(updating OLD entries from Spring Break)
Saturday
10:28 pm
We went to see the Passion today. Despite the many warnings about the gruesomeness of this movie, and its empathize on suffering, I was unprepared for the sheer bloodiness of this movie.
Unnecessary blood, might I add. In truth, this movie was…moving, yet it doesn’t seem to move one to any specific purpose. It portrayed the suffering of Christ, without explaining reason for that suffering-they cleared showed why humans so needed redemption, yet it did show how we are worth redeeming. The lack of historical accuracy (or even biblical accuracy, as many scholars have claimed) troubles me…but I can understand that every artistic rendering of history, or legend, or religion for that matter…requires some artistic license. I agree with Adrian’s claim that such a movie is dangerous for it is more than mere art…for many, this movie will definite our views of religion for this generation-and this is not a view that I can agree with. The anti-semitic claim also has merit. Defenders of this movie claims that it shows that all are guilty of Christ’s death-but this movie heavy empathizes that the strongest burden of that guilt falls on the Jews. Piolute-who sentences Jesus to the death according to the Gospels, is actually portrayed as a victim, unable to stop the bloodthirsty Jews. And the cracking of the Temple upon Jesus’s death…that’s artistic interpretation taken too far. Too many will watch this movie to be moved…and they will be-but the message this movie sends, even unwittingly, suggests that the Jews are to be blamed for the sufferings of Jesus.
And the violence…
Neiman said in class that one criticism of this movie is that the physical aspect of the suffering that this movie portrayals in such a gruesome way actually detracts from the true dept of the suffering endured by Christ. After watching, I have to agree. The physical blows-the grotesque, torn body of Christ certain raises one’s emotions…yet it wasn’t empathy or understanding that I felt…merely nausea. I left the movie after the first scourging…I simply couldn’t take it anymore. I returned for the last 20 minutes, hoping for a conclusion that would justify the excessive bloodiness...there was none. A hint, certainly, that Christ’s suffering was not in vain-but than again, for 99% of the audience…we already knew that, didn’t we?
The greatest suffering is not physical...but mental-emotional. Christ’s physical pains were little compared to his emotional suffering…to being rejected and delivered to die by those he had come to save, to be hated by the people had set out to love…betrayed by his closest friends and disciplines. His greatest suffering was anguish-not merely the physical wounds that this movie empathized.
*sighs* I think of Dante’s hell, compared with hell as described by C.S Lewis. Though Dante fascinates me, I wonder-can we only understand eternal suffering through physical descriptions? Can only Dante’s gruesome descriptions of physical torture and mutilations move his peers-just as only Christ’s torn body and blood move this generation? Can we not understand that perhaps the sufferings of Sisyphus in Camus’ interpretation of the Greek legend, or Lewis’ description of men locked in self-imposed, eternal anguish…that these are the deepest and the truest suffering?
I wonder, what was the point of this movie.
Even when I left my church, I could never quite leave Christianity. So many of the best people that I know-the people that I wholeheartedly admire-are true Christians. Not your Sunday prayer-group Christians…or your Easter-and-Christmas Catholics…certainly not your evangelical-t.v-you’re-going-to-burn-in-hell type Christians. These are people who have never tried to shove doctrine down my throat…who, for the most part, never even attempt to “preach” to me…yet their very actions speak far louder than any words. I understand Christian love through how they care for their friends, I understand Christian forgiveness through their willingness to forgive. After 10 years of an evangelical church, I greet preaching with deaf ears…but I cannot turn away from their astonishing examples. I can never truly leave Christianity when there are people like these…who show me what it really means to claim to follow Christ.
I have two friends who once told me (on separate occasions) that they pray for me (among others) every night before going to bed. I find that oddly comforting, especially since I so struggle to find the words to pray. I haven’t tried in months…and it was years since I succeed, if even then. There’s something about the notion that someone else out there is passing a word, a thought, to God for me…
It isn’t merely that these friends care enough to pray for me (though that, too, is comforting)…it’s the strength of their faith, where my has faltered. Divine love feels out of my reach…but divine love channeled through human faith-that’s something I can understand.
10:28 pm
We went to see the Passion today. Despite the many warnings about the gruesomeness of this movie, and its empathize on suffering, I was unprepared for the sheer bloodiness of this movie.
Unnecessary blood, might I add. In truth, this movie was…moving, yet it doesn’t seem to move one to any specific purpose. It portrayed the suffering of Christ, without explaining reason for that suffering-they cleared showed why humans so needed redemption, yet it did show how we are worth redeeming. The lack of historical accuracy (or even biblical accuracy, as many scholars have claimed) troubles me…but I can understand that every artistic rendering of history, or legend, or religion for that matter…requires some artistic license. I agree with Adrian’s claim that such a movie is dangerous for it is more than mere art…for many, this movie will definite our views of religion for this generation-and this is not a view that I can agree with. The anti-semitic claim also has merit. Defenders of this movie claims that it shows that all are guilty of Christ’s death-but this movie heavy empathizes that the strongest burden of that guilt falls on the Jews. Piolute-who sentences Jesus to the death according to the Gospels, is actually portrayed as a victim, unable to stop the bloodthirsty Jews. And the cracking of the Temple upon Jesus’s death…that’s artistic interpretation taken too far. Too many will watch this movie to be moved…and they will be-but the message this movie sends, even unwittingly, suggests that the Jews are to be blamed for the sufferings of Jesus.
And the violence…
Neiman said in class that one criticism of this movie is that the physical aspect of the suffering that this movie portrayals in such a gruesome way actually detracts from the true dept of the suffering endured by Christ. After watching, I have to agree. The physical blows-the grotesque, torn body of Christ certain raises one’s emotions…yet it wasn’t empathy or understanding that I felt…merely nausea. I left the movie after the first scourging…I simply couldn’t take it anymore. I returned for the last 20 minutes, hoping for a conclusion that would justify the excessive bloodiness...there was none. A hint, certainly, that Christ’s suffering was not in vain-but than again, for 99% of the audience…we already knew that, didn’t we?
The greatest suffering is not physical...but mental-emotional. Christ’s physical pains were little compared to his emotional suffering…to being rejected and delivered to die by those he had come to save, to be hated by the people had set out to love…betrayed by his closest friends and disciplines. His greatest suffering was anguish-not merely the physical wounds that this movie empathized.
*sighs* I think of Dante’s hell, compared with hell as described by C.S Lewis. Though Dante fascinates me, I wonder-can we only understand eternal suffering through physical descriptions? Can only Dante’s gruesome descriptions of physical torture and mutilations move his peers-just as only Christ’s torn body and blood move this generation? Can we not understand that perhaps the sufferings of Sisyphus in Camus’ interpretation of the Greek legend, or Lewis’ description of men locked in self-imposed, eternal anguish…that these are the deepest and the truest suffering?
I wonder, what was the point of this movie.
Even when I left my church, I could never quite leave Christianity. So many of the best people that I know-the people that I wholeheartedly admire-are true Christians. Not your Sunday prayer-group Christians…or your Easter-and-Christmas Catholics…certainly not your evangelical-t.v-you’re-going-to-burn-in-hell type Christians. These are people who have never tried to shove doctrine down my throat…who, for the most part, never even attempt to “preach” to me…yet their very actions speak far louder than any words. I understand Christian love through how they care for their friends, I understand Christian forgiveness through their willingness to forgive. After 10 years of an evangelical church, I greet preaching with deaf ears…but I cannot turn away from their astonishing examples. I can never truly leave Christianity when there are people like these…who show me what it really means to claim to follow Christ.
I have two friends who once told me (on separate occasions) that they pray for me (among others) every night before going to bed. I find that oddly comforting, especially since I so struggle to find the words to pray. I haven’t tried in months…and it was years since I succeed, if even then. There’s something about the notion that someone else out there is passing a word, a thought, to God for me…
It isn’t merely that these friends care enough to pray for me (though that, too, is comforting)…it’s the strength of their faith, where my has faltered. Divine love feels out of my reach…but divine love channeled through human faith-that’s something I can understand.