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BS ‘n’ About…
“The Passion of the Christ”
(Written well before Mel Gibson let his true colors fly)
The last few days of Jesus Christ’s life were so horrible and utterly at odds with everything He stood for, that for us to dwell on them so seems to do a great disservice to everything He was trying to teach us. He said “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do”, yet we’ve spent the last 2000 years forgiving of nothing and no one. We re-live the pain of those three days at the expense of the thirty-three years of spiritual wanderings and preaching that preceded them. Christianity is about three days on a cross. Jesus was about thirty-three years of sharing our world.
While The Passion of the Christ was undoubtedly, devoutly well intentioned, it was the closest thing to a ‘snuff film’ most of us will ever see. It sears the eyeballs with images best left to the imagination, teaching us nothing we don’t already know, showing us nothing Jesus could have possibly wanted us to see. The Passion has maximum shock value and some of the most disturbing images ever released to mainstream theatre. It goes way beyond anything any of us will ever have to endure or partake in. So we took our Sunday School classes.
Ask yourself what the Jesus you know from the Sermon on the Mount would have said if He’d come down from the Mount and walked into a theatre full of Sunday School kids seeing His message summarized by His torture and execution? ‘Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do’, maybe? The Passion can’t be the legacy He’d have wanted to leave for the children of our world.
By all accounts, the man we know as Jesus led a peaceful, spiritual life. As a being, He would have been as totally unprepared as any of us to even comprehend the horrors of His last days. God has gifted the body and soul with safe places they can retreat to when faced with agonies they simply cannot process. We can only hope Jesus was in His safe place before the horrors that so traumatize us even began. We can only hope.
As Jesus reflects upon His time on Earth from His exalted position in heaven, would any of us wish for Him to re-live, over and over, those last few days? So why do we? Instead, let us hope His eternity is filled with the people He loved, the earthly delights He experienced, and the Good Works He accomplished. Let us hope.
Can the simple man who came out of the Wilderness to spread the word of God in any way be happy with the way we’ve interpreted that Word? The pogroms, inquisitions, and crusades. The greed, righteousness, and guilt. The Northern Irelands, Middle Easts, and Bosnias.
For 2000 years Christianity has been an easy banner under which to march off to war. It spearheaded white Europe’s conquests to the four corners of the globe. It conveniently kept the peasants in their place. It has been built upon hierarchies, hatreds, interpretations, and doctrinal squabbles that have nothing to do with the actual Word. That’s a whole lot of ‘mortal’ between here and anything ‘divine’. That’s a whole lot of ‘interpretation’ between here and the ‘Word’.
Were the Jesus who walks through your Bible to come back tomorrow, can you really see Him bombing abortion clinics? …considering picking up a gun for any reason? …choosing sides in Northern Ireland? …living in a big, fancy church while members of His flock slept cold on the locked doorstep? What would the Jesus who walks through your Bible do? How would the Jesus who lives in your heart feel? Are we missing His message?
For 2000 years, the horrors of Jesus’ last days have haunted us, acknowledging a savage side of human nature which, much like the Holocaust in our own times, we can’t begin to comprehend, much less understand. It just doesn’t compute. Yet it is the blood stained filter through which we view Jesus Christ and the message He brought to us. It is the filter through which we judge our fellow man and plan for the future. Has the rigidity of our faith totally mangled the Word? ‘Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do’.
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