What is it with the harassment? ("Passion" movie)

[AmISearching]

Flopfoot:

I have watched ‘King of kings’ and ‘The greatest story ever told’ and I feel that neither of them really managed to bring Christ’s love for us to the big screen nearly as well as ‘The passion’. But thats just my opinion.

Well I haven’t seen either of those, but I would certainly say the same thing about “Jesus of Nazareth” (which I will sadly forever remember for the fact that Jesus looked stoned)

Of course for a full life of Christ movie, I still love the Visual Bible’s Matthew (even if it is the Protestant NIV - but hey its still a great portrayal and well done - and besides - I don’t HAVE to give up my favorite Jesus movie aside from the Passion in order to become Catholic do I? LOL)

 

[Anglican77]

While visiting my Roman Catholic family in Spain last year, all of my family members there were outraged by the movie and thought the concept was horrible (none of them had seen it.) I was kind of shocked since I thought the movie was great and so moving. They didn’t understand why people would sit through all the violence.

 

[Chris_LaRock]

Anglican77:

While visiting my Roman Catholic family in Spain last year, all of my family members there were outraged by the movie and thought the concept was horrible (none of them had seen it.) I was kind of shocked since I thought the movie was great and so moving. They didn’t understand why people would sit through all the violence.

You may want to remind them that, as violent as the movie was, it illistrates perfectly how God was willing to suffer tremendously and die for our salvation.

 

[Reformed_Rob]

Reformed Rob:

Based on the majority of comments above, I realize that I come from a faith tradition that is more adamantly against peculiar Reformation related doctrines, such as not making images of God.

Oh my!!! I’m so sorry!!! I don’t know what I was thinking, but now I realize I should reword the above part in bold to something like…

I realize that I come from a faith tradition that is more adamantly convinced that peculiar Reformation related doctrines, such as the belief that it is wrong to make and use images of God, or Christ, angels, etc. should be taught and upheld today. That would mean that having an actor portray Jesus is wrong, even if Evangelical/Protestants do it, it’s viewed as something offensive to God.

Ok, I’m sure everybody realized that’s what I meant. Probably no one will ever even read this, so it doesn’t even matter…but I have to have a clear conscience.

 

[Chris_LaRock]

Reformed Rob:

Oh my!!! I’m so sorry!!! I don’t know what I was thinking, but now I realize I should reword the above part in bold to something like…

I realize that I come from a faith tradition that is more adamantly convinced that peculiar Reformation related doctrines, such as the belief that it is wrong to make and use images of God, or Christ, angels, etc. should be taught and upheld today. That would mean that having an actor portray Jesus is wrong, even if Evangelical/Protestants do it, it’s viewed as something offensive to God.

Ok, I’m sure everybody realized that’s what I meant. Probably no one will ever even read this, so it doesn’t even matter…but I have to have a clear conscience.

The issue of ‘graven images’? Only images created for one to worship as God are graven images. Exodus 20:4-5 explain it better than I.

If I’m not mistaken, images of angels were put on either the Ark or the holder for the Ark as decorations.

 

[Reformed_Rob]

Chris LaRock:

The issue of ‘graven images’? Only images created for one to worship as God are graven images. Exodus 20:4-5 explain it better than I.

If I’m not mistaken, images of angels were put on either the Ark or the holder for the Ark as decorations.

Yeah, but that doesn’t really matter about Exodus. The anti-Catholics think that you worship the images, and even if you don’t, the more strict think that even if you don’t, it’s still wrong to have statues and the like.

Personally, I think, in order to be completely consistent with Exodus 20, one would have to rule out pictures of birds, your own children, paintings of things, like fish, all kinds of art that depict living animals, that would all be out of the question…
Of course, that would not be at all reasonable, once you start “interpreting Scripture with Scripture.” But, some people are so strict, that that seems like the logical conclusion.

I’m sure everyone sees the hyprocisy in it. You can have images of birds and fish, and not worship the image, but you can’t have images of Jesus Christ, and not worship the image. **Hyprocisy!!! **The Catholic view, on the other hand seems quiet reasonable, the iconism or whatever it’s called. Otherwise, what if, heaven forbid, you had a dream about Jesus!!

My pastor, well, he said he never had dreams??? But if anyone else had a dream and pictured Jesus in the dream, he believed that would be sinful. And it would be worse to form a mental image of Jesus while you’re praying. And far worse to have a statue or make a movie where someone plays Jesus.

Who doesn’t have dreams…???

 

[Forest-Pine]

The only negative conservative outcries I heard centered around the fact that the movie did not show Easter. Not having a concept of Passion Plays, apparently, the argument was that there are plenty of people who suffered terrible fates–the very same one, even. But that what is different about Jesus is that he rose from the dead three days later, which no one else has done. Therefore, they found the movie lacking any substance as it told the “middle” of the story, but without the context of his resurrection, the story was pointless as it was just about some man’s death. Some even went so far as to say that Catholics worship a dead Christ, evidenced by our crucifixes, and the reason that Easter was not portrayed is because we don’t believe that Jesus rose from the dead. Of course, that is false and reading into the situation something they wish to find.

Aside from that, I just heard people say not to see it since it was made by a Catholic. That one obviously didn’t gain much headway!

 

[Chris_LaRock]

sea oat:

Personally, I haven’t met any Protestants (and believe me, I have constant contact with anti-Catholic ones) who resent The Passion for being too Catholic. All the hatred I’ve seen of it has come from non-Christians.

The movie is a little Mary oriented at times. Jesus seems to draw strngth from her at certain instances.

 

[Chris_LaRock]

Reformed Rob:

Yeah, but that doesn’t really matter about Exodus. The anti-Catholics think that you worship the images, and even if you don’t, the more strict think that even if you don’t, it’s still wrong to have statues and the like.

Personally, I think, in order to be completely consistent with Exodus 20, one would have to rule out pictures of birds, your own children, paintings of things, like fish, all kinds of art that depict living animals, that would all be out of the question…
Of course, that would not be at all reasonable, once you start “interpreting Scripture with Scripture.” But, some people are so strict, that that seems like the logical conclusion.

I’m sure everyone sees the hyprocisy in it. You can have images of birds and fish, and not worship the image, but you can’t have images of Jesus Christ, and not worship the image. **Hyprocisy!!! **The Catholic view, on the other hand seems quiet reasonable, the iconism or whatever it’s called. Otherwise, what if, heaven forbid, you had a dream about Jesus!!

My pastor, well, he said he never had dreams??? But if anyone else had a dream and pictured Jesus in the dream, he believed that would be sinful. And it would be worse to form a mental image of Jesus while you’re praying. And far worse to have a statue or make a movie where someone plays Jesus.

Who doesn’t have dreams…???

Some Catholics are guilty of Idolotry. Not all, but some Catholics seek after Mary in the same way one should only seek after God. My mom has a Lutheran bible that has a picture of Jesus on the cover. I doubt Christ was a white man with blue eyes.

I actually had a demon come to me in a dream pretending to be Jesus. I asked him if he loved me as a test, and he turned into an ugly demonic monster. I tore him limb from limb too, rebuking him in the name of Jesus Christ. Wild dreams! the stories I could tell.

 

[Chickamauga]

Chris LaRock:

My mom has a Lutheran bible that has a picture of Jesus on the cover. I doubt Christ was a white man with blue eyes.

That’s called enculturation.

**enculturation - **n : the adoption of the behavior patterns of the surrounding culture.

I’ve seen depictions of Christ that show him as an African, an American Indian,* a Latino, an Asian, etc. Therefore there is nothing wrong with with Northern Europeans depicting Him with Northern European features.

• Note: I use the term American Indian instead of “Native American” for the same reasons Russel Means uses it: http://www.peaknet.net/~aardvark/means.html

 

[Contarini]

Forest-Pine:

The only negative conservative outcries I heard centered around the fact that the movie did not show Easter.

They mustn’t have stuck around till the end then. The movie did show the Resurrection. Briefly and in a very understated way. But how else to show it without making the movie look like a comic book?

I think the portrayal of the Resurrection at the end is one of the numerous strokes of brilliance in the film.

Edwin

 

[Topher]

BioCatholic:

now im not knocking the movie, but his portrayal of Jesus’ beatings and sufferings seemed to go well beyond that of what HUMANS are able to tolerate.

Jesus was human right? now ive seen plenty of people flat pass out from the pain of just a compound femur fracture. lose about 1500cc of blood or the pain causes them to go out.

what gibson portrayed seemed to defy logic as to what a human can tolerate as far as pain and blood loss go.

Navy SEALs and Us Army special forces are taught methods to help cope with pain and blood loss, but i doubt that that knowlegde was around 2000 yrs ago. and then again, it can help only so much.

after the scene of him being flogged with the metal cat-o-9-tails thing, i said to myself that i could have started 2 large bore IV’s, given dopamine infusions, and pumped Jesus full of 1:10,000 epinepherine, and theres just no way he could have stayed conscious, or even alive much longer.

anyone have an idea why Mel would go so far outside the realm of possibility when trying to pain such an accurate portrait of the passion?

Roman soldiers were masters at bringing a person within an inch of their life and then not letting them die because they wanted to prolong the suffering.

 

[2shelbys]

Topher:

Roman soldiers were masters at bringing a person within an inch of their life and then not letting them die because they wanted to prolong the suffering.

This is true. It is also true that Jesus was not just a normal human. An interesting thing is that the injuries visible on the Shroud are not very different than those shown in the movie. There are injuries all over his torso and legs, especially on the back side, and many of them left marks that exactly match the Roman flagrum

 

[Chris_LaRock]

Topher:

Roman soldiers were masters at bringing a person within an inch of their life and then not letting them die because they wanted to prolong the suffering.

You also have to take another thing into consideration. Jesus was the second Adam, and was physically perfect. This physical perfection caused him to be able to sustain more physical injury without dying than the fallen bodies we have.

 

[fellicia]

I have heard people say that it is anti-semetic and that the Jews were portrayed in an overexagerated bad way…Can someone explain this because I don’t see it… The film sticks to the bible and therefore the bible must be anti-semetic… But I thought it was just the truth…truth can’t be anti anything can it?

 

[Reformed_Rob]

fellicia:

I have heard people say that it is anti-semetic and that the Jews were portrayed in an overexagerated bad way…Can someone explain this because I don’t see it… The film sticks to the bible and therefore the bible must be anti-semetic… But I thought it was just the truth…truth can’t be anti anything can it?

Perhaps truth would be considered “anti-evil” or “anti-falsehood.” I’m sure that’s not what you’re meaning though.

What I’ve heard, which is probably what most others would say, is that the movie portrays the Jews as being somewhat responsible for Christ’s crucifixion. Hey, I’m not throwing stones, or being anti-semitic here, but that’s the way the Bible portrays the situation as, also.

There’s the statement about “Let His blood be on us and on our children” Matthew 27:25

That, and similar verses, that people see as anti-semetic (ie. Acts. 2:23), perhaps fuel the claims that Gibson’s Passion film and parts of Scripture are anti-Semitic.

As Pope John Paul II said, “Anti-semitism is a sin against humanity.” We could add that it is also a sin against God, since that’s part of what sin is, it’s offensive to God’s Law.

So, in my analysis, neither the movie or the Bible is anti-Semitic. Perhaps many Semitists (Jews) are perhaps “anti-Passion movie” or “anti-Bible.” But that’s just me making labels, like they are. However, the insights of several Fathers and previous Pope’s still remain valid. The “adjective” Jews are constantly attempting to belittle, water down, or otherwise undermine the Christian faith.

Don’t let it get you down!!

 

[deb1]

Reformed Rob:

Oh my!!! I’m so sorry!!! I don’t know what I was thinking, but now I realize I should reword the above part in bold to something like…

I realize that I come from a faith tradition that is more adamantly convinced that peculiar Reformation related doctrines, such as the belief that it is wrong to make and use images of God, or Christ, angels, etc. should be taught and upheld today. That would mean that having an actor portray Jesus is wrong, even if Evangelical/Protestants do it, it’s viewed as something offensive to God.

Ok, I’m sure everybody realized that’s what I meant. Probably no one will ever even read this, so it doesn’t even matter…but I have to have a clear conscience.

My previous church was Independent Baptist. I know of many Protestants who strongly supported and loved the Passion. This was not true of my former church though. The pastor strongly discouraged the members of our congregation from watching this movie. One of the reasons was that a visual image portrayed on film would somehow make us guilty of idol worship. He was also worried that we would subconciously picture Jesus as Jim Cavezial and this would cause us not to worship Jesus but Cavezial.

Yes, this struck me as odd reasoning.

Here is an article stating the above position.

rsglh.org/jesus_christ_in_the_movies.htm

 

[deb1]

Contarini:

They mustn’t have stuck around till the end then. The movie did show the Resurrection. Briefly and in a very understated way. But how else to show it without making the movie look like a comic book?

I think the portrayal of the Resurrection at the end is one of the numerous strokes of brilliance in the film.

Edwin

This was another point that my former pastor had against the Passion. He told us that Catholics do not believe in the resurrection and that Mel Gibson’s film would not portray it. My hubby corrected this fallacy of his but my pastor insisted that Catholics do not believe that Jesus rose from the dead.

I should add that this is an exteme minority view among Protestants. Most evangilicals fully supported this film. So, I don’t want any one to misconstrue my post as implicating all Protestants in such extreme view.

 

[2shelbys]

Reformed Rob:

…There’s the statement about “Let His blood be on us and on our children” Matthew 27:25

That quote is in the film but in a concession to the pressure Gibson agreed to remove the subtitle for it from the movie. The part is still there. It is a shame that they agreed to remove something that is actually in the bible because of political pressure. The Bible says what it says. If it appears that the Jews were implicated in his death it is because they were. History is not anti-Semitic, it is history.

 

[deb1]

2shelbys:

That quote is in the film but in a concession to the pressure Gibson agreed to remove the subtitle for it from the movie. The part is still there. It is a shame that they agreed to remove something that is actually in the bible because of political pressure. The Bible says what it says. If it appears that the Jews were implicated in his death it is because they were. History is not anti-Semitic, it is history.

I was always taught by the word Jews the bible meant the religious hierachy that was in place at the time, not regular Jewish people.