Too True, Too Wonderful, Too Hard

Spirituality Column #177
March 30, 2010
Current in Carmel - Current in Westfield - Current in Noblesville
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Too True, Too Wonderful, Too Hard
By Bob Walters

When “The Passion of the Christ” was released in 2004, I joined hundreds of local folks at a pre-screening of the film.

When it first appeared in stores, I bought the DVD.

Now years after that first theater viewing, the DVD is still in the wrapper and I’ve never seen the movie again.

It was that kind of movie. Our sin is that kind of awful.

Too many people debate the wrong elements of that film. They complain it is anti-Jewish, it is too violent, it includes story elements that aren’t in the Bible, the androgynous Satan / serpent character is too creepy, the theology is “old school,” producer Mel Gibson got a DUI and drunkenly made racist comments, Gibson’s father is a nut-case Holocaust denier, conspiracy theorist, and Vatican II crank.

Satan just loves it when he can pull us off point.

You see, the point is that the Cross of Christ’s crucifixion shows us the reality of our sin, and the depth of God’s love. The truth is that the Cross of Christ is not a picture of God’s wrath; nor does the Bible anywhere call it punishment or payment. Christ on the Cross is a picture of God’s grace with Jesus bearing the infinite burden of our sins, erasing them with his death, and defeating death itself with His resurrection.

It was the world’s evil and the wickedness of man – Satan – that beat and bloodied Christ. Those are a fallen world’s sins and our individual brokenness for which sinless Jesus suffered pain and humiliation, which are so realistically, shockingly, disturbingly, horrendously and mercilessly depicted in The Passion of the Christ.

If we blame God – or Mel Gibson or his dad or the Church or the Jews – for what happened on the Cross, we are blame-shifting something for which we must take full responsibility, and for which we must be willing to claim in faith as the ultimate truth:

- That I am a sinner and Christ died so I wouldn’t have to.

- That the victory of the Cross is our freedom from death; our salvation.

Do I believe that? Oh yeah.

What the innocent Jesus – fully man and fully God – endured to provide my salvation could not have been God’s hate and retribution; it could only have been God’s love.

But oh, I loath being reminded how the victory was won.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) knows other people who saw the movie, and then bought the video but never watched it.