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"Take
Heed" Ministries
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Cecil Andrews, PO BOX 13, Ballynahinch, BT24 8AL, Northern Ireland. Telephone/Fax 028 9756 5511. E-MAIL - takeheed@aol.com WEB-SITE - http://www.takeheed.net |
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Estimating
the Passion of the Christ |
“Tell me. Ye who hear him groaning, was there ever grief like His?
ISA 53:4 Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted.
With these words Isaiah, the Prophet of Israel, predicts the sufferings of the Messiah of Israel. With these words Isaiah predicts the Atonement of Jesus Christ the Son of God and Son of Man. With these words Isaiah predicts the death of death in the death of Jesus Christ the glorious savior of mankind and bearer of the penalty due to the sins of His people.
The facts recorded in Scripture are there for all to read. The first fact is that the suffering and death of Jesus Christ was foreordained by His heavenly Father. God ordained that Jesus Christ should suffer and die for the sins of His people.
ACT 4:27 "For truly in this city there were gathered together against Thy holy servant Jesus, whom Thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, ACT 4:28 to do whatever Thy hand and Thy purpose predestined to occur.
The second fact is that Jesus underwent a baptism of fire. This baptism was His alone to endure. It included an ignominious death on a Roman cross between two thieves before a mocking throng.
LUK 23:35 And the
people stood by, looking on. And even the rulers were sneering at Him, saying,
"He saved others; let Him save Himself if this is the Christ of God, His
The third fact is that Jesus died and was raised from the dead by God on the third day. The final picture of Jesus’ physical presence on earth is recorded in the Bible is His ascension into Heaven after His resurrection.
ACT 1:6 And so
when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, "Lord, is it at
this time You are restoring the kingdom to
There are two ways to focus on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The first way, which is the Roman Catholic way, is to emphasize over and over the suffering of Jesus with a view to emulate and perpetuate it. The second way, which is the Christian way, is to emphasize over and over again the death and resurrection of Jesus with a view to finding eternal security in it.
It
is the thesis of the Roman Catholic religion that the sufferings of Jesus
Christ are to be re-visited vicariously in their bloodless Mass as well as in
self atonement for their sins. The
gospel preached by
Mel Gibson, as a Roman Catholic, could only have directed a movie about Jesus Christ that centered upon the sufferings of Jesus. The Roman Catholic premise is that the sufferings of Jesus can melt the heart of the most hardened sinners and somehow make them desire to share in the suffering of Jesus for their own sins. This is the portrait of Roman Catholic theology. This is the image of Roman Catholic art. Everything in the Roman Catholic religion is designed to depict the suffering of Christ. The expectation is the emulation of Jesus’ suffering by His followers for the salvation of their souls.
The message of the Passion of the Christ is the Roman Catholic message. The image of Jesus undergoing such excruciating pain begs the question, “If this perfect and innocent man can endure so much at the hands of wicked men then what should I be doing?” Furthermore, “should I not be able to endure far less affliction for the sake of this very same man who has now gone to heaven and left me His example?” The idea is that self-sacrificing begets self-sacrificing. Hence, with every whip lash and with every stinging rod comes the quiet voice of guilt that demands like suffering in return. How can I resist self-sacrificing after seeing what true suffering entails?
If Mr. Gibson were a Christian he would have made a movie illustrating the suffering of Jesus as a backdrop to a more fundamentally important revelation. Rather than suffering that is designed to produce a suffering audience, the pain of Jesus would have been designed to induce a hopeless despair in the audience and joy in the heart of Christians. A Christian would let the agony of Jesus serve notice that no man can pay the awful price for his own sins! The Christian gospel moves through and beyond the anguish, pain, torment and affliction of Jesus to the purpose, person and design of the misery. The death of Jesus was horrific. But the God inspired New Testament authors are more concerned with the fact of the death of Jesus and the purpose of the death of Jesus than the details of the physical ordeal. This is due in part because Christian theology is adamantly opposed to using the anguish of Jesus as an impetus to “go and do likewise for your salvation.”
The Protestant reformers knew from reading the Scriptures that God did not put to death His Son as an example so that mere men would be encouraged to “pay a price” themselves to satisfy God’s wrath against sin. They came to understand that God put to death His Son because nothing else could satisfy the wrath of God. The guarantee that God was satisfied with the death of His Son for the sins of His people is found in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is ironic that Roman Catholic art and images are designed to induce self flagellation without the deep inner remorse that demands the lost to cry out “no hope, no hope!” Whereas the Christian gospel sees within the terrible cross of Jesus Christ “no hope for the lost because they cannot suffer enough for their sins” and because it produces within the Christian a deep and profound cry of “hope only in the sufferings of Jesus.”
Thus, Christians look bravely to the resurrection as proof that there is hope for them for the sake of Jesus Christ and His death alone. Without this message Mr. Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is just one more idol for destruction and one more icon separating Roman Catholics from the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The following article serves to show the importance of a historical and artistic perspective that all Christians should take into account with regards to Mr. Gibson. We live in precarious times. The interpretation and application of God’s Word is dominated by humanistic philosophers. Lead by a parade of Pelagian, Semi-Pelagian, Arminian and Evangelical Humanists the gospel has been disemboweled of its content and God continues to be misrepresented throughout the land by religious charlatans.
Though
regrettable, it is understandable why so many confessing evangelicals like this
movie. It appears that the false gospel
of
How unpopular is the real gospel that announces the wrath of God upon all those who are outside of Jesus Christ. How out of favor is the real gospel that convicts men so deeply that they realize a thousand priests chanting the Roman mass a million times could not touch their sin. How detested is the real gospel that exposes the hapless ecumenical evangelical humanist. The Word of God does not envision eternal life for those who are ‘moved’ toward greater introspection and resolve to live better and love more. On the contrary, eternal life is for those who view the substitutionary suffering of Jesus rightly.
“Ye who think of sin but lightly Nor suppose the evil great Here may view its nature rightly Here its guilt may estimate Mark the sacrifice appointed See who bears the awful load Tis the Word the Lord’s anointed Son of man and Son of God”
Christians well understand that the preaching of the cross of Jesus Christ is a stumbling block. It is so because rightly viewing the suffering and death of Jesus amounts to a stumbling block for those who wish to imitate it to gain heaven. The foolishness of the cross is none other than that the death of Jesus Christ and faith in His atonement alone is the only criteria for eternal life.
The word of the cross is that Jesus paid it all. Nothing can be added to the suffering of Jesus to ensure eternal salvation. The word of the cross is that there is no room for self-salvation. All the effort one can muster to improve one’s self is struck dead by the death of Jesus Christ. The word of the cross is foolishness to those perishing because they are not stricken, smitten and afflicted with a sense of despair at their own goodness.
In
an ironical sort of way Mel Gibson gives the world what it wants. He gives them hope if they can borrow from the
suffering of Jesus to some way improve themselves. This makes the self-salvation and self
improvement religion of
“For the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” 1 Corinthians 1:18.
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So Much Irony In This Passion:[FINAL Edition] |
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Paul Richard. The |
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Full Text (1931 words) |
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Copyright The Washington Post Company If Protestant Americans, diverse as they are, can be said to share a symbol, it has to be the clean-cut cross of Jesus they so liberally display. Hallmark puts it on cards, churches set it atop spires, celebrities hang it in their bling-bling. It's out there in our image-world, standing crisp and white. Like other symbols, it is a weapon, and it has a history. There are mysteries in its meanings, but not in its look. Its look is obvious: The whiteness stands for purity; the brightness for the Light. And that exact rectilinearity, 90 degrees, right on, points toward God, because it's perfect. This cross is not the crucifix of the Roman Catholic church. No Jesus hangs on it. He's already resurrected. No nail holes, no adze-marks, no gall-and- vinegar stains soil this immaculate abstraction. It's no more of flesh than a diagram in a book of geometry. It's been cleansed. It's been washed of blood. What hasn't been washed of blood, what bathes in it, is "The Passion of the Christ," which may be the bloodiest movie ever. Blood gets so much screen time in Mel Gibson's film -- for its oozings and its spurtings and its smearing of the wall -- that it becomes the picture's star. "The Passion" is a torture flick, intentionally Baroque. Its look comes less from Scripture than it does from Counter-Reformation painting. These two visions have competed through the centuries. The
Protestant Reformation stripped the cross clean. Counter- Reformation art
answered by pulling out all the visual stops to defend the Catholic Church
while confounding the Protestants' aesthetics. The paintings Gibson imitates
shared a propagandistic purpose. They were weapons in the wars between
Protestants and Catholics that swept through And yet American evangelicals and fundamentalists -- the
Reformation's children -- are flocking to see "The Passion of the
Christ." The Rev. Billy Graham has called Gibson's film "a lifetime
of sermons in one movie," though the difference, a big one, is that
sermons come in words while movies do their work through the viewer's eye.
Protestants around the country are buying blocks of tickets. Out in All of which seems a little curious, and not just art- historically. There's been an aesthetic flip: Hard-core, clean- cross Protestants would once have been appalled, en masse, by the Counter-Reformation style and its message. Now many lap it up. Gibson's action may be set in 1st-century Special-effect skies, gleams from brass and leather,
swirling darks and lights, heart-rending emoting -- Martin Luther's Reformation was a theological rebellion. At
its core was a refusal. No longer would the rebels accept the pope in The more the reformers valorized the Word, the more they turned away from images. The most extreme among them -- the "image- breakers," the iconclasts -- saw it as their duty to smash the sensual power -- the scary, popish power -- they sensed in Catholic art. For the Pilgrims of East Anglia, the Huguenots of France,
and the Calvinists of the On Think of all art destroyed, the statues with their heads
knocked off, the broken stained-glass windows. Think of all the churches,
especially in the Hatred was involved, of course, in destructions such as these. Class issues, and politics, and imperial disputes were also much in play, but so, too, was a scruple as old as monotheism -- a fear of basely materializing the ungraspable Divine. Most of the Protestant image-breakers, busily whitewashing
and smashing, were confident that they had Scripture on their side. In Exodus
20, after all, God is pretty specific: "Thou shall not make unto thee
any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or
that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth."
And Jesus was cited, too: "Blessed are they," he tells us in John If American Protestantism can be said to have a visual
style, this preference for the cleansed, the stripped-down, the ascetic, must
be one of its chief strands. That plainness is still seen in the clean, white
clapboard churches scattered through "Everything was stripped bare," Harriet Beecher Stowe recounted of the Pilgrims, "all poetic forms, all the draperies and accessories of religious ritual had been rigidly and unsparingly retrenched." Here caveats are called for. Protestants are a various lot. Many Lutherans are highly tolerant of pictures, as are Episcopalians. There is lots of art in churches -- but, in general, the spare white space that's filled with music, light and language, but not with fleshy pictures, still declares itself as Protestant all across the land. That reticence is a presence throughout American painting. Those 19th-century artists who wished to show themselves as Christian, but not as Roman Catholic, sought out God in nature -- and painted all those seaside scenes, and soaring mountain landscapes, and flowers on the table, with which our walls are filled. And now along comes Gibson, returning to center stage the vivid Catholic imagery -- sensual, argumentative, Marian and Latinate -- of Counter-Reformation art. He is, no doubt, sincere. But then the Aztec priests who ripped out human hearts were pretty sincere, too. So are the flagellants who still bloody themselves for God in so many Shiite and Spanish- speaking countries. The act of seeking the divine through blood and gruesome suffering didn't start with Gibson. It must be immensely old. Protestants have long been quick to take up new technologies -- Gutenberg's printing press, the radio, the TV. Christian iconoclasm nowadays isn't what it was. Not long after the Second Great Awakening of the early 19th century, the printed Bible tracts that so many preachers handed out began to come with printed pictures. And by the end of World War II -- when Bob Jones Jr. of Bob Jones University began to build his big collection of vividly realistic Counter-Reformation paintings -- that old distrust of Catholic paintings had pretty well faded, though in some circles it lingered on a while. Andrew Mellon, for instance, the founder of the National
Gallery and a Protestant son of Among the rich Americans who built most of our museums (though
there were, of course, exceptions, such as the Ringlings, or Walter
Chrysler), a general disgust with Baroque devotional painting used to be
widespread. "This dislike," wrote scholar Edgar Peters Bowron in a But many contemporary Protestants will approve of Gibson's
movie, and I bet they won't be thinking of 17th-century Italian art, or
popish propaganda, Calvinist image-breaking, or anything like that. That
reviled mainstream As late as the 1960s, students at Osama bin Laden is still an iconoclast, an image-smasher, on theological principle, but in Protestant America there aren't many left. How could there be? In 2004, with the Internet and cable and PowerPoint presentations, it is just about impossible to go about one's business without permitting pictures, pictures of all sorts, moving ones and still ones, deep into one's life. But pictures bring the past with them. And so do visual styles. There is a lot of "anti" in Gibson's film, and not only anti- Semitism. The film is anti the secular, and anti the sqeamish. And the many clean-cross Protestants who see it ought to be reminded that the style of its images once was aimed at Christians pretty much like them. Author's e-mail: richardp@washpost.com Paul Richard has written about art for The Post since 1967. |
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
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Gibson, Mel |
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Commentary |
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OUTLOOK |
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01908286 |
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Text Word Count |
1931 |
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