Men and Women See Violence Differently
From discussions about the film's violence with men and women who, like me, saw an early version of the film last fall, it is obvious that women will react differently than men to the violence in The Passion. Women will tend to want to cover their eyes, or even run from the theater. But men will tend to be captivated by the physical suffering of the just, not unlike their willingness to endure physical pain in time of war. But while both men and women will understand the significance of the sacrifice, men will embrace the physical side while women will understand more profoundly the emotional side. Unfortunately, motion pictures can only depict the physical side of the formula, a limitation filmmakers do not like, but one that nonetheless leaves women often frustrated.
This genetic difference between the sexes is fundamentally obvious if you've raised little boys and little girls. The little boys will sustain the pain of wrestling with their dad and show off their bruises the next day. But, the little girls, although at first they want to wrestle too, quickly back off, their more sensitive nervous systems forcing them into more nurturing activities.
That nurturing perspective of women tends to see even an evil aggressor as a mother's son or daughter; while men see an evil aggressor as someone that needs to be quickly dispatched before the evil spreads. There is probably some truth in the adage that if women were in charge there would be no more war. But unfortunately to enforce the “no war” dictum against their more aggressive counterparts, our more nurturing halves would probably have to take up a castration knife (a violence of its own kind) or deadly weapons. So it's really not a matter of men versus women, as it is the degree of violence necessary for the sake of a longer peace. In fact, even in the Old Testament God demonstrated the necessity of mass destruction even upon His elect for the sake of a lasting peace. And in the New Testament God sent the Prince of Peace to a violent death for the same peaceful reason.
Thus, at first, I thought that The Passion's violence did not faze me because I was a man. But, I am a man who dislikes violence, war, guns, and blood and gut fare. And then I realized I did not want to flinch or miss a second of the violence in this particular film. For some reason the violence in The Passion was different, and I found it strangely cathartic. It was an unsettling contradiction.
Suffering that Filled a Void
I think I finally figured it out. Seeing what the suffering Christ went through filled a great void for me as I regard the purpose of suffering for a Christian. As an Evangelical growing up, suffering was often equated with sin. If something bad happened to someone in the church, the gut reaction from the adults and even the pastor seemed to be that the person was being punished for some hidden, unconfessed sin.
Many times, in Evangelical settings, when I would be experiencing difficulty in my life, I was challenged to “get right with God and everything will be all right.” This aspect of the Evangelical, and even the Protestant, view of suffering is displayed at the front of every church behind the pulpit. There you will see a cross, an empty cross, void of its suffering Corpus (body of Christ). The empty cross represents Christ's Resurrection. Consequently, there is little emphasis on or contemplation of Christ's suffering; but there is a lot of attention given to Christ's glorious Resurrection.
Yes, there were the occasional communion services, when we were suppose to think about the blood that was shed for our transgressions. But such services only occurred four times a year, and at the large Evangelical, independent church we most recently attended, the wine was actually watered down grape juice. (The Communion Committee claimed they had to water it down to get the juice to flow through a Plexiglas contraption that semi-automatically filled the hundreds of little plastic cups.)
Later, as a Catholic, I came to realize that my sin crucified Jesus. And since I sin at least several times every week, it started to make sense to me that I should weekly (even daily) celebrate the Eucharist, and in the process stare at and contemplate the crucified Christ hanging on the cross above the altar, and ask forgiveness for putting Him through such a Passion. Now, after almost six years as a Catholic, it has gotten to the point where going to Mass does not just seem like a good thing to do, but an absolute necessity.
And to eat His broken body and to drink His blood every week at Mass (cf. John 6), and to taste the sweet potency of the wine's accidents, His real blood, is not just a nice symbolic remembrance, but something that physically gives me more than a “personal relationship with Christ.” It gives me an intimate, physical, connection. I become literally, in reality, the body of Christ. And in so being, I go out from Mass to love and serve the Lord, even in the sharing of His Passion, and at times, joining in His suffering.
But Is There Too Much Suffering in The Passion?
James Caviezel (who plays Christ in the film) and Mel Gibson have said that their movie cannot show too much violence in regard to the death of Jesus. Why do they say that?
It occurs to me that there is no way to show visually, in this physical realm, the enormity of what God did through the suffering of the Christ. What we see on the screen is the depiction of the death of a single person. The Bible suggests that in a perfectly just environment, a man's sins deserve death. Even one of the robbers condemned to crucifixion next to Christ said, “Indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes” (Luke 23:41).
The same robber said “but this man [Christ] has done nothing criminal.” He was wrong in one very significant way. Although Jesus never sinned, and although Jesus was not a criminal, and although Jesus by virtue of His life did not deserve to die, Jesus, in a transcendent way, died with sin, as a criminal, and the death was deserved. Sound heretical? Not in the least. For it is in this great “mystery of universal redemption” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 601) that God made Christ to “be sin” (2 Cor 5:21, cf. Phil 2:7, Rom 8:3). Christ assumed for us the state of our waywardness of sin, and God established Christ in solidarity with all sinners, and thus in this transcendent way allowed His innocent Son to die justly (CCC 603).
But here's the clincher. Christ did not take on just my sin, or the sin of a single horrible sinner, or of a single mass murderer. He took on all the sins of all mankind, all over the world, throughout all of history. Think about that. “To God, all moments [and thus events and sins] are present in their immediacy” (CCC 603). So, the suffering that Christ experiences in His passion is not for one man, even though that is all Gibson's Passion explicitly depicts, but is rather the just punishment of all persons that have ever lived. How many is that? Today, the world's population is over six billion people. But we have to add, to the immensity of what Christ did, all the billions of people that have died throughout history, and we have to add the billions that are yet to be born. Christ died for billions upon billions of people. The suffering, in the eyes of God, was a just death for all the sins of all those billions. How does a filmmaker show the immensity of that?
Gibson has said that his intent was to shock us, and to take us over the edge. To me such words do not come close to being accurate. But, unfortunately there is no way to accurately depict the suffering that God endured with Christ's death. What we see on the screen is the physical suffering of one man. But because that one man is God, the eternal, spiritual, and emotional gravity of what He did is billions and billions of times beyond a filmmaker's ability to depict. Therefore, no matter what violence Gibson was able to portray, it is only a small billionth of the reality of what God did on our collective behalf in the Passion of the Christ.
© Copyright 2004 Stan Williams
Dr. Stan Williams is Executive Producer and Managing Director for SWC Films, an independent feature film development company seeking investment partners. His website is www.stanwilliams.com.
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