I Finally Saw It... Well Kinda...

"Weep not for me, weep for yourselves and for your children."
- Luke 23:28

I was flipping through my new cable channels last night and happened across The Passion of the Christ on Showtime (we get it free at the moment with the new cable). Well, I watched a good 23 minutes straight of this "SO ACCURATE, IT'S PRACTICALLY WRITTEN BY THE HOLY SPIRIT HIMSELF" movie and apart from the main characters and the general plot, I barely recognized what was going on.

Of the first four scenes I watched, three were fanciful and aren't even remotely biblical. The other was fictitious, but based on a true story.

I poked my head in a few more times and watched maybe 10 or 15 minutes more here or there. The last time I looked in I caught the highly accurate and biblical account of a raven tearing out the eyes of the "bad thief" as the "good thief" informs the [bystander] priest to "listen" as Jesus prayed for him (exactly as the Bible recounts).

Satan seems to have given himself a starring role in this story too. He seemed to be omnipresent (if you catch my drift). I'm glad the cinematography was so good (and it was) or else I would have believed that I was watching the Aramaic version of [the 70s Rock Opera] Jesus Christ Superstar. The storyline in The Passion was much closer to Superstar than to the scriptures.

I also noticed that some shots of James Caviezel (who played Jesus) looked just like some of the artwork I saw when I visited the Vatican years ago. Funny that.

It was nice to see the often overlooked biblical account of Pilate's wife tending to Mary's sorrow and the demonic children chasing Judas to his death... perhaps in TPOTC Part II the apostles will get together and build a waterslide. I can't seem to find that in my Bible either, but all that stuff must be near the back somewhere.

This movie (at least the 30 or so minutes that I saw) was so apocryphal that I am sickened that usually sound Bible teachers like Greg Laurie could call it an "accurate portrayal". I am sure that the rest of the movie that I didn't see is likely as bad because I've read so many accounts of other unbiblical content from ministries trying to convince me it's so biblical.

I figured out what they like about the film and why they seem to have ignored the rather loose interpretation of the scripture... it is so bloody that it has an "emotional" appeal. Since the church these days likes to substitute "emotional appeals" above the simplicity of "preaching the word" I am hardly surprised.

Oh, and I'm still waiting for the "hundreds of thousands of conversions" that I was promised by TBN that would happen in the theaters. I guess TBN is still processing all those names. Of course all those promised "church services breaking out in the theaters" must have made the counting difficult.

"Weep for youselves."