{"id":640,"date":"2004-02-23T23:45:48","date_gmt":"2004-02-24T07:45:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/02\/23\/why-are-some-people-obsessed-with-the-crucifixion\/"},"modified":"2004-02-23T23:45:48","modified_gmt":"2004-02-24T07:45:48","slug":"why-are-some-people-obsessed-with-the-crucifixion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=640","title":{"rendered":"Why are some people obsessed with the Crucifixion?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was raised in a relatively conservative Christian household and was a devout member of a conservative church<\/a> in my hometown for many years (in fact, the church was more conservative than even Focus on the Family, headquartered on the other end of the city; the church believed that using instruments while praising God was a terrible sin). In all my years of church camps, Sunday services, bible schools, and mission trips there was a particular quirk of some devout Christians that I’ve not yet been able to understand: why are some people so fixated on Jesus’ crucifixion?<\/p>\n

I’ve known some Christians, typically male, typically very outwardly devout, who obsessed over the crucifixion in a way that seemed, at times, to border on the unhealthy. These were the people who would devout weeks of their sermons and\/or small group lessons to the gory details of how many times Jesus was lashed, how much it would have hurt to be nailed and tied to a cross, how it would have felt to have died in that particular way, and so forth. They often reminded me of horror film aficionados discussing their favorite dismemberments, beheadings, tortures, and eviscerations from the various horror movies they’d seen; the thrill seemed to be in the amount of blood spilled and the number and volume of screams emitted rather than in the context of the situation.<\/p>\n

These teachers and friends from my past have been in my mind a lot lately in light of tomorrow’s release of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ<\/i>. The movies has already become notorious without having been released. The flogging of Jesus occupies forty minutes of the film. The Romans flip Jesus face-down before hoisting his cross. The beatings are brutal. The violence is unflinching, some say excessive, and is the bulk of the movie. The film magazines and some film reviewers have spoken as though this is the first “uncensored” movie made about the crucifixion of Jesus, but they seem to have forgotten the glut of passion movies made since the beginning of the history of film. The last days of Jesus’ life, particularly the crucifixion, is one of the single most popular film subjects because when the first films were being made they were often based on stage plays, including the ever-popular passion plays. The number of passion films has declined since more original films began to be made, but there’s hardly been a lacking for them, so it seems that Mel Gibson’s film doesn’t seem to be adding much.<\/p>\n

What’s interesting to me, though, is that of all the films made about Jesus the overwhelming majority of them have been made specifically about the crucifixion, often with the stated goal of showing the crucifixion in a more realistic, more brutal way than has ever been shown before. The level of violence has, yes, increased as movie standards for violence have shifted over the years, but why does the one-upmanship occur in the first place? Why do people feel the need to constantly run over the details of what is, regardless of your faith, a deplorable and cruel act?<\/p>\n

The crucifixion-obsessed Christians, when I asked, explained that they spoke extensively about the particulars of the death of Jesus because they felt that not enough people really understood what Jesus had gone through in order to save them. I can understand this, except that there were often so many of them, so many stomach-churning descriptions from so many different sources, that it didn’t seem reasonable to me that a study of the Book of Mark should take six weeks, four of which were spent on the crucifixion alone. The number of repetitions, sometimes at the drop of a hat in casual conversation, seemed excessive to me.<\/p>\n

Another explanation I’ve received many, many times is that this obsession is necessary because the crucifixion of Jesus was the single most important act committed in the Gospels. It seems to me that the Christians who say this have forgotten the rest of the story and why the rest of the story is important. The bulk of the New Testament is made up of letters dedicated to discussing why Jesus being raised from the dead was so important, why his being resurrected was such an everything-changing event. Even with this, though, the cross and the crucifix are the symbols of Christianity. I’ve never been to a church (with the sole exception of a Latter-Day Saint temple) where a cross was not on prominent display, bringing to mind the act of the crucifixion rather than the act of resurrection.<\/p>\n

Why is the symbol of Jesus and Christianity so often the cross, a reminder of the bloody and disgusting and less important event, instead of the empty tomb, a reminder of the real reason why Jesus’ coming mattered at all?<\/p>\n

I’m not asking this question to be antagonistic or critical of Christians or of Christianity. I’d genuinely like to know the answer..<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was raised in a relatively conservative Christian household and was a devout member of a conservative church in my hometown for many years (in fact, the church was more conservative than even Focus on the Family, headquartered on the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-site-and-admin-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}