First, a little background. I have never been an outwardly religious person. I have yet to read the Bible, and, although my Wife and kids go to Church every week, I am not there with them. When I was little and would visit my Grandma, she would make me go with her all of the time. It was not a fun experience. I’ll stop by saying it was just short of miserable. For a while, I did go with my wife. The Minister at our Church was fantastic. He held my interest and took a lot of the “boring” out of it for me. Then he moved on to another church…(click the Read More link for more)

From that point on, the church had a lot of different people fill in for him until they could find someone permanently. I went on all of those Sundays and listened as person after person stood up in front of us a read aloud, word by word, from the book. And there I was again. Bored. Uninterested. Miserable. I can read. I read pretty well actually. I read much better than I write. I do not need someone to read it to me word for word. I can do that at home. So I stopped going. So I always knew a good bit about the Bible and the stories it held, but I can’t recite you chapter and verse of something in it.

Which brings me back around to The Passion. Now, I’m going to mention a few specific things about the movie that would normally be considered “spoliers,” but chances are pretty good you already know how it ends. There was close to 15 minutes of the movie, mostly in the beginning before Judas betrays Jesus, where he is not getting beat in some fashion or another. When he is arrested early in the movie, they don’t just bring him in (even though he is going quite peacefully), they make sure to beat him up a little. And a little more while the trip gets started. Then a lot more as the trip is underway. Then he is thrown around some more for blasphemy. Peter denies him three times, beat him more. Take him in front of the Romans, beat him more. Chastise him, but “make sure he lives.” The scene where he is chastised was the toughest in the movie for me to watch. I’ve sat through TONS of violent movies in my life, but this was a new level for me. It reached the unnecessary.

I’ll give you an example. The chastising. They strap his hands down so he can’t run while getting his beating. They use these stick-like things to beat the heck out of him for about 10 minutes. He’s hurt. He’s down on his knees. It could have all been over. But he stands back up. So, I guess the sticks didn’t work so let’s upgrade to something more damaging; a kind of whip-like item with metal on the end that ripped a wooden desk apart. So, if it’s good enough to rip a desk apart, let’s use it on Jesus. Remember, the order was given that he live. So they start beating him with the new weapon, which, is obviously ripping his flesh apart. Then, just like the desk example, it gets stuck on his side and the guy whipping him has to stop and pull really, really hard to get it back, and it rips off a big chunk of his side, revealing his ribs. It’s hard to say how long this goes on, because I’m not sure I have exhaled yet. So, it seems like the beating is finally coming to and end as they go to free his hands. Nope, just kidding, let’s free only one hand so that we can turn him over and beat the other side for another 10 minutes. The guards beating him are so exhausted they can barely stand up themselves. Jesus is just laying there in an unbelievable amount of blood. But it’s finally over. So they drag him off to some dungeon looking place and you are just hoping the violence is over, but of course, it’s not. He is barely breathing. They have just been scolded for giving him way too much of a beating. They can barely catch their breathes from the amount of physical beatings that they just gave. But yet they have the strength to create a crown of thorns and force it, and I do mean force it (of which we get to hear it ripping in to Jesus’ flesh) on to his head. Then they beat him a little more.

Exhausted yet? Wait, there’s more. Eventually there is the order that he be crucified. He struggles to carry his own cross. He is barely alive. He has lost an unbelievable amount of blood. So, let’s make sure to whip him the entire time he is carrying the cross, since he barely has the strength to walk there without it. This continued beating while carrying the cross made no sense to me. He falls and drops the cross a bunch of times and they must figure that if he’s too weak to carry the cross as he is, we should just beat the heck out of him some more. That will help.

But wait, there’s more. The Crucifixion. This, while unbelievably real, was a little tough to watch. Hammering the spikes through his hands and then feet was pretty tough, but they then flip the cross over on top of him while nailed to it, to pound the ends of the nails over so they can’t slip out. Blood is just pouring off of him. Then they flip it back over again and raise it up. So much blood. There is barely a man there before us now. It is more like ground meat.

A little bit more and it is all over. And there is not a sound in the theater at all. Nobody moved. People were crying. Everyone is just sitting there. I was exhausted. I could finally exhale. It was a tough movie to sit through. but it was a good movie. Did it change me forever like some people have claimed? I guess that remains to be seen, but I have been talking about it since seeing it, which means that Mel probably succeeded in one of the things he was trying to do.

But, as I write this, my family is in Church and I am home adding an entry to my blog, which is probably read by less than 10 people across the planet. So, while it still remains to be seen if it has changed me, I did not go to Church today.