| BAPTISTS TODAY
News Release www.baptiststoday.org |
March 5, 2004
MACON, Ga. — Yes, I have seen the movie. To its credit, it has some impressive music and some riveting scenes. It does a very good job of capturing the complexity of Pilate and the grief of Mary. It also has a few brief, beautiful reflections on the Last Supper and the Sermon on the Mount.
Yes, I have seen the movie. But I have also read the Book, which is why I think that churches who are so enamored with The Passion of the Christ might want to interrupt their rush to rent the theatres long enough to remind their parishioners that this movie is just that; a movie. The Passion is to Gethsemane and Calvary what Pearl Harbor (the movie) is to Pearl Harbor (the tragedy); a dramatic presentation of a real event, with all the dramatic additions that it takes to make history work as a movie. The Passion embellishes upon the Biblical voice, and the embellishments all serve to evoke emotions from movie-goers: The demonic children chasing Judas, the ancient infant in Satan's arms, Satan weaving in and out among the high priests, the extra-Biblical extra beatings all the way to Calvary, the blood-dripping cross-flipping scene at Golgotha. If you have read the Book, you know that none of that is in the Bible. And if you have seen the movie, you know that all of that only serves to make the movie-goers cringe, cry, gasp, and flinch.
Many people say they found it all quite moving. I found it all a bit troubling, because it seemed to me that our most sacred story had been exploited for purposes of making the most moving movie possible. For that, one cannot fault the movie-maker. It is a movie-maker's job to make movies, and to make them as moving as possible. In the case of The Passion, the result is a movie that is a caricature of the real Passion of the real Jesus, which is the movie-maker's right.
My question is not for the movie-maker. My question is for the church.
Why are we assigning such sacred significance to this movie? Are we, the Christians of America, so star-struck by making it big at the box-office that we cannot find the voice to speak the truth that this movie, like all movies, is only a caricature of reality? The church needs to speak the simple, plain truth about The Passion of the Christ: Where the Bible whispers, the movie shouts. Where the Bible exercises restraint, the movie takes liberties. Where the Bible falls silent, the movie makes up things.
That is no indictment of the movie or the movie-maker. The movie-maker did what movie-makers are supposed to do; he made a movie. That is not a problem. The problem is that North-American Christianity has sacrificed so much of our theological discernment on the altar of our consumer culture that we cannot find the voice to say that Jesus' suffering and death are not transferable from the gospels to the movies, even if making it big at the movies boosts Jesus' ratings and gets him on CNN, Fox, Newsweek, and Time.
All of that is not to say that Christians should avoid the movie. It is to say that those who go should know that what they are going to see is just that; a movie. If it is the real Passion of Christ for which they are looking, they will have to read the Book.
(Chuck Poole is a former Baptist pastor who now works among the poor through Lifeshare Community Ministries in Jackson, Miss.)