The Passion Of The Christ: Some Articles & Commentary

the Spirit Watch

"The Passion": Some Articles And Commentary

Compiled by Rafael D Martinez, Co-Director, Spiritwatch Ministries

The upcoming film created by Mel Gibson entitled "The Passion Of The Christ" is an account of the final 12 hours of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ depicting the events of his crucifixion, death, burial and resurrection in ancient Israel over two millenia ago as drawn from the four Gospel accounts of the Christian Scriptures. Perhaps no other motion picture setting out to dramatically depict this historic event has attracted the kind of attention as Gibson's work has in our postmodern, secular day. No other has sparked such a firestorm of controversy months before it has even premiered. This page of links offers some perspectives on the story and those who would stir up controversy over it as well as few of my own thoughts ...

For the Christian communities of the world, the film is one of the most eagerly awaited products of Hollywood-inspired film making of all time. Multitudes of prescreening events among Christian gatherings across America have left audiences absolutely thunderstruck at the depiction of the brutal savaging of Jesus at the hands of His Roman executioners at the instigation of Jewish leaders. Perhaps the profoundly unsettling impact it has made on them is tangible evidence to their personal realization of the true cost of the love of God for them and how it was truly for their sins, as well as the world's, that Jesus came to die and rise again.

Gibson's avowed desire, stemming from his renewed conservative Catholicism, to offer his cinematic talents to the spread of the central message of Christianity, has cost him dearly and has stirred controversy in many a quarter. Millions of dollars of his own funding was spent on the film's creation, but he will likely recoup that in the first weekend or so after it's national release. He now faces a far greater personal cost by being attacked on many quarters by those viewing "The Passion" as stirring up antisemitism, or being a product of naive and misguided Biblical literalism. Many in the Jewish communities around the world, long accused as "Christ-killers", view the depictions of Christ's Passion with unfeigned terror and horror, fearful of a Christian backlash. And as the date of the film looms, a renewed global debate over the person and message of Christianity has also flamed up. Debates over who Jesus was, what His death and resurrection were about, and whether or not one can believe in the accounts of the Bible as historical documents are now stirring up again everywhere. The inevitable pressures of secular skepticism and religious revulsion by those who reject the notion of depicting Jesus Christ as the only way to know God are stirring up old contentions and new dialogue between those who reject absolute truth and embrace a universalistic pop relativism and those who hold to the exclusive claims of Christianity, as well as other world religions.

As an ex-Catholic, I cannot agree with Mel's Catholicism, but we both share a common awe of the Lamb of God's great Sacrifice and what it means to our twisted, violent and defiling world. His film's focus on the torture and death of Jesus Christ in ancient Jerusalem two millenia ago involves a most graphic depiction of His torture and crucifixion that He endured, an excruciating reality of this event rooted not in slick Hollywood screenplays but in an undeniable historical reality found in the Gospel accounts of Scripture. It may well be a gloriously choice tool God uses to bring millions to consider once again, in perhaps the only way they would have done so, just what the precious cost of Divine Love is and what this will demand of those who look into it, even if out of curiosity.

For our increasingly depraved and desensitized society, only the stimulation of entertainment that is both violent and sensual, mingled with pop spirituality and farcical fatalism seems to connect with it at all. In such a world, therefore, it is no wonder that the Gnostic Neo of the Matrix franchise could be openly viewed as a "Christ" figure whose "salvation" is a fury ranging from kung fu slaughter to gun battling bloodbaths. I find it both amusing and astonishing that a culture such as ours that embraces such grotesquely murderous fantasy as "entertainment" is now finding itself forcibly confronted in its own comfortable multiplex turf across the nation with a gloriously redemptive reality. The remembrance of an ancient violence relived, a reenacted Sacrifice suffered by the Son of God to save it from its own self-destructive spiral will be an event that can decisively beat it at its own violent game.

During a national interview on ABC with Gibson, Diane Sawyer asked him bluntly "Why so violent?" (Primetime America, ABC, 16 February 04) While Gibson answered well, Isaiah the prophet so much better replied to her question millenia ago in Isaiah 52:14-15 and 53:2-12:

".. his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men: So shall he sprinkle many nations; the kings shall shut their mouths at him: for that which had not been told them shall they see; and that which they had not heard shall they consider. .. For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.

And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.

Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors."

It is this absolutely soul-shattering prophecy, delivered by the prophet hundreds of years before Jesus was ever born, that delivers an unflinchingly vivid, 3-D image of physical and spiritual agony beyond our ability to understand or describe. It starkly reveals that Jesus was born to suffer the agonies we will see depicted for the very wickedness that WE do. This oracle transcends any of the violence that Hollywood's gore-obsessed graphic realism could ever hope to describe. No computer graphics or special effects can match what the world will again be compelled to watch. The plain truth is that Jesus Christ took upon Himself this unimaginable horror to pay for the sins of all mankind in full consciousness of what it would bring, in full submission to His Father's Will, knowing that only His perfect life could be the scaffold for the perfect Sacrifice for all humanity to be mounted upon. Such an incarnation of inconceivably vast Love left torn, bleeding, trampled and reviled is just too much to conceive or understand by the secularized man or woman apart from His Spirit's illumination of their minds.

As a Christian minister, one whose life has been forever changed and challenged by The Passion of the Christ, the Lord Jesus whom I call Savior and Master, I cannot but view this with the deepest and most profound sense of wonder and awe. This film event is going to compel so very many to consider the horrific depictions of the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ and to consider its meaning and relevance to their lives. This dimension of the event alone transcends all anyone might ever say about it. Rich and poor, black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Buddhist and Muslim, there will be many who will be confronted with this, the glorious heart of the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in a way never possible before. My mind simply is boggled at how this event can possibly change our world in so many anonymous and yet quite manifest ways. Mel Gibson's view of the Holy Ghost as "leading him" perhaps is not at all a farfetched bit of bravado but a bold statement of how God will use those He chooses to use to accomplish His purposes. I plan on seeing the film and will post my own thoughts on it later, but so many have already done so and shared ...

LINKS TO ARTICLES ONLINE CONCERNING MEL GIBSON'S "THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST"

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/980753/posts - A must-read article that is the most revealing of Gibson's mind & heart

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4212741/ - "Who Killed Jesus?"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4271888/ - Mel Gibson's defense of the violence of "The Passion"

http://rj.org/interreligious/pub/passions.shtml - A Reformed Jewish perspective with many provocative articles & links

http://www.adl.org/PresRele/ASUS_12/4291_12.htm - The Anti Defamation League's website that vigorously opposes "The Passion"

http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/gibson.asp - Untangling and exploding the myths of antisemitism of "The Passion"

http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2003/08/14/gibson/index_np.html - Typically irreverent, postmodern criticism by a Salon writer

http://www.belief.net/story/139/story_13900_1.html - The revulsion of theologian John Dominic Crossan, Jesus Seminar member

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/132/story_13279_1.html - The commentary of theologian Darrell Bock concerning "The Passion"

http://www.equip.org/free/DG040-2.htm - Douglas Groothuis on the "Gnostic Gospels", used by many to bring out "new truth" on Christ

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-t016.html - Evangelical perspective on the "Jesus Seminar's"revisioning of Christianity

http://www.leaderu.com/truth/1truth21.html - Christian article on the essentiality of the Gospel accounts

http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9604/articles/girard.html - Christian article dispelling the "Mythology" of the Gospel accounts

http://www.christianitytoday.com/fun/special/thepassion.html - Special Christianity Today coverage page on "The Passion"

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/130/story_13051.html - Jewish critic viewing "The Passion" as a piece of antisemitism

http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleid.17815/article_detail.aspm - Michael Medved's powerful article on Jewish revulsion

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/3484915.stm - General commentary by the BBC on "The Passion" controversy

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004/01/12/special_reports/religion/1_7_0420_08_49.txt - Richard Ostling's article on "The Passion"

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/News/Piatak/NewsTP082903.html - Catholic perspective on Gibson's detractors

For a harmony of the Resurrection stories found in the Four Gospel accounts by Christian apologist Robert Bowman - CLICK HERE

More links to come as I find the time to surf them out ...

Go Back To The Spiritwatch Home Page