ThinkBlog

Highly Acclaimed and Burned in Effigy

Voluminous criticism has been heaped on Mel Gibson for his latest production, The Passion of the Christ. I will answer several of the most common, but first it is essential to the reader to consider what Gibson chose not to do with the film. Neither Christians nor non-Christians will find this film preachy: there is no soft underbelly of evangelical pedagogy for viewers (or reviewers) to deflect their questions onto and so sidestep the real message and thrust of the work. The movie is also not intended to be a delightfully benign frolic with a cartoonish Anglo-Jesus through a few parables, and it’s not meant to be a commercialized rehashing of a few hand-selected Gospel sequences. And it’s for that reason that a great deal of the controversy surrounding the film exists.

Depicting with sword-edged accuracy the last twelve hours in the life of Jesus of Nazareth whom Christians call Christ, the Messiah[1], The Passion is a fully immersive experience that dashes to pieces the coolly logical, apathetically aloof recall of the words of the text of the Bible. This movie is a wake-up call for Christians in that it reminds us not to lose sight of the reality of what our Lord went through—and that only physically!—for us to commune with the Father; and a shot of bittersweet truth to the non-believer in that it will leave them asking questions. Not bothering to explain or give background information, the film opens up in the Garden of Gethsemane, a shivering Christ (Jim Caviezel) in agony, sweating beads of blood and praying (Luke 22:44). From the beginning to the end, the viewer is drawn into the reality of the experience: no summaries are made, nor apologies. By the coming of the fade to black and the credits roll replete with riveting score, one is made to feel as though getting up and continuing about daily business is a highly irregular and unnatural action. More than inviting thought, The Passion demands serious contemplation and will exact its payment in mental energy even if unbidden from the one that goes to see it.

Of course, this has been one of the criticisms of the movie, that it leaves the unbeliever somewhat in the dark and asking, “Why?” I would put forth to you that this is not only a good thing and a sign that Gibson accomplished at least the production of a thoughtful film, but also that this movie can and will serve as the crucible in which the souls that see it are tested to see whether they are truly interested or not in knowing the truth surrounding Jesus’ death. As one reviewer[2] puts it, “while we see what happened to Jesus, we understand very little about why.” That is precisely the point. Jesus taught in parables to separate those who really were seeking the truth (and would inquire about their meaning with those more learned, viz. at that time Him) from those who were just coming to Him to see a sensation, a public spectacle that were His miracles and radical teachings. The entirety of this movie is, in addition to being highly historically accurate, a type of extended parable that serves as invitation to the genuinely seeking and as a boring, average spectacle of typically Gibsonian gore for those seeking entertainment.

The most popular criticism leveled against Gibson’s film is that it is anti-Semitic, which can only be fueled by the fact that his father is unfortunately very much and publicly so. Frankly, many of these critics haven’t seen the first minute of the movie, though of course this is not true of them all. But in answer to this, we must go to the source material, as it were, for certainly no serious scholar would simply dismiss the Gospels as an account illustrating anti-Semitism. Though the verses are numerous, only one needs be echoed: when Jesus is presented to the crowd of priests and Jewish peasants standing before Pontius Pilate and that latter washes his hands as though to cleanse himself of the sin for which he was even yet culpable, saying “I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.” Then answered all the people, “His blood be on us, and on our children” (Mt 27:24b-25). They left that out of the movie, of course (bad P. R., imagine that), but that’s in the account and mustn’t be overlooked. Any Christian understands that this movie is no more anti-Semitic than each of us is culpable for having nailed Christ to that tree ourselves, for our own sins. For this reason I can sing with lyricist Matt Morginski[3], “My sin yelled `Crucify!’ / Louder than the mob that day.” I will concede that Caiaphas, the high priest (Mattia Sbragia) was played to seem evil?aye, for was he not even from the account we have?—but what these critics overlook is the brutal glee with which the Roman scourgers portray “man’s inhumanity to man,” as it were. Who’s calling this anti-Roman, in the light of these bitter blows with which they rip open the flesh of Christ and revel in his pain and quite literally in his blood? No one. The cries of anti-Semitism are a knee-jerk reaction from those controversy mongers looking to displace the spiritual impact of the film onto an external scapegoat.

The gory violence of The Passion is itself, apart from questions or anti-Semitic overtones, a final criticism of the movie. This is a valid point to raise, perhaps especially in light of Gibson’s other testosterone-soaked films, but there is a purpose for focusing on the violence of the time before and during Christ’s crucifixion. I don’t purport to speak for Mr. Gibson, but I can see several reasons for doing so. First of all, no question about it, even the most clinically cold description of the experience of being crucified is enough to make for shudders and cringing. Second, and coupled with the first, is the fact that the vast majority of the viewing public in America has been desensitized to the entire message of the Cross. Those who are used to rationalizing violence in movies as stage-blood and other such displacement exercises will do well to remember the grim truth of all that blood being splattered about, all those cries—no, they are not the Lord’s per se, but they do us a great service in reminding us that Jesus, in addition to being the eternal sovereign Lord, is also fully man. The academic message of the cross given in Sunday schools across the country and being taught piecemeal and softly to children almost serves to inoculate them to the shocking truth of what it really all means—from a human standpoint as well as from a spiritual/religious/theological. No, tough guy, go see it and witness what your Creator and Lord did for you; and no, thou Christian, go and visually witness the awesome substance behind the words of the Word.

One Christian’s Opinion

The movie opens in the Garden, a frighteningly powerful, beautiful androgynous figure (Satan) near Christ, whispering doubts and promises objectified by the snake that Jesus crushes mercilessly underfoot (Ge 3:15). We see the Lord sweat blood (Lk 22:44), betrayed with a kiss by Judas (Mt 28:49, Mk 14:45, Lk 22:48), restore the ear of Malchus (Jn 18:10-11), and be dragged away to the crowds in the night. Inside Jerusalem, the Pharisees confront him with false witnesses (Mt 26:60) and accusations of blasphemy (Mk 14:60-65). By the time Peter denies that he knows Jesus that third time, cursing and swearing oaths, the Christian viewer falls to his spiritual knees with Peter, echoing with him that vast, horrified silence in which he meets the eyes of Christ. Through the film thenceforth we see ourselves: have we not spat upon him, mocked him? Are we not culpable?

The Catholicity of the film cannot and should not be ignored; but Gibson does a fabulous job taking iconographic license only where it does not conflict with Scripture, and in a few places where it helps give context to the attentive viewer. As far as I can tell, Gibson arranged the movie according to the “five sorrowful mysteries,” a part of the Rosary Catholics use to pray: (1) the agony in the Garden, (2) the scourging of Christ, (3) the thorned coronation, (4) carrying the cross, and (5) the crucifixion. Catholics will also recognize the “fourteen stations of the Cross,” imagery used in Catholic devotions on Good Friday. The somewhat controversial ones are included in the movie itself, viz. the following: Veronica wipes Christ’s face with a cloth, Mary helping strengthen Christ’s resolve on the way to the Cross, and the three times Christ falls under the weight of the cross itself, though this is not explicit in Scripture (only implied because Simon the Cyrene carries the cross when Christ is no longer able alone). The most striking of the “stations” at which the Catholic imagery will be most striking and poignant is a graphically accurate depiction of the Pietá of Michaelangelo. Perhaps even more striking than the artistic element of that pose, though, is that it does not osbtruct the flow of the movie nor the riveting impact when Mary looks directly into the eyes of the audience. There are those who deplore the film for its Catholicism, but I, a Protestant, do not: I doubt anyone is going to be led astray by the imagery here, and the only ones who will really recognize it are either studied Christians themselves or critics looking to nitpick on that which does not, in this context, matter. The bottom line is that even with all the Catholic and artistic liberties Gibson took, this depiction still does justice to the message behind the cross and resurrection.

And that is perhaps the best reason to see the movie, and the reason that most people who don’t, won’t. The Passion is a powerful film, a deeply moving and concrete depiction of the suffering, death, and resurrection of our Lord. It will challenge you, move you, and leave you asking “why?” In discovering the answer to that question, your entire life could be changed. Do you have the courage to face your faith, Christian? Do you who does not believe have the courage to ask yourself and answer a difficult question?

†

A Few Last Thoughts

I really enjoyed this movie on several levels. Spiritually because it nailed me to my seat and forced me to consider what I put my Lord through for my sin—and that not because he was for any reason beholden, but only because he loves me! But academically and psychologically, I appreciate what Gibson did with this film even apart from my subjective spiritual experience it helped engender. The fact that it was spoken entirely in the authentic languages of the day (Aramaic, a Semitic language closely akin to Hebrew for the Jews; and “street Latin” for the Romans). A student of Hebrew, and a native speaker of English (some of whose root words descend from Latin), I greatly enjoyed listening for those things I could understand. The fact that it was indeed rendered in the original languages leveled the playing field, so to speak: the acting prowess really shone through, especially the second time I saw it. Did you notice the subtle shock with which Pilate regards Jesus when the latter switches from speaking in Aramaic to the Jews to flawless Latin when speaking to Pilate himself? Here is further allegory: the voice of God speaks in every language, and no tongue is unintelligible to the Lord who created the minds from which these languages sprang. (None can claim ignorance of the Gospel!)

Questions invariably come up, and this is where you come in. If you have a question about the movie either before or after having seen it, I’ll do my best to answer it; and I enjoy researching the topics, so have at it. Here are a couple that I’ve either asked or heard most commonly:

Q: Where in the Bible does it say the unredeemed thief on the cross next to Jesus had his eye pecked out? Isn’t this just a gratuitous grotesquerie?
A: There is no direct account of this in the Bible, but I don’t believe it’s either gratuitous or unjustifiable. Hanging on my wall is a verse I wrote down when I was exceedingly unwell with my parents’ authority: from King Solomon’s book of Proverbs, the seventeenth verse of the thirtieth chapter, “The eye that mocks a father, that scorns obedience to a mother, will be pecked out by the ravens of the valley, will be eaten by the vultures” (NIV). The idea here is that, since to obey the Father (that is, the LORD) is to “believe in the one He sent” (Jn 6:29 NIV), that is, Jesus, and the unrepentant thief had just mocked and refused to believe in the Lord (Christ), he was subject to punishment as illustrated here as a literal instance of Proverbs 30:17.

Q: That baby in Satan’s arms—what on Earth was that all about?
A: Gibson answers this himself. “[I]t’s evil distorting what’s good. What is more tender and beautiful than a mother and a child? So the Devil takes that and distorts it just a little bit. Instead of a normal mother and child you have an androgynous figure holding a 40-year-old ‘baby’ with hair on his back. It is weird, it is shocking, it’s almost too much?just like turning Jesus over to continue scourging him on his chest is shocking and almost too much, which is the exact moment when this appearance of the Devil and the baby takes place” (ChristianityToday.com).[4]

[1] Both Christ (from the Greek, khristos) and Messiah (from the Hebrew, meshiakh) mean “Anointed One,” and Christians believe that the Jesus of the New Testament in the Bible is the one foretold to be the Savior of the world.

[2] Garth Franklin of “Dark Horizons”: http://www.darkhorizons.com/reviews/passionn.php

[3] Singer and writer for the Christian ska group The Orange County Supertones.

[4] See this link for the full article.

If you have any more questions, or comments, please don’t hesitate to let me know! I’ll be delighted to answer your queries with solid research and exposition.

[This was written as an informal email to a few friends interested in seeing The Passion, and I wanted to give a plain-English explanation for why Jesus suffered what he did—the reaon for his incarnation, death, and resurrection. What follows is a slightly edited version for public consumption, sometimes making liberal use of slang and idiom. I’ll be glad to clarify if need be!]

Before you see The Passion of the Christ, chronicling the last twelve hours of Jesus Christ’s life, it might help to know what it was all about to begin with. If no one’s ever told you about the Good News, so bear with me and I’ll do my best to tell you of it!

First things first. God’s will for each of our lives is knowable, and it’s in the Bible. “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16).

H’okay, zo. God created us each with the ability to make moral choices, which is something unique to humanity: He created animals, for instance, not to have that capacity, so that’s why when they kill each other out in the field we don’t call it “murder” and why when cats in heat bump & grind with every other cat in heat, we don’t call it “adultery”. Well, since we have this choice, this ability to make moral decisions, we can also make immoral decisions, those things that we know are wrong we can actually choose to do. The ability to choose is what Christians typically refer to as a “free will,” and that’s what they mean.

Thing is, we all have chosen to do wrong. I mean, can anyone really claim that he’s perfect? I sure can’t. I know I’ve lied, cheated, stolen, cursed, profaned the name of God, and, well, you get the idea! The Bible attests to the fact that everyone has committed willfully wrong acts: “There is none righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10). It’s not about making excuses and blaming other people for our actions, either. It’s about taking personal responsibility for the wrong we’ve committed—basically owning up before God and being like “Wow, dude, I was wrong.”

This concept of moral wrong is called “sin,” which is simply a word that comes from the Greek meaning to shoot an arrow at a target and hit something other than a perfect bull’s eye. So when I say “I’m a sinner,” or the Bible says something about sin, what I’m saying is that I’ve shot the arrows of my actions out of the bow of my will and most, if not all, of them have been way off bull’s eye. The Bible confirms that, too! That’s what it means when it says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

What does it really mean to “fall short of the Glory of God” though, really? Well, God is perfect, totally (all-encompassingly!) good, always right, and always fair. He cannot tolerate sin, because what sin is, is willful disobedience of Him (even though once we’ve done it enough sometimes we don’t even think of it anymore) and is moral imperfection. Obviously, Perfection can’t accept Imperfection, or it would become Imperfect itself! Well, to put it more concretely, a full sheet of paper can’t accept a rip, because then the paper would be ripped and it wouldn’t be a full sheet anymore! Habakkuk 1:13 puts it really well: “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong. Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?”

The Bible says “the wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6:23). What that means is, what we deserve for sinning (willfull rebellion against God, remember) is death. Indeed, we get it!—everybody dies, physically. There isn’t anything we can do to stop it, nothing in our own power for us to keep death away—even though we can try to stave it off, of course, with herbs, meds, surgeries, cryogenics, whatever.

But the awesome thing is, just because God is perfect doesn’t mean He’s mean, or spiteful, or some old Zeus throwing lightning bolts down on “sinners” and mere mortals who dare disobey Him. No indeed! God is the very essence of Love (1 John 4:9), and He loves every bit of His creation, especially humans who are special to Him. He doesn’t want you to die, not spiritually, so He made a way for you to get back to Him. Since we’re cut off from Him by the sin and rebellion in our lives, and there’s nothing we can do in and of ourselves to turn it around, He had to make a way Himself—and He did! Here’s the rest of that verse I quoted earlier: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).

He who we call Jesus the Christ is the way we can get back to God! Jesus, the one and only Son of God, came to Earth and lived a perfect, “sinless” life. He didn’t rebel against God at all—he did everything He told him to. Here’s the clincher: the only way that we could get back to God was for Christ, who is fully man and fully God, to die in our places and take the punishment we deserve on himself. And here it is, here’s the heartbreaking truth: he did it! And that, because he loves you, and loves me, enough to have died a brutal and cruel death, being separated from God, when he was the one person that ever lived that didn’t even have to die! Jesus took hell for us, literally, even though we didn’t deserve it: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8).

To accept the death of Christ, this free gift of God, is to obtain eternal life—and peace and joy here on Earth. God doesn’t want us to be separated from Him, He wants us to be truly happy, and in communion with Him: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:16-17). And again, “… Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God…” (I Peter 3:18).

So what does this dude’s death have to do with anything—I mean, even if he was perfect, what good was that if he died? Well! He didn’t STAY dead, and that’s where our (Christians’) hope lies—he rose from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion, and later ascended into heaven. He conquered death itself through the power of God—and that’s why we call it eternal life, because to believe in Christ is to accept this gift and this power over death.

So how does one attain to this eternal life? Well, it’s not simply by believing Jesus was a real dude that lived and breathed and died, it’s about believing that He holds the key to forgiveness for your sins and that he rose again on the third day, and is ready and waiting to accept you if’n you just ask. It’s true! All we have to do is be willing to turn away from our rebellion in God—which is that phrase Christians use, “repent (turn away) from one’s sins” and ask Christ to forgive us for what we’ve done.

“All you gotta do is ask, man.” It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, if you just ask, sincerely, Jesus for forgiveness, he won’t turn you away. In fact, he’s waiting for you to accept him! “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me” (Revelation 3:20). “Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord” (Acts 3:19).

Jesus said, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). It is essential that you come to Jesus as you are. You don’t have to try to clean yourself up or make yourself presentable to God somehow, God’s not the host of a down-south get-together, all you have to do is come to Jesus and be like “Yo dude, I’m dirty and I know you have the soap—will you wash me?” He will, and you’ll be shouting joyfully for the rest of your life. Jesus said, “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out” (John 6:37).

So, what is the means by which one comes to this belief, this trust in Christ as your salvation? Easy dude! All you have to do is pray a conscious prayer, from the heart, something along these lines: “Jesus, I know that I have sinned against you. I know the truth is that I have sinned by my own choice, and I am the one responsible for it. I know that I have earned punishment from You, and that the fair punishment would be death. Jesus, I believe that You died in my place. Forgive me for my sin. I cannot cover or take my sin away, I am relying totally and only on You. You are the only one who can save me. I reject my sin, I turn away from it, I repent. Come into my life, take away my sin, and show me how to live my life in a way that is right and pleasing to You.”

If you pray that prayer from the heart, truly seeking God, being honest with Him, you are saved! That’s all there is to it. Now, granted, there are really only two ways to respond to this—either “yes” or “no”—and you have a choice. God is patient with us: “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). But why put it off? It’s the greatest decision of your life! “For he says, `In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you.’ I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). If you want me to pray with you, I’ll be glad to, any time, day or night, call me up if you’d like (346-0062) or snag me in person. Or, if you just want to talk about it, the offer stands!

So that’s it, that’s the plan of salvation, called the Gospel (comes from Old English meaning “good news,” that’s all): realizing we’ve missed the mark (”sinned”) morally, separating ourselves from God; wanting to change; and accepting Christ’s forgiveness and his empowerment to change.

So now you know, when you see Passion, the reason Christ went through hell—figuratively and literally—because he loves you that much.