Passion like religious pornography
Date 3/11/2004 12:00 AM | Topic: Letters to the EditorSensing the potential for great profit from the Lenten passions of Christians, Mel Gibson has given us a portrayal of the final hours of the life of Jesus that one major review correctly assessed as bordering on religious pornography.
Pornography caters to the senses as this film does. People who view it come away moved by its depictions of the suffering and the gore that went with countless Roman executions in that age of brutal power. The film fails to tell us that Jesus' death was much like the deaths of many others, that he chose to join the ranks of many victims of political "justice" and religious zeal.
The Man's Galilean ministry had been for the sake of the poor and the victims of that small world. The sequence of true events is clearly laid out in the earliest written account, the Gospel of Mark. After earning fame as a healer and teacher in His home region, He appeared in Jerusalem and dramatically protested the religiosity of the temple for its commercialism. He drove out merchants and moneychangers with a homemade whip as he quoted ancient Scripture to say, "My house will be called a house of prayer, but you have turned it into a robbers' den."
The people in charge of the temple enterprise reacted strongly. Getting rid of Him was their aim and the Roman procurator had the power to do that. They portrayed Jesus' behavior and words as a threat to Roman authority and so it was for political reasons that Pontius Pilate ordered first a cruel flogging and then crucifixion. (In limited records of Rome, the execution of "Christus" was the only deed listed to his credit. The Jewish historian of the time, Josephus by name, gave evidence of Pilate's many political mistakes and his general inconsideration of Jews.)
Mr. Gibson has insisted that the film came out of his own deep religious convictions. So be it. But this also tells us that his Christianity is more medieval than biblical. It is a modern equivalent of the medieval passion plays that laid such rich soil for the anti-Semitism that blossomed as late as in the twentieth century.
It is powerfully ironic that millions can be stirred by the scenes in The Passion of the Christ, yet be so blind to the same kinds of suffering in our own times. Indeed, the truest followers of Jesus are surely those who see the suffering people of our own time as He saw them and identified with them in His time.
Richard Simon Hanson
Professor of Religion Emeritus
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