"Crucifixion Porn"

Pandagon > USATODAY.com - Kids will see R-rated 'Passion'

I'm interrupting the countdown to comment on this USAToday article.

"The violence is necessary to understand the sacrifice Jesus made," says First Family pastor Jerry Johnston. His Baptist church has rented out a half-dozen theaters in Kansas City, Kan., and has reserved auditoriums the night of Feb. 27 for children 11 and older.

Johnston concedes they'll be disturbed by the violence. "I hope they're disturbed enough to make their peace with Jesus."

There is plenty in the two-hour film to make children and adults alike squirm:

• Roman guards employ a "cat-o'-nine-tails" that rips the flesh from Jesus' back.

• As Jesus is being crucified, a supervisor scolds one man for not nailing his hands properly. He yanks Jesus' other hand, pulling the arm out of the socket.

• To see whether Jesus is dead, a Roman soldier pierces his side with a lance. Blood showers down on the soldier.

"Most images of Christ on the cross are too tame," says Matt Stoehr, pastor of the West Coast Christian Center in Vista, Calif. "They minimize the sacrifices he made. Scripture tells us that he was beaten to a pulp. I think seeing that on screen will be more powerful for kids than any sermon."

The spectacle of the agony of Jesus has been a tool for Christian conviction since the religion's beginning. Paul shows the importance of suffering and mediation on Christ's death:

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our heart through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person - though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love to us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.

Romans 5:1-8, NRSV

For Paul, the simple act of Christ's death was enough to convict the heart. We were all sinners before God, but Christ died to provide forgiveness for those sins and give us access to God's saving grace. Will someone die for a righteous man? Maybe, but who would die for a wicked man? Jesus. This becomes the Christian proof of God's abiding love.

But as Christianity progressed, anything to do with the death of Christ becomes an tool for impressing the stubborn heart with God's love. The first Gospel written, Mark, deals with the final physical suffering of Jesus in 23 verses. Matthew uses 25 verses, and Luke uses 23 verses from flogging to death. John, the last Gospel written, moves up to 30 verses, adding the information about the spear in Jesus' side.

There is restraint to be found here, however. It's a "just the facts" presentation. There is no relishing of the details of crucifixion or flogging. In fact, there was no need to. The audience of early Christianity could walk outside of any major city and see a crucifixion victim for themselves.

But as time progressed and crucifixion fell out of use, the need for a presentation of the miseries of crucifixion grew. The Stations of the Cross became a spiritual exercise to flagellate the soul with Christ's agony. These mediations could become quite graphic. Read this passage from Anne Catherine Emmerich's The Dolorous Passion of Jesus:

Our loving Lord, the Son of God, true God and true Man, writhed as a worm under the blows of these barbarians; his mild but deep groans might be heard from afar; they resounded through the air, fording a kind of touching accompaniment to the hissing of the instruments of torture. These groans resembled rather a touching cry of prayer and supplication, than moans of anguish. The clamour of the Pharisees and the people formed another species of accompaniment, which at times as a deafening thunder-storm deadened and smothered these sacred and mournful cries, and in their place might be heard the words, ‘Put him to death!’ ‘Crucify him!’ Pilate continued parleying with the people, and when he demanded silence in order to be able to speak, he was obliged to proclaim his wishes to the clamorous assembly by the sound of a trumpet, and at such moments you might again hear the noise of the scourges, the moans of Jesus, the imprecations of the soldiers, and the bleating of the Paschal lambs which were being washed in the Probatica pool, at no great distance from the forum. There was something peculiarly touching in the plaintive bleating of these lambs: they alone appeared to unite their lamentations with the suffering moans of our Lord. The Jewish mob was gathered together at some distance from the pillar at which the dreadful punishment was taking place, and Roman soldiers were stationed in different parts round about. Many persons were walking to and fro, some in silence, others speaking of Jesus in the most insulting terms possible, and a few appearing touched, and I thought I beheld rays of light issuing from our Lord and entering the hearts of the latter. I saw groups of infamous, bold-looking young men, who were for the most part busying themselves near the watch-house in preparing fresh scourges, while others went to seek branches of thorns. Several of the servants of the High Priests went up to the brutal executioners and gave them money; as also a large jug filled with a strong bright red liquid, which quite inebriated them, and increased their cruelty tenfold towards their innocent Victim. The two ruffians continued to strike our Lord with unremitting violence for a quarter of an hour, and were then succeeded by two others. His body was entirely covered with black, blue, and red marks; the blood was trickling down on the ground, and yet the furious cries which issued from among the assembled Jews showed that their cruelty was far from being satiated.

From here.

Emmerich's book is a basis for Gibson's movie, by the way. I expect to see a shot or two of the lambs bleating while Jesus is being scourged.

Passion plays could truly deal with the details of crucifixion, with the added bonus of a mob mentality gripping the audience. And now we have a Passion play in which every gruesome detail has been checked for lighting. It's red and raw in THX sound - every lash, every bleat, every spatter of blood on the pavement is there for the audience to marinate their brains in. You could almost call it brainwashing, but that implies the non-cooperation of the victim. Here we have people who will pay eight dollars or more to monopolize their perception willingly.

But will everyone be cooperating? Churches are renting out whole theaters, bringing their youth groups in to see a 45 minute scourging. Everybody's going to be on the same page? Nonsense. And the church leaders are quietly gleeful about the kick-it-up-a-notch graphic violence of the impending spectacle. More kids soaking up an evening of excruciating violence that's all their fault and turning back to the Lord in love. Sure beats Kumbaya around the campfire, doesn't it?

Jesse at Pandagon calls this "crucifixion porn". I haven't found a better description of this movie anywhere. I wanted to see the film to compare it to The Passion of Joan of Arc, but already here's a major difference: Joan's sufferings are mental until the very end. When the fire is lit to burn her, the flames are anti-climatic compared to the visions of horror she's endured throughout her trial. But Christ's agony moves quickly to the physical in the Gibson movie. The empathic connection with Gibson's Christ must be maintained by realizing that your own depravity placed Christ there; but we are free to be human beings when we identify with Joan.

So on with the countdown. Tomorrow is number five: What were the motives of the Jews that examined Jesus before he was taken to Pilate?