For those of you who have not seen the Mel Gibson film 'The Passion of the Christ', and may not have read any of the reviews, I offer a few thoughts of my own which may persuade you to see it if it comes around again or if it becomes available on video tape or DVD.
Some critics, in their reviews for the lay media with their own anti-Christian or atheistic agenda, have condemned the film as being anti-Semitic and the scourging and other beatings of Jesus it depicts as being 'gratuitous violence'.
That the film was anti-Semitic is total nonsense. The dozen or more films about the life and death of Jesus that I have seen since the 1930s were sanitized versions as regards the violence but even those versions did show Annas, Caiaphas the High Priest, the Sanhedrin etc. being guilty of a rigged trial. In Mel Gibson's film, as before, one sees the High Priests etc. but at no time does he depict the Jews as such, as being responsible for Jesus' death. The problem people may have with the film is not really the film, it is with the Gospels, for the film simply portrays in a visually stunning and memorable way, what the Gospels report. If anything, the film, as compared to the Gospels, decreased the role of the Jews. Whereas the Gospels repeatedly refer to the Jews, the Pharisees, the Sadducees etc., the film omitted most of those references and in fact, the people who arrested and interrogated Jesus and asked Pilate to crucify him are hardly identified as Jews. Mel Gibson even removed from his film the subtitles of Matthew's line in 27:25 'His blood be upon us and upon our children'.
As regards the graphic blood and violence, may I say that because the Gospels have only one line to say that 'Pilate had Jesus flogged' and because earlier screen lives of Christ were such sanitized versions, one did not truly understand how dreadfully brutal and agonising flogging was. This film wakes you up to the fact of Jesus' boundless love for all mankind in voluntarily undergoing this terrible torture. If you see this film later, I ask that you remember it, not for the graphic blood and violence, nor for its dealing with evil's attack on God but for the reminder of Jesus' love for us. The film is deeply moving and spiritually inspiring. It will break your heart. Never have I seen in earlier films such a depth of understanding given to the portrayal of Mary, the Mother of our Saviour.
I could write more to extol this film but space is limited. I very strongly recommend you see it second time around.
David de Souza