Most of the controversy surrounding the movie “The Passion of the Christ” revolves around two things: violence and anti-Semitism.
Many people feel that the glossed-over, sugar-coated, children’s-book version of Christ’s death is the way that Gibson should have portrayed it.
Gibson never said that this movie was for children-he said that he wanted to portray the suffering that Christ endured. For Christians such as Gibson, the suffering is just as important as everything else, since he believes Christ was suffering on behalf of the world.
Violence is a common theme in the Bible. As much as Christians-and some Jews-may convince themselves that their religion is about peace, love and one true God, the document of their faith has a lot of suffering, violence, slavery, prostitution and discrimination.
Therefore, Christians must accept violence, even if it is a regrettable and dislikable part of their history.
Is the movie anti-Semitic? Does it portray Jews in a negative light? I have read the New Testament, and it would be difficult to write a script based on the Scriptures without including any Jewish people, especially since Jesus was Jewish.
There are three people who can be held as individual contributors to Jesus death:
* Caiaphas, the Jewish high priest who arranged to have Jesus arrested, convicted and crucified.
* Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of the province of Judea, who worshipped the Roman Pantheon of gods, and under whose supervision the arrest, trial and crucifixion occurred. Pilate was also hesitant to kill Jesus and tried to avoid it.
* Judas Iscariot, one of Jesus’ own disciples that helped by betraying Jesus location to the authorities.
Other groups of people should also be held responsible. One group to include is the court members of Pilate who were persuaded by Caiaphas to vote for Jesus to be crucified. It is never mentioned if these courtesans were primarily Romans or locals.
The last group of people is those who were mean and cruel to Jesus as he carried his cross to the hill of Golgotha. Most of these people were probably Jewish, and most of these people were probably mean to all the “criminals” that were convicted.
Many of them probably saw and heard of him for the first time as he was on his way to his death. Even today, many people still have negative reactions toward convicted criminals.
If people believe that Jesus’ death was the Jews’ fault, they are only partially right. If you are anti-Semitic because of it, you also need to be anti-Roman, and probably anti-Christian if you count the disciples as Christians.
You probably should also hate the hundreds of followers of Jesus who did nothing to rescue him. Or maybe you should believe-as some Christians have told me I should-that Jesus did it for a reason, saw it coming and would not have wanted it any other way.
If you are going to hold the crimes of a few against all the people of their religion, then you are going to run out of hate fast.
Start with the atrocities that Christians and Muslims committed during the Crusades. Then get mad about all the wars of religion that have occurred, especially in places like Africa and Bosnia. Then get mad at Christians who have done bad things. Get mad at all Christians, whether they kill in the name of God or just because they wanted some money.
It is useless to blame an entire religion for the actions of a few.
Some of the people who were responsible for Jesus’ death happened to be Jewish. If you blame Jews as a religious group for the actions of a few, then you hold blame for all the actions of people at your church.
Isn’t that a scary thought?
John Summerlot is a graduate student in counseling education. He can be reached at [email protected].