People moved by emotion not passion

THE EDITOR: “Pastor Power” by Pastor Dr Winston Cuffie. What a lot of nonsense, for crying out loud. The man holds a doctorate yet all he can conclude for Mel Gibson’s film is that it is making a tonne of money therefore it has to be good. One of the cardinal rules for controlling people’s thoughts and bringing their minds under one’s control (brainwashing) is to make them emotionally upset. The power of the Passion is in its awful, raw, bleeding brutality. The audience is emotionally upset — imagine in a darkened, crowded room — an emotion ignites, flashes and engulfs the audience (mob psychology at its worst). Someone once asked an actor’s son “What does your father do?” to which he replied “my father spends all his working hours pretending to be someone else.”

Any movie is pretense. A ribbon of moving plastic, imprinted with images and a sound track, upon which a light is focussed to cast a series of animated scenes upon a white background. Blows are faked, emotions are faked, characters are faked, death is faked and the blood is fake. A cinema audience forks over good, hard cash to enter a darkened auditorium where they are asked to suspend their “sense of disbelief,” enter a world of fantasy and allow scriptwriters, movie directors and actors to play with their minds. So what? Loads and loads of people are writing and talking and thinking about The Passion, but how long after emotion has subsided and the movie is retired will the “Christ” be remembered?

I remember as a youngster years ago on Good Fridays in TT, the long lines winding along the pavement to the doors of the cinema where sell-out crowds pushed and jostled to get in to see 1) Passion Play ) the crucifixion of Jesus) and 2) The Blood of Jesus. These movie were not unduly fussed over by those who saw them. Here are some questions which beg an answer: 1) We are told that God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten to be crucified for our sins so that those who believed in Him would not perish but have eternal life. Jesus came as a saviour for the Jews, when the Jews rejected Him, He opened the door of salvation to the Gentiles.

If the Jews had accepted Him fully what would have been the position of the Gentiles? 2) Why would Judas betray Jesus for 30 pieces of silver? Judas was the treasurer for Jesus and the disciples. He held the money bag. With a calculated plan he could have stolen and hidden away more than 30 pieces of silver from the money bag for any selfish motive of his. 3) Everybody knew Jesus, what purpose did it serve for Judas to betray Him with a kiss? 4) The Jews are to be blamed for the death of Christ. The entire Jewish nation cannot be held to blame for the action of a handful of scribes and Pharisees, false witnesses and a rounded up “ragtag” crowd calling for Jesus’ crucifixion. One can question the bible but no answer will be forthcoming. Father son, Holy Spirit and the Bible has to be taken on raw faith — “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed.”

JACK LEARMOND CRIQUI
Diego Martin