Musings about the Passion of the Christ

Hey. I'm trying to get the New York stuff online so I can go back to posting. So here I am. The [] serve to protect the innocent or fix the poor grammar/writing.

An Entry Transcribed.

Written the morning after I saw the Passion of the Christ, during the bus ride to New York.

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Impressions from the Passion of the Christ.

Epic? Certainly.

I told [a friend] last night that the level of brutality was not excessive. It wasn't. However, the level of brutality is horrific. Perhaps revulsion is expected but I had none. Jesus death, complete with it's myriad of painful and violent moments is something I came to grips with a few years ago after reading "The Day Christ Died" [by Jim Bishop].

I was caught offgaurd instead by the less violent moments, rooted more in the emotionalism and effect that Jesus had on people.

The 'teaching moment' with the guard in the garden of Gethsemane is amazing. The connection that Simon develops with Jesus. The difficulty Mary has in the alley in seeing her son stumble and fall and knowing that she must run to him. The mother's instinct portrayed so beautifully against the backgdrop of nearly indescribable cruelty.

Exhausting to watch. I didn't have most of the reactions other people had. I wonder why the pundits and critics were so focused on the anti-semitism when there are clearly men on the sanhedrin who questions his arrest and treatment?

[Another friend] mentioned that she couldn't help wondering why it wasn't enough. She said she felt a sense of "Ok, you've made your point." both in reaction to the violence of the film and the character's treatment of Jesus. I suppose that perhaps that was unintentional. But maybe not. Maybe that was Gibson's point: to use the graphic violence to cause the viewer to want to scream "STOP! Haven't you done enough allready? How much more must I watch? How much more must he take?"

"Jesus Christ died for (y)our sins."

Its so trivialized. So glib. Do you ever stop to think about it? [That we say he] died for us. And not the quiet and dignified death of the old. Instead the horrific death that only a man in the prime of life could even hope to reach at the end of the suffering he endured.

"God came to Earth."

Did he live vicariously in Christ?

Or was he Christ?

Does he prove that we can make it?

Is his sacrifice indicative of something we could all accomplish?

Was it in those quiet moments (standing back up after the beating. Praying for the guards as the nails are hammered home) that Christ was God in us? Or was it then that Christ demonstrated that the attributes of God have not completely abandoned mankind?

Can the sacrifice of one man complete the transaction for us all?

No.

I'm not comfortable accepting that.

To partake of Christs freely offered sacrifice, we must pay a price?

Our souls? Our lives?

What is God's role in all this?

Does he die with Christ? Is he ressurrected with him?

Or [is] his observance of the event enough?

No, he must be human, for this idea to work.

Why? How can the soul of one attain [atone?] for us all? Whose soul holds such power?

[ed. note: following the writing there is a grid with four options, made out of a cross. with the words "Why this?" scrawled across it. The four options read "God is Jesus, God inhabits Jesus, Jesus displays the attributes of God, Jesus is God."]