Jesus has told Maureen Dowd what the movie's message is?

Every time I read a Maureen Dowd column, I want to kick Maureen Dowd's teeth in.

At the end of the movie, the devil is walking thru a crowd carrying a child?,man? or something to that effect. Would one of the experts here explain what that was about.
My foreman wanted to know.

h-man
That didn't happen at the end - it was closer to the middle. I'm not sure about the meaning, though.

OJ: I don't think that there is but one "great divide" over the film. There are several. The one I am more likely to participate in is between those who leave the theater emotionally moved by the film's power, and those who are sickened by its pornographic violence (Andrew Sullivan, not often a favorite commenter of mine, has the most extended take on this angle today), always endemic in a Mel Gibson film. "What we did to him, " indeed, was bad enough, without the extra-biblical embellishments Gibson brought to it. I would guess that for many, much of the film's "power" is sheer endorphin rush from having to witness so much graphic violence in one sitting.

As for the "What they did to him" angle, and the charges of anti-Semitism that inevitably dog any depiction of the Passion, if Mel Gibson was at all interested in avoiding them he might have relied a bit more on the Gospels as they are (and as he claims he did), and a bit less on the psychotic ravings of certain 16th-18th century Catholic nuns.

Well, the film won't work at all if you see "him" instead of "Him". If it's just a man there then his suffering is rather common. If it's God, then His willingness to suffer for us changes the World.

OJ: You're quite right, but the task of the filmmaker was to make us see "Him," not "him." Only those who are already predisposed to see "Him" will manage it, since everything that precedes the Passion, and even the ensuing Resurrection, is badly abbreviated in comparison to the (again, to belabor the point, extra-biblical) torture.

Anyone who honestly believes that the film is not consciously anti-Semitic has glossed over quite a bit. This is hardly surprising, since unless you're Jewish and thus naturally sensitive to scenes such as the early focus on the 30 pieces of silver, there isn't much that could penetrate the unremitting violence.

My candidate for best review so far: http://mystupiddog.blogspot.com/2004_02_22_mystupiddog_archive.html#107779052316290897

Naturally sensitive?

No reason to get cagey, OJ, and you can stop the insinuation now. I should know better than to enter into any discussion of anti-Semitism, since parties on all sides are more scrupulously on the lookout for regrettable choices of words than a hormone-crazed 15-year-old boy looking for double entendres.

Moreover, I should know better than to do so here, where the casually tossed one-liner is often preferable to engaging the meat of a discussion.

Christianity is just as anti-Semitic as Judaism is anti-Christian, big deal.

Haven't seen the movie, but that "best review" is a joke. The entire content of the review: the movie is violent. Real real violent. Did I say the movie is violent? Man, it is VIOLENT. Oh, and it's anti-Semitic, too.

OJ --

Have you ever thought about having a contest for a blog motto?

Where the casually tossed one-liner is preferable to engaging the meat of a discussion.

People who object to the violence, saying it went over the top (like Sullivan), don't know what they are talking about. Flaying alive is exactly what the scourge did. There was no victimology or softness in Roman punishment.

It is one thing to object to gratuitous violence in cop films, but quite another to say no to what we read from history. I don't recall similar objections to "Saving Private Ryan".

Or, how about "The Magic 8-Ball of Blogs".

Ahh, Did Jesus not say he came to divide, not unite? You come down on this issue on either one side or the other, anyone (Larry King) who tries to be "objective" is pulling a John Kerry.

M. Bulger:

Easy now, we are all grappling with a serious, divisive issue. And listen to Jim. I'm uneasy too, which I attribute to my Protestant background. But when I hear Andrew Sullivan complain about pornography and Roger Ebert about violence, it puts me in a very ecumenical mood.

Christians and non-Christians are obviously reacting very differently to the film. That should be enough to twig us to the issue of what is the appropriate way to convey profound religious meaning in a public, entertainment medium, something I haven't heard much on as yet. However, the new-found theological insights of a lot of heretofore secularist reviewers is putting me off my breakfast, it is.

Several of my cubicle farm neighbors were discussing the film. The one who had seen it, a Christian right down OJ's alley, found it revolting.

Really, I saw it with five atheists who decided to join the Jesuits afterwards.

Amazing. I wouldn't have thought you could suffer the company of atheists long enough to sit through the interesting parts of a Bill Moyers show, never mind the entire "Passion."

H-man, I think the idea was that Satan was mocking Christ and Mary by parodying a mother suckling her child. That's the way I took it, anyway.

Some of my best friends are atheists...

The Romans weren't known for mercy.
After Spartacus was defeated, the Appian Way from Rome to Capua was said to have been lined with six thousand crucified former slaves.
Not to mention, "Carthago Delenda Est".

I actually had a great idea for how Gibson could have ended his film--a play on Spartacus. Recall how the slaves all stand up one at a time and declare: "I am Spartacus!"? At the end of the Passion you could have had every cast member and finally Gibson himself declare: "I killed Christ".

A tone of condescension and defensiveness pervades the criticism of tf this film which is difficult for this particular catholic to understand. I have not seen the picture but from the more favorable reviews it sounds like the story is fairly in line with scripture. The sensibilities of ancient people regarding violence and the value of life is not the same as ours. The gospels are probably written the way they are since the suffering endured through scourging and crucifixion need not be emphasized for obvious reasons. The intent of the film, from what I understand, is to remind us of the suffering He endured.

I stopped in our local Christian book store (By the Book - heh,heh) yesterday to see whether the movie publicity had increased sales yet.

Not so far, but the reason was interesting. The movie is playing at a different mall.

American religion is like the North Platte River.

"At the end of the Passion you could have had every cast member and finally Gibson himself declare: "I killed Christ".

Well, everyone who feels this way and wants to make it up to Christ should read these words:

"Then they themselves also will answer, `Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?' "Then He will answer them, `Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.' MT 25:44

Christ is dying every day out among you. Go help Him.

And here I thought being an atheist in America was like living at the bottom of the Hoover Dam while the kids play with dynamite.

As far as I can tell, we're just like everybody else except we cannot expect to become president, even if we were born in log cabins.

(Which I was not, though my first home was in one.)

Because you're inherently untrustworthy.

As if religionists have an unblemished record of untrustworthiness.

One should clean ones finger before pointing out someone elses spots.

I need to take a mulligan.

As if religionists have an unblemished record of trustworthiness.

One should clean ones finger before pointing out someone elses spots.

Perhaps baptism might cleanse you?

As far as I can tell, we're just like everybody else except we cannot expect to become president...

There's also that part about believing and not believing in a Supreme Being.

To put the question frankly, why should you expect to become president when you stand in philosophical disagreement with the vast majority of the nation? What's wrong with the people electing not just someone who's capable of running the country but also someone who represents their views?

R.W. has a point. As much as I'd want the majority of Americans to seriously consider a well qualified athiest for president, people will make their decisions based on their own deeply held beliefs. Part of the price to pay for having the freedom to be different from the majority is that the majority will not automatically give you the benefit of the doubt.

Very few people will ever become president. We will probably never have a Buddhist president, or an Orthodox Jewish president, or a Muslim president, or a gay president. Someone with the religious views of Pat Robertson will probably never be electable either.

Robert:

Reportedly at least two of our current governors are gay and that whole Nixon/BeBe Rebozzo thing was always strange.

Everyone believes in a Supreme Being. Atheists just keep their's especially close.

David:

You seem uncommonly certain about the character of a belief you can't fathom.

Jeff, all is revealed to he that listens to the little voice in his head.

David:

It is vital to Jeff that we all acknowledge how deep he is, rather than just a stock product of an absent father.

Robert:

The other thing it requires is completely ignoring other conceptions of God. Like, for instance, a God all wrapped up in creating pretty galaxies, and completely unaware one of them had spawned humanity.

That sort of supreme being is quite believable, and not at all close to the believer.

Why?

Quoth Jeff:
Like, for instance, a God all wrapped up in creating pretty galaxies, and completely unaware one of them had spawned humanity.

I'm not about to speculate about anyone's childhood, nor am I going to appeal to pop psychology to account for a person's religious belief or the lack thereof; but there's something ironic about Jeff's hypothetical "believable" supreme being: it sounds just like the thing one might expect from what OJ called "a stock product of an absent father." The God who spends all day at the office and misses all His world's baseball games.

How close can the Supreme Being be if it hasn't the slightest clue humanity even exists?

How could it possibly make sense to presume such a God is the font of morality?

The dude who creates a jigsaw puzzle needn't wait around and see how you do putting it together in order to know there's only one way that it all fits and makes sense and that he's established the rules of the game.

You are making an assumption that God has established rules that include us. Wonderful, if that makes you feel better.

But that doesn't mean there is any good reason to believe that is true, other than desire it be so.

Jeff -- I'm pretty sure I fathom Atheism. There is no god; everything we observe is the result of random, impersonal natural forces; we are born, we live and then we die, and that's it.

What I think atheists don't fathom is that, even on their own terms, the concept of God is crucial to human civilization as it has developed and that tat niche must be filled with something. When it is not filled by G-d, it can only be filled by the atheist himself -- he becomes his own final arbiter. Mostly, the atheist believes that he is filling this niche with Reason, but Reason is harder to find than G-d.

Besides which, I thought you were agnostic.

Robert -- In some other thread, I'm trying (badly) to make the point that, metaphorically, none of us know anything except what we're told by the little voice in our head.

Jeff:

Exactly.

"Robert -- In some other thread, I'm trying (badly) to make the point that, metaphorically, none of us know anything except what we're told by the little voice in our head."

Yes, I agree, at least metaphorically. The question is, to what (or to whom) do you attribute that little voice? I attribute it to me. You attribute it to God.

Robert:

Because you are your own god.

David:

I am agnostic. Unfortunately, in the shorthand of discourse, sometimes that other A word is the handiest to use

Where I think you miss how agnostic/areligionists view the world is the notion of an arbiter. We are social animals--we are surrounded by arbiters. The people around me have far more immediate power to make my life miserable than any God. How can anyone be self centered, or their own God, if their first thing they do in assessing the advisibility of any action is the impact upon others?

Some here may attribute that to swimming in the ocean of humanity. I attribute it to impersonal forces that left me, like most people, no real choice in the matter. Free will is overrated.

Jeff:

Because you're assessing yourself, not the effects. So you can arrive at decisions like killing babies or your injured wife and pretend it is for their good, not yours.

Brave words from someone who countenances suicide.

People can kill themselves, not others.