| THE PASSION OF CHRIST
Radio Script, March 7, 2004
Several months ago I first heard that Mel Gibson was making a movie about
the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. In the ensuing months, I have
read with great interest, the various debates about the movie including
questions of perceived “anti-Semitic” overtones and that it
showed much to much violence. Responding to the question of antisemeticism,
Newsweek article did an article a few weeks ago entitled, “Who really
killed Jesus” and I did a program answering that question from a
Biblical perspective. However, I reserved making any comment on the film
until I had the opportunity to see it for myself.
I intended to see it on my recent trip to Arizona, but things got busy
and I was unable to fit that in and so this past Sunday night my wife
and I went to see it. I had a wide variety of emotions as I watched the
movie, some unimportant, and some that need to be dealt with and so, on
this broadcast I would like to take the opportunity to deal with some
of the issues raised in the movie “The Passion of the Christ.
Now I must say from the beginning that I am not a movie critic and if
I were to try to give an opinion on the technical and artistic merits
of the movie, I would make a fool of myself for sure. I will leave that
for people trained in that field and only say that it appeared to me to
be well made. The purpose of this program will be to deal with the accuracy
of the movie from a Biblical perspective.
In the things that I had read and heard concerning the movie, it was my
understanding that Mel Gibson had done everything he could to be as accurate
as he could, and so I expected the movie to be Biblically accurate. However,
that expectation did not take into account the fact that Gibson belongs
to a religious organization that does not believe the Bible to be the
sole authority for faith and practice but rather the leadership of their
organization is such and the traditions of the organization are quite
different from the Bible. It became apparent to me very early in watching
the film, that the religious traditions that Gibson has been taught were
more the basis for the film than the Word of God. Over and over, I was
put off by the various scenes that had no basis in the Word of God whatsoever.
I did not try to make a list of the Biblical inaccuracies of the movie,
but my good friend, Pastor Ray Pritchard from Oak Park Illinois, on his
web page, did make a partial list which included “The snake in the
Garden, Jesus being pushed over the bridge, the private conversation between
Pilate and his wife, Jesus constructing a wooden table, the raven that
pecked out the eye of the unrepentant thief, the woman who wipes the sweat
and blood from Jesus’ face while he carries the cross, the children
taunting Judas, Mary kissing Jesus' bloody feet, Pilate’s wife offering
towels to Mary and Mary Magdalene.”
I would include several other things that I noticed that were not according
to scripture such as satan being a woman and being present in the garden
of Gethsemane, Jesus, as a child, falling down and Mary rushing to comfort
him, Mary Magdalene being the woman caught in adultery in John 8, the
rotting donkey, Satan carrying baby with the face of a 45 year old man,
the “teardrop from heaven,” and Caiaphas speaking to Jesus while
he is on the cross.” I am certain that this is not a complete list
but all of these things are things that are in the movie that are not
in the Bible.
Now the question begs to be answered, just how much harm do these unbiblical
insertions do to the overall story. The answer is that it varies. Some
of them only represent attempts to fill in places where the Bible is silent.
For example, the Biblical account of the conversation between Pilate and
his wife only deals with the matters pertinent to the purposes of God
and no doubt Gibson was only trying to embellish the drama that unfolded
in that brief conversation. However, what he did was nothing more than
conjecture at best and would perhaps put a spin on the matter that is
not necessary or helpful.
Another similar error was the depiction of Satan as a woman. On the one
hand, it would not do to portray Satan with horns and a red cape as that
is totally out of line, and perhaps what Gibson was trying to do in this
instance was noble in that in attempting to present Satan as “an
angel of light.” He used the sensuousness of a woman to depict show
the appealing nature of evil. However, no matter how noble the intent,
he strayed from the path of Biblical accuracy.
And then, some of these inaccuracies only perpetuate long held myths.
The idea that Mary Magdalene is the woman taken in adultery is a common
misconception that will gain even more acceptance since it is in the movie.
There will be many people, ignorant of the Bible, who will just assume
that this is the case since they saw it in the movie. There are enough
misunderstandings of the Word of God without perpetuating them.
There are other inaccuracies in the movie that gender confusion like the
scene where satan comes carrying a baby with the face of a 45 year old
man. Where did that come from? There is nothing in scripture that would
even intimate such and the presence of such an image is eerie and unnerving
without serving any Biblical purpose. Where did it come from?
There are many paintings of the “mother and child” in historic
art where the “baby” is full grown and in some cases, the face
is turned toward the viewer in the same manner the face turned toward
the viewer in the movie although I do not know why or what purpose it
serve. Even so, I cannot figure out what possible this scene was supposed
to portray. What it did do was to needlessly give the viewer the “willies.”
In a movie already pushing the boundaries of what people could stand,
this scene was totally unnecessary at best and counterproductive at worst.
The same can be said for the grotesque scene of Judas being tormented
by children and the maggot covered carcass of a donkey over his betrayal
of Christ. Gibson took a brief statement from the Bible and extrapolated
a whole scene. To be sure, any dramatization of the suicide of Judas would
need to show anguish of soul but the external forces depicted in the move,
not only lead to an unnecessary emotional from the audience but to an
unscriptural conclusion as well. The reason Judas hanged himself was because
of his guilt with lack of repentance over his betrayal of Christ. The
Bible shows Judas to be a man who walked with Jesus for over three years
but never came to know Christ as saviour. The movie showed him to be a
misguided victim of society and circumstances. Again, the movie misleads.
And that leaves only one more question to answer. Why did Jesus Christ
go through all that he went through? If one knew only the movie version
of this matter based on the Garden of Gethsemene scene, Jesus was a good
man against whom wicked men plotted and were successful in entrapping
him. According to the Bible in John 10:15 As the Father knoweth
me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down
my life for the sheep. Ga 1:4 Who gave himself for our sins,
that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the
will of God and our Father: Eph 5:2 And walk in love, as Christ
also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice
to God for a sweetsmelling savour.
Much of the prerelease controversy over the movie involved the matter
of who actually killed Jesus, the Romans or the Jews. By misleading the
uneducated audience in the matter that Christ actually laid down his life,
this issue becomes real. If Christ was a martyr for a cause as the movie
implies, then there really is a question of antisemeticism. The movie
clearly showed the Jewish crowd clamoring for Christ to be crucified,
one of the places where the film was accurate. But remember, the Jews
had been trying to kill Jesus for some time and He had been able to successfully
thwart every attempt.
This time, although they thought they were successful, they were no more
able to kill Jesus or have Him killed because of their will to do so than
Pilate was able to have him crucified without God giving him power to
do so.
Jesus Christ suffered and died because men are sinners without
hope in this world or the next. The fact of sin separates man from God
and make man completely and totally unable to enter the presence of God.
Because God is Holy, He cannot allow sin even into His presence.
But God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever
believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Jesus Christ,
who was the God of creation, came to the earth and took on himself the
form of a man, was born a virgin birth, lived a perfectly sinless life
and laid down his life in order to make a proper payment for the sin of
mankind. He also rose from the dead, victorious over death and now offers
the blessings of salvation to “whosoever will.”
And that bring us to perhaps the weakest point of the movie. Christianity
is not based on the suffering and death of Christ, although all of that
was absolutely necessary for our salvation. Christianity is based on the
resurrection of Jesus Christ. To tell the story of the Passion of Christ
without proper emphasis given to the resurrection is to miss the point
entirely. Now I realize that the religious organization to which Mel Gibson
belongs spends far more time on the death than it does the resurrection,
the message of the Apostles was the resurrection.
Jesus was not a martyr for a cause against whom the tide of popular opinion
shifted, He came to the earth to die and to be raised again the third
day and in doing so, He conquered sin and death.
I do not doubt for one minute, the sincerity of Mel Gibson in making this
film and there is no doubt that some good will come of it. There will
be people that God will use the film to bring them to a point of recognizing
their need of salvation. However, I am fearful that there will be many
others who will become confused to the point of never being saved as a
result of the film. In the big picture, I fear that this film will do
more toward creating “another Jesus” than it will to pointing
people to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
Mel Gibson will become extremely wealthy because of this film. It is a
box office success. False religions will swell in number because they
don’t care about the integrity of the scriptures. A sovereign God
will also accomplish His purposes in spite of what man will do.
The question is this. “Will this film ultimately do more harm than
good?” Only time will tell for sure.
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