The Movie Passion of Christ

Over the last month, the movie has grossed over $27 million (28 Mar 04). Benefitting from the controversy created by Mel Gibson and his production company, the movie puts on center stage once more the life of one Jesus of Nazareth.

I laugh and smirk at all the Christians who say that they have rediscovered their faith by watching this movie. Apparently, they were touched by the torture that Jesus suffered at the hands of those bastard Romans who were just upholding the law. Scenes of being scourged and beaten and having shoulders dislocated brought tears to people's eyes.

My response is that if scenes of torture of any human being do not bring tears to one's eyes, then one is a callous and insensitive brute. Of course you will be touched by the horrors of torture and brutality. You don't see it everyday. But I am amused by people who rediscover God. The movie experience should lead you to question man's inhumanity to man. It might even lead to a questioning and a deeper understanding of the sacrifices god makes for man. But finding God and its subsequent metaphysical questions of faith by watching a movie suggests that one's beliefs have not been examined to the fullest.

Besides, Jesus of Nazareth was lucky. He was tortured only once and he died from it. Now, slaves on the other hand are pretty much tortured whenever they disobey the master. Figure that a slave will try to disobey once or twice or three times, and the slave would have been flogged more times than Jesus. The only difference between a slave and Jesus is that Jesus has a very active marketing and sales firm working for him with the promise of salvation at the end of the world.

I have reached the stage in complexity of religious thought to know that Allah, God, Buddha, Bathala, and Zeus are simply the manifestations of one God who is so complex that the human mind can only approximate the reality. The human mind is so small that in contemplating God, the human mind comes up with the different variations on deities.