Five Reasons Not to Go See The Passion of Christ

The Banner of Truth: Biblical Christianity through Literature ^ | February 19, 2004 | Andrew J. Webb

[Quix]

GO AND BE ABUNDANTLY BLESSED.

Clearly righteousness, like beauty, can be overmuch in the eye of the beholder.

There is plenty of THE BIBLICAL JESUS and the BIBLICAL EVENTS in the movie to be richly and deeply spiritually blessed.

I think it has to do with the attitude of one's heart.

And the attitude of the heart of the author of this post seems to me to be quite askew from the heart of Jesus.

But he can cite lines of chapter and verse and well justified hostility . . . .

Just as the pharisees could in their calling for Christ's crucifixion.

They that SEEK GOD SHALL FIND HIM according to God's own Word.

Those who SEEK TO THROW ROCKS, instead, may end up being labeled stone-headed and stoney-hearted.

My God is bigger than that.

[Quix]

Absolutely! And evidently, thousands already have.

[MHGinTN]

"God has ordained the foolishness of preaching to evangelize the world." It is sad that the author of this piece is unable to 'see' that Mister Gibson's movie IS PREACHING ... Christ and Him crucified for each of us, individually! Could it be that the author wants the feel good without the shame vital to true repentence? Perhaps he should ask the thieves recently converted after experiencing the Passion. Thank you, Mel, for your courage in bringing this work to pass. Thanks to all your actors and crew ... and thank you, Jesus. He IS risen!

[Quix]

I think the author HAS A REAL PROBLEM WITH JESUS.

As my dissertation research elaborated a bit . . .

Many believers of all persuasions BELIEVE EXTRINSICALLY. They put their religion on like a coat for various reasons.

It can be for business; for psychodynamic reasons; for perfectionism reasons; for Obsessive-compulsive reasons etc.

THE PHILOSOPHY of Christianity becomes their God instead of GOD ALMIGHTY; THE RESURRECTED SON; HIS SPIRIT--THE PERSONHOOD OF THE GODHEAD.

It's understandable. The PHILOSOPHY can be manipulated, hammered, controlled, gamed with. It can be used to control and do gamey things with other people.

Such extrensic believers usually have holes in their psyche, their emotions, their spirits which were not filled by proper parenting and proper parental affection the early years of their lives.

And subsequently, making sure that all the petty details of their religious construction on reality--making sure those details are all lined up according to their script--that rigid surveilance and obsessive scanning and pontificating serves to quiet however briefly their aching, gaping, hurting, empty inner holes in their person. Trouble is, it requires constant maintenance. It requires ever finer details hammered into place. Or it requires ever more hammering on others around to butress the gaping inner holes to afford the tortured psyche shreds of comfort.

But Jesus has a better way. He calls us to intrinsic, authentic, heart belief grounded in HIS REAL, HEART-FELT, AUTHENTIC DEATH and RESURRECTION--in HIS VERY POTENT BLOOD BOUGHT COVERING FOR OUR FLAWS AND WILFULL SINS. He died that we could give up RELIGION and exchange it for RELATIONSHIP.

Those obsessive about the letter of the law very, very, very rarely have much awareness of the inner vitality of true faith, in my experience. But I have a fair amount of compassion for such. I was among that number for agonized years. It was the best that I knew how to do and be in my fractured walk with God.

MERCIFULLY, GOD HAS BETTER FOR ALL OF US. AND MANY CAN FIND THAT BETTER THROUGH SEEING THIS MOVIE.

[smith288]

My Baptist pastor concludes this movie is NOT evangelical. There is too much missing to teach a nonbeliever anything besides Jesus suffered greatly. It is up to the evangelicals to present the Gospel.

This article seems to be written with the mindset that all evangelicals are trumping it as evangelical.

[MHGinTN]

Your words touch upon the essence of man's fall: "He died that we could give up RELIGION and exchange it for RELATIONSHIP." Quix, with religion, the serpent's guileful invitation (to Eve and Adam) to 'do it yourself for yourself' deflects the heart from accepting the Grace, to begin a relationship. Religions feed this prideful focus quite well. You can see it in the cults and in Islam, etc.

[Quix]

I can understand the feeling.

In my childhood--about 7 or 8 years old, as I recall. I was traumatized. I somehow started pondering THE CROSS and THE CRUCIFIXION. And I was literally histerical that Christ would have suffered such pain for me. It was beyond what I could comprehend or handle. I pestered my mother relentlessly with questions about it trying to get some peace that Christ didn't really suffer such pain for me. Mother finally had to send me away in her typically harsh way.

And, I still cringe somewhat at vivid depictions--whether in fiction or historical films or sometimes even in text. I don't like violent movies. I get tooooo 'into' them.

I expected THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST to be devastatingly impactful on me. I didn't go see it eagerly with cheery expectation.

But I did decide
that GIVEN
JESUS' LOVE
sufficient to SUFFER that PAIN,
the least I could do
as a believer and follower,
was to SEE
the BEST DEPICTION
of that SUFFERING,
the BEST DEPICTION
of that SACRIFICE
AVAILABLE for our era.

So I went. I was blessed.

It was not the . . . dramatically, overwhelmingly life transforming event for me that I thought it might be. I think that is probably because The Lord has led me through quite a desert of extensive suffering the last 3+ years and I'm still not out of it. So, a lot of the drama that comes from vicarious identification with the sufferings of Christ HE HAS BEEN POURING INTO ME with great intensity the last 3+ years. There seems to have been few heart-strings left to pull very dramatically in that ball park by such a historical film--regardless of how accurate or well done.

But it was moving. It did touch my heart and spirit. In a sense, it was life-changing. It did deepen my AWE, adoration, respect, reverence, thanks to my Lord for what He endured. It deepened my Love, my compassion, my empathy for Him; my identification with Him.

That's quite a lot of Biblical, spiritual benefit, fruitfulness for something greeted with such hostility by the author of this post.

For my money and from my 57 years of religioius/spiritual experience, it just shows that the author of this post is quite over full of himself and quite over full of his 'special' counting of all the letters of the law according to his construction on reality. He probably needs to get a life.

Better yet, he likely needs to get a real, authentic, heart-felt, humble, broken relationship with the Heart of Jesus The Messiah, Our Risen Lord.

Then he would have no rocks to throw at the movie, only cheers for what Holy Spirit is doing with this movie.

[Qwinn]

I don't know if anyone pointed this out - I didn't bother going through all 6 pages, just the first page, and no one seemed to notice this:

"The script for The Passion of Christ not only adds things that didn't occur in the Bible, it cuts out other things that did. The most widely known example of this being the important declaration, "His blood be on us and on our children." (Matthew 27:25)

So, basically, this article slams Gibson for having enough sympathy toward Jewish concerns to leave this line out. Man. Neither the Left nor Jews gave him a -single- ounce of credit for leaving it out, not -once-, but the author slams him for it as if he had no clue as to WHY? Un-freakin-believable.

Qwinn

[Quix]

NO!
Satan is NOT
HAPPY
with this film
But
HE IS GLEEFUL
at his successfully
fostering of the same
PHARISAICAL ATTITUDE
toward this film
that got Jesus
crucified
2,000 years ago.
. . .
He can't succeed
at crucifying Jesus
again.
But he's doing quite
happily at
CRUCIFYING
this film
about
THE CRUCIFIXION!
. . .
sigh.

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[Quix]

WELL SAID.

THANKS.

[Quix]

WELL SAID.

THANKS.

[Quix]

AMEN! AMEN! AMEN! AMEN! AMEN! AMEN! AMEN!

[Quix]

Worse . . .

I think it's a grand, prime example of

PHARISAICAL FECES FONDLING!

. . . another inadmirable way to get . . .

VERY STINKY FINGERS.

[Quix]

Arguable but I get your point.

I don't know that Christ would have claimed quite a number of so called Christians in every era and probably in every organization and "Christian" structure.

We just love being pharisees too much for His comfort or pleasure.

[Quix]

There is that.

And I'm thankful for it. I love the way God turns satan's efforts on their heads! Or is it on their tails! tee hee.

[Quix]

A CHRISTIAN MOVIE MADE BY A CHRISTIAN MAN.

ABSOLUTELY . . .

as any creature with a faint hint of discernment could detect . . . and then cheer!

[Quix]

YUP!

[Quix]

Point taken.

But Jesus would probably have been characterized as much more identifying and going to great effort to identify with the common man.

[Quix]

ANOTHER WONDERFUL FRUIT OF THE FILM.