but with Mel Gibson back in the public eye again, there's something I've been mulling over. Really, I've mulled this stuff for a long time- almost like a song playing in my head over and over, this has been a background noise for my faith life for quite a while.
The thing that made me uncomfortable about the Passion of Christ movie was that it seemed like a giant guilt trip- so much the pre-Vatican II style of Catholicism(which apparently is what Mel is...)that said "see? be grateful that I suffered so much, and just do what I say." Like a mother using her labor pains as leverage against her child. As I am not keen on guilt overall (bad at it, really) this message didn't hit me.
Then I heard a piece on This American Life that featured parts of Julia Sweeney's "Letting Go of God", in which she tells of her return to Catholicism, and the struggles that followed. She decided to start learning about the Church she'd grown up in and left, and joined a Bible Study at her church. The rub is, the more she learned about the Bible, the less she believed in God. One part of the story particularly effected her, and her telling of it kicked my butt too- she said, basically, that in the grand scheme of things Jesus didn't suffer all that much... she had a brother who died after many months of throat cancer- very painful, awful throat cancer. Now that, she said, was suffering. She said someone told her once "Jesus had a very bad day for your sins."
Wow, when you look at it that way, doesn't that blow your mind? It really did a number on me. I couldn't understand why we should be asked by Mel and others to try to relate to Jesus' suffering. It made those Good Friday processions in foreign lands (you know, the ones where they carry a cross and wear thorny crowns and make themselves bleed) seem upside-down.
When my dearest friend's neice died, things came a little clearer. I realized that it wasn't so much important how much Christ suffered, it was that he suffered. HE suffered so that he could relate to US. We don't need to watch that movie and cry for his pain (although it's nice of us to!)because his suffering was his cry for us, for our pain.
When children die, their parents often say to tv reporters "I wish it could have been me instead". Jesus' pain and death were that wish, lived. His suffering is not meant to be a guilt trip for me, should not be something I should try to relate to. It is something I can take comfort in, because Jesus knows how it feels to suffer, like I do.
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1 comment:
BINGO!
One of my favorite bumper stickers reads "We are not human beings having a Spiritual Experience, we are spiritual beings having a Human Experience".
God created us but He had to become one of us (Jesus) to experience what humans experience - the Ultimate "Spiritual Being having a Human Experience".
(I can build a drum, but that doesn't mean I fully know what it's like to BE a drum. Although I scientifically know how it functions, what makes it work, and can witness it's activity as it does it's thing - I would have to become one to fully grasp the feeling.) By having experienced exactly (but not necessarily more) what humans feel from birth til death (not only physical suffering, but also humiliation, rejection, temptation, trust (worthy and mis-placed), joy, friendship, success, etc.. He experienced all there is to experience as a human (except one thing if - you believe the Catholic Church and not the DaVinci Code but that's a whole 'nuther debate) God is now better able to have compassion for our efforts and be more forgiving when we fall short. Lucky for us He's so darned smart and thinks of everything!
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