That’s David Weinberger to whom I’m referring, who asked this question in a comment to my post about the passionless Passion.
I ask this as a Jew who hasn’t seen the movie. And I ask it sincerely. If this movie were all you had to go on, what would you think of Christianity? Does it do a good job representing the meaning of the religion?
In my review of the movie, I purposely avoided that issue because I wanted to review the movie as a movie and not as propaganda. Having done that, however, David’s question gives me an excuse to share my answer to that important question — which is unequivacally NO!
The model of tolerance and compassion that the figure of the Christ is supposed to be for Christians is not reflected in the movie. The main message this movie gives about the Christ is that he was tortuously martyred by Messiah-denying Jewish religious leaders. The model of political and philosophical courageous rebellion that the Christ is for lots of us others isn’t there either. The point of the movie is that he said he was the Messiah, and the Jewish leaders said he wasn’t, and there more more of them then there were of him and they won out.
This is not a movie about any of the aspects of Christianity that might make it a valuable path to follow, that might give insight into its potential power to those who don’t know much about it. This is a movie made by a man who looks at the world through a two-inch pipe.
The mindset that made this movie is the same one that caused feminist Monique Wittig to write:

On my tv news right now: Jason West, the 26 year old mayor of New Paltz, NY (who won his office on the Green Party ticket) says that he’s going to start marrying same sex couples tomorrow. Four couples are far on the list so far. Experts say that nothing in NY State law says that he can’t do that.
I just love New York!

OK. I admit, upfront, that I’m biased. Beginning with the time Sister Mary Whatshername took our sixth grade class to see a Black Friar-produced Passion Play, and continuing through another half-dozen years of Stations of the Cross and Seven Last Words and various other celebrations of that noxious crucifixion, I pretty much had my fill of the story’s gory details.
Maybe that’s why, sitting through Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ this afternoon with my mother snoozing on and off next to me through the less loudly symphonic parts, I felt….well….I felt bored.
Or maybe that’s not why. I mean, I really like going to the movies. And I am deeply enamored of all kinds of mythologies. There was a time that used to to read the gospels over and over because I loved the stories. Hearing Haydn’s interpretation would move me to goose bumps and tears. So, why did Gibson’s Christ leave me cold.
Well, first of all, costly coagulated make-up effects and lots of eerily expressive faces aside, Gibson directed this movie like it was a film student’s final project. All of that slow motion drifting of various droplets, bodily and otherwise! Those creative camera angles and constant crescendos of new age-y music! And, of course, those lengthy close-up portrait shots of fluid-oozing faces!
Anyone who doesn’t know the details of that mythic journey might totally lose track of the story line as it flashes back to various signficant moments in the Christ’s life-before-flogging. You really had to have read the book. Probably several times.
And then there was the flogging. And the flogging. And the flogging. No man born of woman would have lived past the first round. By then, essential organs would have been mortally wounded, and at least a few ribs cracked and sticking in and out of places that they were never meant to be. Certainly, after having just about every inch of skin pretty much flayed to strips, any human would have fainted from the pain, gone into catatonic shock.
Oh, what’s that you say? But he wasn’t human. Oh, but the point of the movie and of scripture is that he was. His father in heaven did not protect him or save him or take that chalice from him. He made his choices and he took his chances.
And so it was with Gibson-the-director. He chose to turn one of the greatest stories ever told into what amounts to a graphic novel. Oddly enough Pontius Pilate comes off as the only character who thinks in more than one dimension. Unfortunately, the historical Pontius Pilate was much less bothered by conscience than the one that Christian mythology has come to embrace and the one that Gibson chose to portray.
I think that Gibson has done a great disservice to both faith and myth, which, when it comes to the passion of the Christ, are based in so much more than the skin-deep story that his movie tells.
Instead of being drawn into the heart of the matter, as I watched Gibson’s movie I was remembering my sixth grade introduction to the Passion Play, when Stanley Szymanski sat next to me and held my hand. And during the most dramatic moment of the play, when the Christ was hanging on the cross and about to utter his last words, and the sound effects thundered and the lighting effects blinded. Stanley leaned over and said to me “let’s get hitched.”
P.S. For some clever related visual sacriligious humor, check out Rage Boy’s “Christ on a Crutch.”

I got the following from my son’s website, out Oregon way. He says it’s being emailed around, but this is the first I’ve seen it. It sure does make the point — at least it should to anyone who doesn’t look at the world through a two-inch pipe.
As certain politicians work diligently to prevent marriage between two people of the same sex, others of us have been busy drafting a Constitutional Amendment codifying all marriages entirely on biblical principles. After all, God wouldn’t want us to pick and choose which of the Scriptures we elevate to civil law and which we choose to ignore:
Draft of a Constitutional Amendment to Defend Biblical Marriage:
* Marriage in the United States of America shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women. (Gen 29:17-28; II Sam 3:2-5.)
* Marriage shall not impede a man’s right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives. (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21)
* A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deut 22:13-21)
* Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden. (Gen 24:3; Num 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Neh 10:30)
* Since marriage is for life, neither the US Constitution nor any state law shall permit divorce. (Deut 22:19; Mark 10:9-12)
* If a married man dies without children, his brother must marry the widow. If the brother refuses to marry the widow, or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law. (Gen. 38:6-10; Deut 25:5-10)
* In lieu of marriage (if there are no acceptable men to be found), a woman shall get her father drunk and have sex with him. (Gen 19:31-36)
I hope this helps to clarify the finer details of the Government’s righteous struggle against the infidels and heathens among us
In his post, b!X makes the following statement, which, I think, it right-on.
The same arguments made today against same-sex marriage — which boil down to something about a threat to the social fabric — are merely echoes of the arguments which supported the idea that blacks were not quite human and could be owned as property, the idea that women should not be allowed to cast votes at the ballot box, and the above idea that whites should not marry people of other races.
Thing is, they’re right. Same-sex marriage indeed is a threat to the social fabric, just as were the ideas of free blacks, voting women, and interracial marriages. But when the social fabric clearly is worn, tattered, and only protects the privileged few, it deserves to be threatened.
We can only hope that the next national election will provide what’s needed to do some major Constitutional mending (in contrast to Amending.)

I was posting over at my old Blogger site while the server I’m on here was down. There’s a few good February posts over there, plus links to some oldies but goodies, in case anyone is interested.

My mother spends a great deal of time watching Channel 61 on our cable system, the Catholic Global Television Network . She also spends a great deal of time trying to get me to watch it, and I spend a great deal of time making excuses about all the other things I have to do.
The other day, however, while I was over in her apartment, I caught an old segment of Mother Angelica facilitating a discussion of stem cell research. Now, my opinions these days are decidedly catholic and not at all Catholic. And so I have to admit that I didn’t agree with most of what was said. However, I did get a kick out of Mother Angelica’s quippy sense of humor. She reminded me of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, who used to be on our old black and white tv in the early fifties. Like Mother Angelica, he knew how to play to an audience. They both used humor to make religious doctrine sound human and humane. It occurred to me, watching Mother Angelica perform, how much that approach appeals to the “childlike” in all of us. People of such uncritical faith seem to have remained innocent and childlike in ways that people like me turned way from for all kinds of personal and realistic reasons.
People like me look at Mother Angelica and see Granny Weatherwax. They are both the stuff of Croney female legacies and legends. And childlike fantasies. Their quirkinesses are appealing and disarming. Personally, I prefer Granny in terms of what lessons there are to learn about life. But if one is compelled to wear a black habit instead of a black pointy hat, she should take lessons from Mother Angelica.
Legacies and legends. I guess that’s why I also like novelist Alice Hoffman, whose novel The Probable Future I just finished. It is a novel teeming with legacies and legends, and, like all of Hoffman’s works, it opens up places in my poetic spirit that strict and traditional religion was never able to touch. Legacies and legends are powerful in their metaphor — more powerful, for people like me, than any literal interpretations of life as we are supposed to know it.
And that’s why I’m interested in seeing Mel Gibson’s controversial movie, The Passion of the Christ.
I hadn’t been paying much attention to the publicity about the movie, but when my phone rang at 11 p.m. Monday night and it was my mother excitedly telling me to put on Channel 61 (aarrggh), since I was up, I did. It was Mel Gibson being interviewed about the movie. What he said in that interview is pretty much what he’s been saying in all interviews:
“Obviously, nobody wants to touch something filmed in two dead languages,” Mel Gibson explained at a news conference

Damn. I almost always remember to check out www.snopes.com when I get emails that sound too good to be true. I dropped the ball on the Social Security Urban Legend that, as one of my weblog readers informed me via email, has been around since 2002. And I fell for it. Too eager to think the worst of our leaders. So much for Crone wisdom. Heh.

Got this as an email. It’s worth sharing, I think, even though there’s not a chance in hell of anything ever being done to achieve equity.
SOCIAL SECURITY:
Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions during election years!
Our Senators and Congresswomen do not pay into Social Security and, of course, they do not collect from it.
You see, Social Security benefits were not suitable for persons of their rare elevation in society. They felt they should have a special plan for themselves. So, many years ago they voted in their own benefit plan.
In more recent years, no congressperson has felt the need to change it. After all, it is a great plan.
For all practical purposes their plan works like this:
When they retire, they continue to draw the same pay until they die! Except it may increase from time to time for cost of living adjustments.
For example, former Senator Byrd and Congressman White and their wives may expect to draw $7,800,000.00 (that’s Seven Million, Eight-Hundred Thousand Dollars), with their wives drawing $275,000.00 during the last years of their lives.
This is calculated on an average life span for each of those two Dignitaries.
Younger Dignitaries who retire at an early age, will receive much more during the rest of their lives.
Their cost for this excellent plan is $0.00. NADA….ZILCH….
This little perk they voted for themselves is free to them. You and I pick up the tab for this plan. The funds for this fine retirement plan come directly from the General Funds;
“OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK”!
From our own Social Security Plan, which you and I pay (or have paid) into, -every payday until we retire (which amount is matched by our employer)- we can expect to get an average of $1,000 per month after retirement.
Or, in other words, we would have to collect our average of $1,000 monthly benefits for 68 years and one (1) month to equal SenatorBill Bradley’s benefits!
Social Security could be very good if only one small change were made.
That change would be to jerk the Golden Fleece Retirement Plan from under the Senators and Congressmen. Put them into the Social Security plan with the rest of us … then sit back and watch how fast they would fix it.
Heh. And just how likely is that to happen??
ADDENDUM: Please see comment below indicating that the above is not really true. The commentor points to links that can be used to verify the validity of such emailed information.