Frei Betto on Mel Gibson’s film

Frei Betto, a Brazilian theologian and novelist, has written a powerful essay on the ways in which Mel Gibson’s film perverts the witness of Christ. It’s available in the original Portuguese on the web, but fortunately for those of us who can not read Portuguese, the Media.faith listserv has translated it into English:

CHRIST ACCORDING TO MEL
Frei Betto

Mel Gibson shows in his film “The Passion” a Jesus lacerated by the mostatrocious sufferings. The scenes are shocking, or as Geraldo Magela,cardinal of Salvador says, “cruel”.

What’s behind this painful approach to Jesus’ Passion? Above all else,it’s a marketing move. Those who know about marketing are aware of thetwo ingredients that go into any successful recipe: sex and/or violence.The pendulum in our unconscious keeps us constantly alert to somethingthat no other living creature knows: we are born and we will die. Thisform of entertainment reinforces those polarities and brings thegeneration of life and sexuality together to produce pornography; whiledeath, the extinction of life, means violence. The use of these twoingredients keeps the masses spellbound.

Mel Gibson started off from a theological approach which was verypopular in the Church’s past : we have offended God so much with oursins that only the death of his Son by torture can redeem us from suchan offense. The Father gives his Son over to death, so his blood cansatisfy his thirst for revenge against Man. By dying on the cross, Jesuswashes the sins of mankind.

It is necessary to put Jesus’ death in context, in a society where thelaw prescribed the rescue of slave prisoners, to understand this morbidplay in which God makes God suffer and be killed, to understand Gibson’smistaken approach. The center of Jesus’ life is not his suffering andhis death, but his Resurrection, which is unique. Without it, as theApostle Paul said, our faith would be in vain. And the most importantthing in Jesus’ life is not how much he suffered, but how much and howhe loved, the way only God loves. I have met prisoners who suffered morethan Jesus did at the hands of their torturers. But none of them lovedas He did; He never made a gesture lacking in love, so therefore, hedidn’t know sin.

The Word did not become incarnate to suffer. He became incarnate to loveand to bring light. His love has nothing to do with the complacency thatreduces love to a mere feeling. To love and to be truthful to oneselfand to others are two sides of the same coin. And to practice justiceand make everything so “that they might have life and have it moreabundantly” (Jn 10: 10). That’s why Jesus died, victim of an unjustsystem. He died as a political prisoner, condemned to death using theinstrument adopted by Roman power: the cross. He died because of oursins, as the injustice we practice creates structures that ensureabundant life for a few and condemn most people to an early death.

Mel’s Christ is bitter. He is the expression of our lack of love andGod’s lack of love. But God is love, and he never stops loving us. Thisdimension of the passion —now it makes sense to love somebodypassionately- is what the film lacks. Mel offers us a wreck. The Gospel,fortunately, offer us the way, the truth and the life, God’sunconditional love, showing us in Jesus the path to happiness, to suchan extent that He says: “I have told you this so my joy may be in youand your joy may be complete ” (Jn 15: 11).