Root of ‘the Passion’ controversy…
Friday, March 12th, 2004The Root of ‘the Passion’ controversy…
Christopher Hitchens was on tv recently discussing an article he had written about Mel Gibson and his film ‘The Passion of the Christ.’ Describing Gibson, he said…
“Yes, he‘s a fascist and he‘s an ignorant peasant and a superstition monger.”
All of this controversy about Mel and this movie has been analyzed and determined to be a lot of different things but the bottom line is this…
it is not a political issue, it is not a social issue, it’s not even a personal issue… as much as it may sound like one. This is a spiritual issue. There is no better example of it and Mr. Hitchens admits this himself…
“I am atheist. I‘m not anti-Catholic. I am not anti-Protestant. I‘m not anti-Greek Orthodox or anti-Judaism or anti-Islamic. I just think that all religious belief is sinister and infantile and belongs to the backward childhood of the race and that the great thing about the United States is that it‘s a secular country with a godless Constitution.”
Like all men that have no use for God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ…they reject the teaching that they are sinful and in need of anything, they are doing just fine the way they are…
“Christians say we all nailed Jesus to the cross, not just the Jews. I say no such thing. We can‘t make ourselves complicit in a crime we didn‘t commit that took place as a human sacrifice in the 1st century.
If you can believe that, you can believe anything. Christianity further invites you to say, if you will plead guilty to something you didn‘t do, we will forgive you for all the sins you did commit. I think you will agree, as a conservative, that that dissolves personal responsibility and morality altogether. That‘s my view. “
It should by now be fairly obvious that Hitchens (and others who are saying similar things) are not criticizing Mel Gibson or the movie, they are criticizing the Gospel and therefore rejecting Jesus Christ.
