“Experiencing the Passion of Christ”??
So, we were just now flipping through a Christian Book Distributors catalog and we ran across something that just freaked me out so much I had to blog on it. A column of books dedicated to the Passion of Christ– or to the movie, anyway. There was “Experiencing the Passion of Jesus” by Lee Strobel and Garry Poole, and “Experiencing the Passion of Christ Workbook” by John MacArthur. Authors who should know better than to come up with such goofy names for books! We all know that the reason that Christ suffered and died was so that we wouldn’t have to endure such pain from the separation from God. This is the good news: that we don’t have to experience the Passion of Christ!
There is a lot of stuff surrounding this movie that I don’t like the looks of. The movie provides a kind of safe and comfortable distance from which to view (”experience”) these sufferings, like a crowd of Roman citizens watching people get thrown to the lions. Not only this, but many are convinced that we can’t really understand Jesus’ suffering unless we watch this movie. Christians have meditated on the suffering of Christ for centuries without actually having to watch someone get crucified in front of them, and although the early Christians knew that the martyrs were suffering for their faith, I doubt they instructed new converts to take a trip to the Colosseum for a visual spectacle of what it was like. Unfortunately, like so much else that happens in the evangelical world, spectacle and sensationalism are not only the selling points, but how we regard the value of things of faith.
This is all without really criticizing the movie itself, which I don’t intend to do here. Movies are good and can certainly have an impact on people’s lives. But when I hear Christians constantly dropping the name of Mel Gibson in conjunction with this movie, it becomes obvious that we Christians are just as impressed with fame as anyone else. Christians want the strong and powerful on their side, to be the head and not the tail in society (which is funny, considering the subject of the movie and how Jesus demonstrates the exact opposite). Allow me to quote the description of a book on this list called “Changed Lives: Miracles of the Passion”: “A murderer confesses, the sick are healed, and broken relationships are restored. Respected filmmaker Eldred shares powerful testimonies of people touched by Mel Gibson’s images of Christ’s suffering and sacrifice…” This is a frighteningly idolatrous treatment of a piece of art. So often we equate numbers with success, figure the more people talk about something the more important it must be, and are impressed at the “changed lives” that our human programs can generate. From the church growth movement to the “Prayer of Jabez” to the adulation of people like Rick Warren, this is a sickness that infects a lot of Christianity. Alex’s aunt Laureen Kuhl, former member of the Alliance church, wrote a rather eloquent article addressing this point that I’ll have to share on here some time.
Just had to get that out of my system!!!
January 26th, 2005 @ 8:59 pm
It really does come down to the worship of the god of pragmatism– whatever works, is right! Dangerous god, this one. It disguises itself in many forms, but always has as its goal to enshrine anthropocentric idols–money, power, fame, success…
*sigh*
I am beginning to understand why Jesus said it was so hard for the rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven…
-Alex
January 26th, 2005 @ 9:22 pm
This theme of “results means God is blessing” brings to mind C.G. Finney, the “great revivalist” of the 19th century. True, he got numbers. But what theology he taught! He taught that God does not forgive our sins on account of Jesus, but rather on account of our own turning from sin.
For instance, Finney disagrees with this statement: “If his view of the subject be correct, it follows that God justifies sinners by his grace, not upon condition of their ceasing to sin, but while they continue to sin, by virtue of their being regarded by the law as perfectly obedient in Christ, the covenant and mystical head; that is, that although they indulge in more or less sin continually, and are never at any moment in this life entirely obedient to his law, yet God accounts them righteous because Christ obeyed and died for them.” (Finney’s Systematic Theology, lecture LVI) Instead of this, he proposes that a man is only saved so long as he is morally perfect before God. “By sanctification being a condition of justification, the following things are intended.(1.) That present, full, and entire consecration of heart and life to God and his service, is an unalterable condition of present pardon of past sin, and of present acceptance with God.”
Compare to St. Paul in Romans 7:21-25: “So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God–through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.”
If Finney’s theology of justification is correct, St. Paul is condemned. Finney did not believe in original sin, and thus believed in complete moral and spiritual free-agency… scary stuff.
I should cut off here or Kelly will make me get my own blog…
Alex
January 26th, 2005 @ 9:26 pm
Kel,
Although I have to agree with some things you said, I still believe that an unchurched person, especially of this generation, who doesn’t study scripture, could be moved after seeing this picture, even curious to go to a church and wish to be taught about who Jesus is and why He came. I can see some evangelical benefit from a movie like this. “How can they know if noonw teaches them” They need to hear “The Word”. Jesus went to people and talked to them in their life situations, however they were, so they’d understand; Paul was a preacher like that too; you know the story of the “unknown god” and how he used that to tell them about Jesus. I agree, it’s ALL about Jesus, NOT Mel Gibson!
Love,
Mom
January 26th, 2005 @ 10:12 pm
The point of the post being that although movies like this can be a good influence on people, it also generated some harmful hype, such as the books or the other general attitudes I described. Christians get excited about movies like this, but do they get excited about the obscure village pastor who gives his life to his congregation day in and day out, despite not having a huge ministry following and selling lots of books, tickets, or otherwise? God uses many means to spread his Word, and each person (including the artist of course) must pursue his own vocation to honor the Gospel in their lives. But flashiness, glitter, and that which sells or “works” is way too big a priority among Christians today.
January 27th, 2005 @ 12:02 am
Unfortunatley, people who call themselves Christians take something like “The Passion of Christ” and commercialize it and even misrepresent it. I’m more concerned about the non-Christians who might go to a movie rather than read a book about the “experience” and feel the need to investigate in one of those little churches you described. I have known many pastors who worked exhaustively in diminishing congregations without fanfare because they loved The Lord. I, and I’m sure many other Christians, hold them in high esteem for their devotion, humbleness and humility. I’m a firm believer in doing whatever you do as unto the Lord with the gifts he bestows.
January 27th, 2005 @ 12:04 am
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
January 27th, 2005 @ 12:04 am
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
January 27th, 2005 @ 7:12 pm
Kelly,
Interesting views on The Passion, but I just felt a need to enter my 2 cents on this topic. I must take some exception to your statement that ” We all know that the reason that Christ suffered and died was that so we wouldn’t have to endure such pain from the separation of God. This is the good news: that we don’t have to endure The passion of Christ!”
While your statement is true, I think that it’s much more than that. Have you ever heard of a well meaning person approaching an individual who suffered a great loss, such as the death of a child, and saying to that person that they know what they’re going through? This often angers the suffering person, because the well intentioned person doesn’t know – can’t know – what that person feels, because it never happened to them. One of the reasons that Jesus died the death that he did was that so no one could go to God and tell him that they’re going through too much pain and suffering, and God doesn’t know what it’s like. He knows exactly what it’s like. If this movie helps people understand that, bravo for Mel Gibson.
Dad
January 27th, 2005 @ 9:22 pm
Fun… discussion! This is what blogs should be like. I hope you enjoy it and don’t see it as merely your daughter trying to be belligerent at you. =o)
As you suggested, one of the results of meditating on the sufferings of Christ is comfort that he, as God and man, has experienced the same sort of human weakness and temptations we have (Heb. 4:15). The primary reason that Jesus suffered and died is to fulfill God’s gracious will that we should be saved. Ideas that God also did it for the purpose of proving himself to us that he knew what we were going through, are possible, but speculative, I think– God created us and even before Jesus came, he knew what we go through better than we do. I don’t doubt that people can be consoled by the fact that they see Jesus suffering (although I’ve personally seen it cause a lot of hard-core guilt among Christians, and not much comfort). Keep in mind that in all my discussion about The Passion of Christ on here, I have yet to actually criticize the movie itself– my criticisms have been entirely about the WRONG stuff that people have done with it.
January 27th, 2005 @ 9:27 pm
Just a quick admin note–we deleted the duplicate and triplicate of your one post, Mom. No offense meant.
January 28th, 2005 @ 12:56 am
No prob losing the dups; I must have hiccupped. Interesting confab, eh? So glad I got Dad checking out your blog. Anyway, how can I get a book of Chesterton’s containing “The Father Brown Mysteries” ? I didn’t realize he wrote a skidzillion pieces and therefore couldn’t find just the mysteries at B & N. Also his poetry would be nice. Can you help?
Much love,
Mom
February 2nd, 2005 @ 12:04 pm
I’m going to keep this brief because I still intend to read through (more carefully this time around) your post and to comment on it further later (as in the afternoon because lunch break is over in 2 minutes).
Awful sentence structure…or whatever…up there.
Anyway, overall, I’m totally with what you’re trying to say. When I worked at LifeWay Christian Store in Balto and people asked me about the Prayer of Jabez, I continually had to repeat that I’d never read it and had no intention of doing so in the near or somewhat distant future. One additional comment I’ll add right now is that this initially seems to be a topic to discuss in the Christian sector. It deals with things Christians need to be aware and wary of and things that warrant a “You should know better.”
That’s it for the moment. More coming soon.
-Trace
February 2nd, 2005 @ 1:46 pm
Just a note before you read this: This is my prepared response to someone who wanted my comments on your post. So, be sure to read the explanation of all the ()s and []s before you continue. Also, my italics and bolding got lost in the copy/paste job. Use telepathy
to figure out where they were supposed to go, ok? Here’s what I gave them to think about:
And here are my comments (first round in (red)..he he.. and second round in [olive]) on Kelly’s blog. Probably not at all what you were expecting from me.
(Despite my eyebrow raising at the Anabaptist comment….)
So, we were just now flipping through a Christian Book Distributors catalog and we ran across something that just freaked me out so much I had to blog on it. A column of books dedicated to the Passion of Christ– or to the movie, anyway. There was “Experiencing the Passion of Jesus” by Lee Strobel [Who I generally consider of sound mind and thought.] and Garry Poole, and “Experiencing the Passion of Christ Workbook” by John MacArthur. [I wonder if these authors aren't thinking "Opportunity to get some things said that people need to hear" as opposed to "Let's earn some extra pocket change because we know people will flock to this stuff like vultures." Just a possible alternate view.] Authors who should know better than to come up with such goofy names for books! [See comment (again) above about Lee Strobel.] We all know that the reason that Christ suffered and died was so that we wouldn’t have to endure such pain from the separation from God. This is the good news: that we don’t have to experience the Passion of Christ! (Oh…but let’s not forget the whole “die with Christ, resurrected with Him” deal…)
There is a lot of stuff surrounding this movie that I don’t like the looks of. The movie provides a kind of safe and comfortable distance from which to view (”experience”) these sufferings, like a crowd of Roman citizens watching people get thrown to the lions. (I don’t necessarily get this feeling, but that doesn’t mean others don’t. So, opinion-wise I disagree with this comment, but as an observer of human behavior for the past 24+ years, other people tend to have different reactions to the same stimulus.) Not only this, but many are convinced that we can’t really understand Jesus’ suffering unless we watch this movie. (I would say that some people have at least reacted in a way that makes me think they feel this way. Whether they truly do or not is something I’m not qualified to answer. [I'm not them.] I would put money on at least one person thinking that it wasn’t possible to really understand Jesus’ suffering unless they saw this movie.) Christians have meditated on the suffering of Christ for centuries without actually having to watch someone get crucified in front of them (Random interjection: This recalls a memory from a Ridgecrest Youth Group trip where a speaker did a drama sort of thing about the crucifixion. While I wouldn’t say I would never feel the weight of Jesus’ suffering, sacrifice, etc. without seeing this drama, I would say that at that particular moment in time, the reality and depth of it was reawakened in me. Inevitably, that feeling that felt so urgent and significant at the time lost some of its potency as time wore on. There have been other moments where the weight came back, but most of those have been without visual and audio cue, as I think Kelly is about to comment on.), and although the early Christians knew that the martyrs were suffering for their faith, I doubt they instructed new converts to take a trip to the Colosseum for a visual spectacle of what it was like. Unfortunately, like so much else that happens in the evangelical world, spectacle and sensationalism are not only the selling points, but how we regard the value of things of faith. (The sad state of things is that sometimes people do get carried away (in the Christian sector) with the sensational nature of things like the Passion, the Prayer of Jabez, WWJD, the “F-Troop Bible Study” (that doesn’t exist, but Kelly might remember this reference). It’s one of the selling points that almost inevitably pops up in the Christian bookstore, catalog, or *gasp* even church. It depresses me slightly because it should be less about those things and more about how Christ is changing and shaping us as opposed to such-and-such movie, speaker, book, or Bible study doing so.)
This is all without really criticizing the movie itself, which I don’t intend to do here. [Good. Just so we're clear
It does have its merits.] Movies are good and can certainly have an impact on people’s lives. (I would even add that movies (and music, books, art, etc.) in the “secular” (oh, how I abhor that label at times) realm can impact people’s lives in positive, Biblically-consistent ways. It’s what my Senior Honors Seminar class was all about in college. Someone did their presentation on Moulin Rouge for heaven’s sake! ha ha…not intentional use of that phrase, but funny nonetheless…) But when I hear Christians constantly dropping the name of Mel Gibson in conjunction with this movie, it becomes obvious that we Christians are just as impressed with fame as anyone else. Christians want the strong and powerful on their side (He he…guess we forget that we already do have the strong and powerful on our side…suppose we somehow [get confused about what possesses that strength and power]…), to be the head and not the tail in society (which is funny, considering the subject of the movie and how Jesus demonstrates the exact opposite). Allow me to quote the description of a book on this list called “Changed Lives: Miracles of the Passion”: “A murderer confesses, the sick are healed, and broken relationships are restored. Respected filmmaker Eldred shares powerful testimonies of people touched by Mel Gibson’s images of Christ’s suffering and sacrifice…” (Not knowing anymore about this, my question (in the same vein) would be “What happened to people being touched by Christ’s suffering and sacrifice alone?”) This is a frighteningly idolatrous treatment of a piece of art. (By art, do you mean the movie? Just a question of clarification.) So often we equate numbers with success, figure the more people talk about something the more important it must be, and are impressed at the “changed lives” that our human programs (Ah…there ‘we’ go again forgetting Christ.) can generate. From the church growth movement to the “Prayer of Jabez” to the adulation (The ‘adulation’ part being the problem, not Rick Warren himself (or Mel Gibson or any other person who’s name has been ‘adulated’ without their consent.) of people like Rick Warren, this is a sickness that infects a lot of Christianity (*thunderous applause*). Alex’s aunt Laureen Kuhl, former member of the Alliance church, wrote a rather eloquent article addressing this point that I’ll have to share on here some time.
Just had to get that out of my system!!!
(I did read Ms Mar and Mr. Harry’s comments and have this to say in response. Yes, media/art like the Passion and others can be used in ways that provide non-Christians with good influence. I would just be wary about how Christians, in general, are trying to provide that [good] influence. I’d say that we sometimes forget that things like God’s Word and Christ working through actual members of His body to touch non-Christian’s lives in a personal way are age-old and tested methods. All this is keeping in mind that it’s the Holy Spirit, God Himself, that is doing the drawing, doing the work. We and some of these other things are simply conduits/tools in this physical realm. This is why I think Kelly’s blog is more a point made to the evangelical world to be careful with how we react, use, view, treat (the list goes on) these possible tools. They are not God. In fact, they’re far below Him. Without His say-so and initiative, they would accomplish nothing.)
(On a different, but not completely unrelated topic, when did things become Christian or secular? Last I checked, only people (i.e. human beings) could be classified as Christian or otherwise.)
-Tracey
February 2nd, 2005 @ 2:19 pm
“Unfortunately, like so much else that happens in the evangelical world, spectacle and sensationalism are not only the selling points, but how we regard the value of things of faith.”
P.S. Adria from work liked the point you made above.
February 4th, 2005 @ 12:31 pm
Auuggh! My blog has been attacked by a paralegal! =o)
Just a few “sum up” points that you seemed curious or unsure about, Trace…
1) Strobel and MacArthur. It’s a wonderful thing to remember that not one of our favorite Christian authors or speakers is perfect in every single thing they do and say. It keeps us from staking our trust in their words or views and launching them onto a pedastel. Take a few people whose words I strongly affirm– Chesterton, Luther, C.S. Lewis… and it won’t take long to come up with a list of wonky side views they held. I can’t judge the motives of these authors as to why they released the books they did, but even seemingly good motives play up to what is popular and selling in the evangelical world (take, for example, the flood of “praise and worship” albums). The Christian market is a business just like other businesses.
2) Let’s not split hairs about “dying with Christ.” We don’t have to experience the *real* Passion–that is, suffering–of a death on a cross and separation from God. We don’t even have to experience it as a movie spectacle.
3) The drawback to all violent and graphic movies is that they keep you a safe distance from the reality of what they try to depict. I think that the Colosseum metaphor would work for all very violent movies. Why are graphic movies so popular? They engage our emotions and sense of pathos, for one thing.
4) Impact on lives. I think this was Alex’s point about Finney, that although he had an “impact” on lives in the sense that people had “spiritual awakenings” of some kind and flocked in the aisles, his theology was seriously screwy. Are we so excited to get people just thinking about God that we don’t care how it plays out or what conclusions people reach? (This is rhetorical and speculative and not directed against anyone.)
5) I was referring to the movie when I said that some people were regarding this piece of art idolatrously. You could make a conparison to a weeping statue of Jesus or Mary, which people flock to and report all sorts of miraculous conversions from the location, such as Lourdes. No criticism of the artistic value of the statue–and certainly nothing theologically offensive of the idea of Mary or Jesus weeping– but is all this outcome and response legit? Or do we attach ourselves to BIG, miraculous, wonder-working pieces of art that will do our evangelism for us?
6) And personally, I do have problems with things Rick Warren teaches and his methods. =o)
February 7th, 2005 @ 3:02 pm
He he he…attack…attack…
Also to clarify…the comments I made were sort of random and at times purposefully to throwi a different perspective on things. (Just want to keep you on your toes.) I really was totally in-lined with your view, though to the person who asked for my comments, it seemed rather intellectually harsh, making it all difficult to decifer.
Anyhow, all good additional points. You know how I ramble and how I just throw out random comments. That’s pretty much all I was doing.
You’ve got to remember my huge issues with the Prayer of Jabez back when I worked at the bookstore…and my issues with calling something Christian music and using that as a selling point, etc.
I agree with you. I just think this was a bit over some people’s heads.
-Trace
February 7th, 2005 @ 3:05 pm
I should really proof-read my comments better. There was some horrible syntax and grammar (syntax again, really…bad keyboard…bad fingers…stop typing the wrong stuff!) in there. I hope it all made sense regardless.
February 11th, 2005 @ 11:12 pm
And by “over people’s heads” I’m sure that we all understand that it’s just that a couple things needed clarification, not that people reading it and trying to figure it out are clueless or stupid. I’ve never been on a discussion board yet where people writing long posts have had every point they’ve made totally understood by others the first time around.