain from sex rather than use a condom.
But the Christian community's enthusiasm for The Passion has dealt a catastrophic blow to its credibility in condemning violence in films and squalid video games such as Grand Theft Auto. Gibson's movie is one of the most brutal and bloody in the history of film and rivals The Texas Chainsaw Massacre for sheer gore.
No doubt my Christian brethren would argue that the violence in The Passion is warranted, given the fact that the subject matter is religiously inspiring. But I predict that Hollywood directors famous for gratuitous violence, such as Quentin Tarantino and Oliver Stone, will now find convincing arguments that violence in their films also serves an important social purpose.
2. Mel Gibson, who emerges as a talented fanatic at best and a full-blown loon at worst.
Yes, I know, every commentator has painted Mel as the big winner in this brouhaha since his Aramaic movie defied all expectations and so far earned him a cool $200 million. But money is not everything, and Mel must now contend with his new reputation as a violence-obsessed religious fanatic who said that all Protestants, including his own wife, are destined for hell, who claimed that the Holy Ghost helped him direct his film, and who has a Holocaust-denying anti-Semitic dad to boot.
Mel's violent streak has also been much in evidence. As New York Times columnist Frank Rich writes, "If he says that he wants you killed, he wants your intestines 'on a stick' and he wants to kill your dog - such was his fatwa against me in September - not only is there nothing personal about it but it's an act of love."
When the hoopla is over and Mel is searching for a new project, he'll be hard-pressed to find another controversial biblical story that guarantees controversy and profit. After all, you really can't much improve on the charge that the Jews killed God.
3. Jewish conservatives, many of whom now feel alienated from their Christian colleagues and are wondering who are their authentic allies. The Passion has forced upon politically conservative Jews like myself a horrible choice: either betray Jewish interests by pretending that a movie making the charge of deicide is no big deal and playing sycophant to the much larger Christian market by praising the film - a choice all too many high-profile Jewish conservatives have made; or be told that you are endangering Israel by undermining Christian support for the Jewish state.
But I reject the choice between the interests of the Jewish people versus the interests of the Jewish state. Any Christian friend whose support can so quickly evaporate when we object to being falsely portrayed as god-killers in a movie is hardly an ally.
PASSIONATE ADMIRERS of the Christian community, like myself, now feel distant from and disillusioned by our Christian counterparts. Where is Christian sensitivity to an allegation that has led to the death of millions of Jews throughout the ages?
I have been attacked by Franklin Graham on US television for opposing this film. His father Billy, one of America's finest sons and its foremost evangelist, has - for all his greatness - labeled Jews "devilish" in a secretly taped conversation with Richard Nixon.
If such an educated man can develop a negative view of Jews based on the gospel's depiction of Jewish culpability for the death of Christ, what conclusions will the less educated draw as they are shocked by the bloody images of Jews demanding the crucifixion of Jesus? 4. Jews for Jesus.
I have thrice debated leading Jewish-Christian missionary Dr. Michael Brown on the messiahship and death of Jesus. People like my friend Mike must now defend a deeply anti-Semitic film that portrays his own people as devilish murderers who crucified the Creator, thus giving the lie to Jewish-Christian's central argument that believing in Jesus is not a betrayal of the Jewish people. 5. The Christian faith.
The biggest loser of all, tragically, is the Christian religion, which is now portrayed as a religion of blood, gore, and death rather than of blessing, love, and life.
Judaism and its daughter religion, Christianity, were a radical departure from the pagan world's earlier cults of death. Both emphasized the idea of righteous action on this earth and both were based on the Hebrew scriptures' demand for moral excellence and the need to perfect the world in God's name. Even in the New Testament, the passion of Christ occupies at most a chapter or two in each of the gospels, while the life of Jesus is spelled out more than 10 times that number.
But Mel Gibson, in his wearisome, monotonous, and numbing depiction of endless blood and gore, utterly ignores things like Jesus's beautiful ethical teachings from the Sermon on the Mount, focusing entirely on the horrors of the crucifixion.
Gibson tells us that what made Jesus special was not that he lived righteously but that he died bloodily. Mel Gibson - who told interviewers that he contemplated suicide before making this film - is clearly obsessed with violence and death.
The Passion is an evangelical tool. Is that really Christianity's central message - not that Jesus lived an inspirational life by which the faithful should be roused but that he died a horrible death for which the sinners should feel responsible? Indeed, the only winners emerging from The Passion are Islamic extremists who will no doubt take pleasure in seeing Jews and Christians squabbling at a time of considerable danger to both Israel and the United States.
But rather than blame the Jews for simply defending themselves against Mel Gibson's attack, let's place the blame squarely where it belongs - on Mel Gibson, who could easily have made an inspirational movie about the life and death of Christ without blaming the Jews for Jesus's death and without mixing in enough blood to fill the Jordan River. Instead, he decided to protect his investment by courting controversy and has made hundreds of millions of dollars.
Will he put some of that money toward educating Jews and Christians about their common heritage and kinship? Only time will tell. And in that telling, we will better be able to gauge Mel's motives and sincerity.
The writer is a nationally syndicated talk radio host in the US and author of 14 books.
I agree he wasn't hysterical but he wasn't reasoned either.
"Even in the New Testament, the passion of Christ occupies at most a chapter or two in each of the gospels, while the life of Jesus is spelled out more than 10 times that number."
"Gibson tells us that what made Jesus special was not that he lived righteously but that he died bloodily."
This is the most ridiculous argument about the film that I hear from so many friends who have seen the movie.
This movie was about The Passion, not a guide to His teaching.
And the fact is, that Christians believe Christ died for their sins and he was not murdered by the Jews, but gave His life
Apparently there are some folks on this planet that think the Crucifix is some sort of prop. I know that when I was growing up, I shuddered every time I ever saw the cruelty and wonder to this day why people wear the Crucifix instead of just the cross...they are stronger folks than I...to be reminded every day just how much one man suffered for their sins...I can't carry that kind of guilt.
By the mear fact that a Holocost museum exists in a country where no Jewish Holocost occured and the taxes I'm bled to support Israel is all the proof of sensitivity thats needed. Without the U.S. and its overwealming Christian population, Israel would be nothing but a smudge! And yet I've heard more hatred towards Gibson and Christianity from Jews then I've heard from Christians hatred towards the Jews after they've seen the movie! Wheres the rampid Anti-Semitism this movie was to spark?
This is a nonsensical statement in multiple ways.
1. To people who do not accept the divinity of Jesus, he was simply a man, not God. Therefore the charge "X killed Jesus" can not be a charge of "deicide" against X; at worst it's a charge of murder. (In the case of Jesus, I'm inclined to think it wasn't even murder; he was given capital punishment by the ruling authority of his time and place, and let's face it, he does seem to have been guilty of the blasphemy charge against him, so even if his execution was bad, how is it "murder"?) But to say that "X killed Jesus" is a charge of "deicide" is to imply that Jesus was God, which as you say is manifestly not what any (conventional) Jew thinks. So then how could any Jew think he, or anyone else, is being charged with "deicide" in the first place?
2. Even if one accepts that it's a charge of deicide (by saying "well it's deicide in Christians' eyes anyway..."), you gloss over whom that charge is against as if it is but a small detail. At the very most, it is a charge being levelled against (a) some Romans (and perhaps e.g. Syrian or other foreign soldiers working for the Romans) who comprised or worked for the ruling authority in Judea at the time, and (b) whichever Jews (i.e. Sanhedrin) may have been involved in turning Jesus over to those Romans from (a), or who may have worked for/collaborated with the Roman rulers (we know there *were* some, e.g. Saul/"Paul", right?).
But all of the people being charged in (a) and (b) are now dead and have been so for nearly 2000 years.
So when you say "it's a charge of deicide!" my reaction is, "yeah, ok, so what?" First of all, someone killed Jesus, so we gotta charge someone with this "deicide" (if that's what you believe)...isn't that ok? Second, it's a charge being made against a group of people X. All of the individual people in that group X are dead. Why should anyone today, Jewish or otherwise, feel "hurt" by identification of some or all of the individual people that group X?
Also, is group X somehow not allowed to contain any Judeans? Was it metaphysically impossible for any Judeans 2000 years ago to have had a hand in getting Jesus killed? From the way detractors now talk, one would think so. To say "'the Jews' didn't kill Jesus" is perfectly reasonable, of course, but to say that "NO Jews even had a hand in killing Jesus" is stretching things. I don't know that. Are not Jews capable of this aspect of human experience (gettin' someone killed)? Why infantilize Jews so much that we deny the very possibility that some of them had a hand in this deed? But, you see what I'm saying, I am sure.
Jews have been persecuted and died as a result of Jew-hatred and/or the deicide charge.
That is of course true but it does not mean I have to take a claim like "Mel Gibson's movie charges 'The Jews' with deicide" seriously if that claim is, in fact, factually untrue. I don't see how it's even within the realm of possiblity that a narrative film depicting Jesus' execution "charges 'The Jews' with killing Jesus". It can charge some Jews with doing it but I cannot for the life of me imagine how it can charge "the" Jews.
There may indeed be people who walk away from Mel Gibson's movie with the nonsensical impression that "'The Jews' killed Jesus" but those people are frickin' idiots, and I will say so at every opportunity if I ever encounter them.
Still doesn't justify the nonthinking criticism being levelled against Gibson's film. Not his fault there are frickin' idiots in the world.
Largely, I agree. I comment, however, on your #4: They could accept [Christians professing their own faith that humanity is responsible], without accepting the divinity of Christ personally. They could at least accept what Christians say about the Christian religion.
My theory is that those who cannot accept #4 believe they are taking Christians on their actions, not their words. And there are different versions of history in play here. There is a version of history that says, for example, Passion plays whipped Hitler's Germany into genocidal frenzy.
Wow; what a beautiful thought. I'll have to chew on that bright note for a good long time. Thanks.
"Attacks"? You're peddling the line that there've been "attacks" because of "The Passion" on Jews? What do you mean precisely by "attacks"?
Substantiate your charges, or I don't see why we need this Rodney King wisdom.
Gibson and "The Passion" have been under attack for as long as a year before its release, mostly by people who hadn't seen it. There're still a lot of people---including a lot who haven't bothered to pay $8 to see the film---who throw around the most outrageous charges about the film---such as that it uses "Nazi" techniques, and comparing it to Leni Riefenstahl's movies. Nothing of the same order of rhetorical magnitude has been served up from Gibson's defenders, much less the physical intimidation or violence routinely predicted as a result of the film's release. I don't buy your attempt to morally equate the opposing positions, and I don't consider any of the people making the scurrilous, baseless charges against the film and, directly or indirectly, the tenets of my faith, to be my "friends."
In this case we get: "Gibson tells us that what made Jesus special was not that he lived righteously but that he died bloodily." Um.. yeah. Because the latter brought us salvation, while the former gave us our example of Christian virtue. Nothing wrong with examples of Christian virtue, but salvation ranks higher on the list of import for Christians.
This would be obvious to any self-described "PASSIONATE ADMIRER of the Christian community" who was passionate enough to educate himself about why Christians have placed such central importance on the passion of Christ for the past two millenea. In artwork, prayer, and theology there can be no denying that Christ's "bloody death" has a pretty darn important role on by itself in the Christian faith. It doesn't take personal belief in that to show a basic understanding of it, and tolerance for it among a group you claim to admire.
It takes a staggering amount of ego-centrism to ignore Christian understanding of the Christian faith, and focus solely on what it means to Jews. News-flash: American Christians don't have pogroms against the Jews. The suggestion that viewing this movie is going to lead them to it is simultaneously a stupid reading of history, and a thumb in the eye of modern Christians.
It's very insightful to see people like Mr. Boteach equating American Christians with proto-Nazis, which is essentially what this critique amounts to. In his eyes, we're a couple of propagandistic movies away from lighting the ovens of our own Auschwitz. Nice to know what your "passionate admirers" truly think about you.
Desperation. She's an apologist for those who attack Christianity cloaked in critiquing this movie, for reasons I can't begin to imagine.
Well, that is the thing with criticism of The Passion. Left-wingers in general, and Frank Rich in particular, have a political/cultural problem with Christianity. Their Leftist designs include the grinding into powder the entire edifice of Western Civilization, in which Christianity is a major constituent. The Passion is a powerful Christian counter blow, and if it cannot be squelched, it must be contained. For this reason the hysterical attacks against The Passion and its creator. None more hysterical than Frank Rich.
Frank Rich's anti-Passion frothings have, I believe, been primarily from his perch on the NYT's Op-Ed page, not the Arts section. Yes, Veronica, Rich has been plenty political about The Passion.
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