Passion Power

It is abundantly evident that there was never anything wrong with ‘The Passion of the Christ’. The critics clearly had their own ulterior agendas. The anti-religion, anti-Christ detractors just wanted to suppress and ridicule anything that did not fit their crooked ideologies and value systems.

Mel Gibson’s latest movie has now proven to be not only an emblem of passion, but power. We only knew of the passion aspect through the pre-release controversy. But after the Ash Wednesday release hauled in the super-hit quantum of 23.6 million dollars in one blow, the passion had turned to power! Hollywood insiders and others, who were supposed to know, had cast much scorn upon Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. They bluntly told the Hollywood actor-turned-producer /director that nobody would be interested in his bloody Christian depiction. They passionately predicted that any chance of the movie making an impact was further destroyed by the fact that the entire piece was done in Latin and Aramaic. It did not end there — far from it.

There are those, Gibson said, who “nefariously” got the script sometime before the film came into being and raised vociferous protests against its contents. They claimed that it was heavily anti-Semitic and would encourage hatred and violence against Jews. The spirit and intensity of their views are captured in the language of senior British lawmaker Gerald Kaufman, a member of Britain’s governing Labour Party. Kaufman charged, “Sadism, gratuitous violence wallowing in blood and it has to be said, crude anti-Semitism is what you’ll find. The Jews are depicted as almost caricature Jews demanding the blood of Christ.” This is as strong as the anti-Passion sentiments came. Some of the critics were even more crass and caustic. In fact, things got so bad that the Passion’s release was threatened. This changed dramatically, however, when much kinder reviews came from many prominent Christian leaders, including Billy Graham, Benny Hinn and Pope John Paul II (who watched an advance copy in his private residence in the Vatican).

But although the comforting words of religious leaders succeeded in calming the fears of some critics, there were those who relentlessly persisted with the campaign of bitter resistance. In one NBC interview, Gibson lamented, “For a year it’s been nothing but nasty editorials and name calling.” He added that he forgave his critics. Gibson quite obviously has the last laugh, with his overwhelmingly successful film very easily raking in hundreds of millions of dollars. As the virtually stunned world look at the fascinating figures of the movie’s box office ratings, many are anticipating a record-breaking yield in the near future. Really, the grand success of Gibson’s classic is no surprise. It is about the most accurate depiction of the biblical description of the sufferings of Christ (in His crucifixion) ever captured on film. This was bound to find tremendous favour with the multiplied millions of Christians the world over.

The brutal, violent and gory death of Christ, and those who crucified him, has been well known for 2000 years. Millions of preachers, singers, authors and lay Christians go through the details practically on a daily basis, on the media and otherwise, all over the world. This has never aroused any anti-Semitic sentiments anywhere. Nothing about too much violence has ever come up. Everything has always been viewed and accepted in its proper context — Christ, through His love, laying His life down as the ultimate sacrifice for man. His death and the violence connected with it have always been accepted as the fulfilment of God’s prophetic destiny for His Son, in man’s redemption. This has always resulted in the brokenness and repentance of men. To a considerable extent, this is what has been happening through the Passion movie.

Gibson, who is of a traditional Christian background, noted that his inspiration to make the movie came from his personal experience with the graces which flow from the sacrifice and sufferings of Christ. The famous screen personality related how 13 years ago, he had reached a particularly difficult, painful time in his life, to the point of becoming very suicidal. He indicated that meditating on the suffering of Christ contributed significantly to his coming through. “I went to the wounds of Christ in order to cure my wounds. And when I did that through reading and studying and meditating and praying, I began to understand it as I never had before — even though I had heard the story so many times,” he said. After Gibson used 30 million dollars from his own pocket to finance the making of the film, he stated that conceiving the idea of the movie was like giving birth. “The story . . . the way I envisioned the sufferings of Christ, got inside me and started to grow. It reached a point where I just had to tell it . . . to get it out. I tried to make it as realistic as possible. I wanted the audience to feel like they were really there,” he explained. Surely, Gibson has been splendidly achieving his objective — much to the chagrin of his vain critics.

It is abundantly evident that there was never anything wrong with The Passion of the Christ. The critics clearly had their own selfish, ulterior agendas. The anti-God, anti-religion, anti-Christ Hollywood detractors just wanted to suppress and ridicule anything that did not fit their crooked ideologies and value systems. Most of the other critics were of a similar persuasion. But as they have quite embarrassingly recognised — once more — Jesus is alive and well, and so are his millions of followers! Let’s hope they learn this well from the current unleashing of Passion power.