Passionate POVs

[neadods]

Although I don't want to see the movie (I'm not big on the gore and guts for any reason, and as an atheist I'm not really willing to pay to be proselytized) I have been following the reviews and commentary on The Passion of the Christ with interest.

And after a while, particularly in seeing the various responses from the public in breathless/horrified anticipation, I finally realized something.

There are, to oversimplify, two kinds of Christians.

One kind, the kind I grew up with/as, focuses almost entirely on Christ's life. Yes, he died horribly, but that's glossed over with the simple chant of the creed weekly - "He was crucified, died, and was buried." But that's not the important part; that's what comes next in the creed. "On the third day he rose again, and sitteth at the right hand of the Father..." What is stressed is how he lived, what he taught, and that he lives still, and you can too if you live according to What Would Jesus Do?

The other kind, and these are the ones that Passion is aimed completely at, focuses more on the death than the life. The point here is less on what would Jesus do than what he did - offer himself up as an Old-Testament-style blood sacrifice, the literal scapegoat for humanity. The prayer on the back of Chick tracts says "I believe you died for my sins" and never mentions "I will live according to your teachings." The hymn sings "washed clean in the blood of the Lamb." Was it Mel or was it one of the ministers singing the praises of his film that said "Jesus didn't give one drop of blood for us, he gave every drop of blood for us!"

Looked at that way, of course the movie is going to be as graphically sanguinary as possible. The suffering is the whole point.


Mind you, this still leaves me wondering about another either/or that came up recently:

Last summer, a religiously-based group of people drove a major kink convention out of Ocean City. Although the activities would have been completely shrouded in a hotel, the objections were "what about the children, what if they're exposed to it?" and "people shouldn't be allowed to hurt other people, even if they think they want it!"

This spring, several religious groups are founding a major drive to take children to see what is, in essence, a torture snuff film.

Can anyone explain that to me?

Comments

[stratfordbabe.livejournal.com]

I could go into all the various discussions of "Old Testament" Christianity vs. "New Testament" Christianity, etc. I will say that I would bet very good money that those bloody depictions you saw of the cruxifiction were over 100 years old.

And Fundamentialists, of any stripe and any religion, tend to promote from the negative. Those who have prostelytized to you have no doubt reacted to you as a middle class white female. You'd get a very different pitch if you were of the lower class. Then they tend to focus on the aspect of being loved and accepted within the church. Around here, that's definitely the angle they take (and yes, I have been preached at and bothered by evangelists here -- just as racism is often worst within a given race, religious intolerance is often at its highest within the given religion).

I suspect we are talking about much the same thing, but you see a different source for it than I do. Really, you are talking about much of the difference of Old and New Testament Christianity -- and that gets into a whole 'nother can of worms. :-)

[shayheyred.livejournal.com]

I'm feeling a little defensive of Nea at the moment. Why is it not possible for her to have come to different conclusions about the nature of Christians? Just as I am certain you would not say you represent every Christian, so Nea is not saying that every single Christian falls into one of her two categories. If she did not seek out your specific opinion, does that invalidate the experiences she's had with other Christians?

Surely you are both coming at the same conclusion from different angles. I am an outsider observing, and it does seem to me that both of you are describing tolerance vs. intolerance, strict adherence to the Bible vs. interpretation of the Bible in order to follow the principles described within it. It's like Constitutional law. you either follow blindly or you interpret. And if adherence to the letter of the law = fixation on the description of the death of Christ, and interpretation = extrapolating one's own Christianity from the resurrection and LIFE of Christ, then in the end, you both mean the same thing. For me it's easier; I accept that there is some sort of Higher Power/God/Supreme Being - I can't understand how the Big Bang happened without a God creating the stuff that exploded. I just don't believe in religions, because, hey, look at all the crappy stuff that happens, that we've all described here. And once again, religion is coming between people who otherwise are simpatico. Just read the posts above.

[stratfordbabe.livejournal.com]

Trust me when I say that fgwriter needs little defending from me. She's quite capable of having someone argue an opposing point and make her own arguments -- just as I am. I took exception to something she said in her original post and stated my opposite theory. We've now exchanged something like seven posts about it and are exploring new areas and enjoying the give and take. In my LJ, she asked for my input here, and I gave it.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Hey, can we all take a deep breath? Not that I'm not flattered to have a defender, but Shay, Stratfordbabe and I tangle on a regular basis; the result of rather radically different worldviews. I think we both get ahold of the wrong end of the stick more often when we're reading each other's writing as opposed to talking, but we generally talk around it and figure things out. (The whole New Testament/Old Testament Christian thing is a new and interesting angle; I want to ponder on that before I respond.)

But on the whole, to quote the Bard, we "strive mightily but eat and drink as friends."

You are very right about tolerance vs intolerance, but now I'm going to start another hare because I love a good discussion. Is it possible to follow any written document, be it Constitution or Bible blindly? Isn't anything, even "it literally means this" an interpretation? Mel interprets "the rending of the veil of the temple" as an earthquake; Massachusets interprets the Constitution as *already* supporting gay marriage. Both the filmmaker and the judges can point to words and say "They literally mean..." but there are those who argue that it's a wrong interpretation.

[shayheyred.livejournal.com]

You'd need to ask Antonin Scalia that question, I think.