I haven’t talked about seeing The Passion of the Christ here yet, mainly because I’m lazy, but also because I was trying to sort out what I was feeling after seeing this film.
I’m still not sure what I’m feeling.
This movie troubled me, and I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. Yes, it’s graphic. No, it’s not anti-semitic. So what could be so troubling for me?
Whether you are a Christian or not, it is to be incredibly difficult to watch a person willingly being brutalized and suffering such an agonizing death and in such excrutiating pain, and all because he knows it’s what he must do. You see very clearly in the film that the treatment isn’t forced upon him, but that he does everything voluntarily. And then during one of the most poignant moments of the film, when things are being done to him by the Romans that no ordinary human could bear, he calls out for their forgiveness.
Wow.
This film depicts Christ the way no other film has. You haven’t really seen Jesus “the man” depicted in films or television, and it can be difficult to get a sense of that when you read the Bible. Yes, Jesus was God, but he was also a human being, and he felt fear and pain just as we all do, and that is very apparent in this film. It’s easy to read about the sacrifice made, but to see it played out on the screen, it made His sacrifice more real, more clear in my mind.
The images will stay with me forever and will weigh heavily on my heart.