EDITOR: Many folks are applauding the The Passion of The Christ
film that opened last week. While seeing it I suffered a major
disappointment. To be sure, this work of thoughtful craftsmanship
is deserving of much praised for its focusing upon the central
feature of human history.
EDITOR:
Many folks are applauding the The Passion of The Christ film that opened last week. While seeing it I suffered a major disappointment. To be sure, this work of thoughtful craftsmanship is deserving of much praised for its focusing upon the central feature of human history.
No one alive during the first century could have predicted that 1,950 years later, a film would be made about the final days of an obscure Galilean carpenter turned preacher. Many thousands of others were crucified on hillsides all over the Roman Empire.
My disappointment is with the portrayal of the Identity of the film’s tragic/victorious hero. For 99 percent of Mel Gibson’s plot-line, Jesus is featured as a humble teacher of love, peace and forgiveness, who is misunderstood as a rival to both Moses and Caesar.
Unfortunately his essential Deity becomes swallowed up in the fullness of his essential humanity. Unlike the Gospel of John, which opens its mini-biography of Jesus with a statement of Christ’s identity as God incarnate, the movie fails to explain how Jesus’ death could possibly atone for the eternal consequence of humanity’s sin.
The viewer is left with the mysteries of how the extremity of his sacrifice relates to the enormity of our waywardness and to the forgiving grace of God’s promises of eternal bliss. If Jesus the Christ is merely the best of all human beings, a composite, perhaps, of Abraham Lincoln, Louis Pasteur, Pope John XXIII, Joe Montana, and Jerry Rice, (throw in Florence Nightingale and Nadia Comaneci for balance.), as a perfect 10, he could only take the place of one other person (the movie suggests the ruffian, Barabbas).
Only as infinite God incarnate could Christ lay down his life for the eternal salvation of an infinite number of rebels and sinners like you and me.
If only Brother Gibson had begun his plot-line with six minutes of focus on the resurrection appearances of Christ, which serve to authenticate his Deity, and if he had treated the rest of his Jesus saga as flashback, could he have added more credibility to the Christ message.
Surely we could have done without six more minutes of brutal, pre-crucifixion beating, administered by Caesar’s goons, in favor of footage of the risen Christ. In spite of the film’s shortcomings, I raced home to look for once familiar passages form the book of Hebrew’s and from 1 John:
“For consider Him, who endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself lest you become wearied in well-doing.” Hebrews 12:3
“And Christ is the atonement of our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world.”
Bill Paterson,
Gilroy
