Winter Light
Ingmar Bergman is considered to be one of the top directors of the 20th century, producing films such as The Seventh Seal, Fanny and Alexander, and The Virgin Spring. Being considered the greatest director in Sweden, his works tend to be somewhat dark and focus on more existential issues.
Winter Light is about faith and meaning with or without God. The peak of the movie is when a character talks about his reflections on the death of Jesus with a fellow clergyman. The essence of individual characters are based on having someone to identify with. For example, the main character, after the death of his wife, has become a bitter robot who has lost all passion for his life and his job as a pastor. A character, in response to a collapsing human condition (specifically, China developing nukes), kills himself. His wife, upon hearing this, can only after several moments say that she is alone.
In this, God acts as a surrogate person to identify with. However, God's silence destroys this bond and empties the church and causes the pastor to forsake God. People who have no meaning as merely suffer an existential hell are absolutely no different from those who worship a silent God.
When the subject of reading the bible comes up, one characters talks about the suffering of Jesus. Pardon if I don't get the exact story right, it's hearsay. He makes the claim that Jesus didn't really physically suffer because being nailed to something for four hours isn't that bad in comparison to shit that physically happens to normal people all the time, even in the modern day. It could've been a lot worse. The true suffering comes in a degree of this identity-meaning shit. He was with his apostles or whoever non-stop for three years, and then on the cross his apostles all ran away, with Peter even denouncing Jesus.
That sucks. I'm sure Jesus loved hearing that. His response? "My God, My God, Why hast thou forsaken me?" This is a very controversial phrase, but it fits in the explanation so perfectly. So, to be dying on a crucifix thinking you are the son of God only to be forsaken by your followers and a silent God, well, that'd suck. And in my personal analysis, say that God really did choose to forsake him, then depending on who you ask, Jesus is a manifestation of God is being turned on by his superior. To be an essence of God betrayed by God is the most painful betrayal in this identity-meaning theory that Berman describes.
So on, Jesus has been forced to suffer the biggest mindfuck possible (Can God be so tricky that he can trick himself? Apparently yes). Jesus died on the cross for us, meaning he suffered for us. He died 'for our sins' to forgive them now. So Jesus went through the ultimate existential hell for our 'sins'. Leaving a reversed impression, showing the worst thing possible, his apostles spread the word and thus Jesus' death led to the story of Jesus' ultimate disappointment. By seeing such terror, our sins are now acceptable. Vicarious existential angst = sins are not bad. Hmmm.
Okay, slightly different approach. Now, let's focus on the manifestation as Jesus thing. To take the most popular view of the trinity and focus on the least retarded aspect of it, God is primary substance. I still haven't heard a sensible explanation of the Holy Ghost. Jesus is an extended substance of God. He is God with respect to the physical limitations of God being on Earth (thus, the only way to 'know' God is to transcend understanding of physics). What the fuck does that mean? How can your true self betray yourself to make a point (though I failed to prove that even if Jesus was divine that he had widespread true spiritual effect on humanity)? Cognitive dissonance. The self doesn't exist, and I don't mean that in a Modernist or neurological kind of way. When people try to explain what they call 'self', anything they describe will be a component of another type of self in a string of senses of self ranging from materialist genetics to intrinsic conscious and back to materialist physical behavior outside of the mind. That's part of my master map in my progress of understanding consciousness. And I actually have everything structured, even.
Nonetheless, so the harsh reality of existence tricked Jesus (God killing Jesus, as that would be more productive than Jesus preaching). Harsh reality of self completely screws us over all the time. We have our self-concept (usually in the 'holistic' category) and our behavioral reality. We do things we don't want to and things we don't think we will do. We can't control ourselves. Thus, disappointment is a little bit of Jesus dying in us all the time. Seems abstract? Let's put the original numbers into the equation. Jesus' entire essence was destroyed when God did the true ultimate betrayal, as it destroyed the having someone to love/be loved thing. Our meaning inside ourselves, our self-concept, is betrayed by our harsh physical reality. This creates the most sophisticated (according to Maslow, romantics, and intellectuals) suffering possible to man: existential angst.
Similar to Heidegger, when our meaning is destroyed, we are disappointed and start to 'die'. We become closer to the true 'Dasein', which to really simplify it, will mean 'being who you really are'. Jesus has uber-existential angst, as God losing meaning in himself is kinda weird. As Jesus hit the peak, he literally died (no relation to the Heidegger thing). So, like, what? Well, it shows that once God no longer thinks he is God that all that is true is the physical world. When we kill our irrational concepts of self, we become more pure and sorta happier. When God is clear of being God, he is simply the purely existential state of God - existence.
As our meaning is slowly destroyed, we stop lying to ourselves.
As Jesus dies with uber-suffering, he is left with the literal perfection of existence.
Okay, that was really pointless and not insightful. Besides, obviously Jesus dying for our sins didn't work worth shit. Jesus dying made everyone get worse.