Mel Gibson’s film “Passion of Christ”…

As a visual artist (painter) I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the visual stills in each frame. Individually, they represented some of the greatest visual treats since the works of the Master painters. Take Goya, for example, visually stunning with a very “violent” theme. Or Munch, perhaps in his “Scream”. Somehow humanity was able to digest and appreciate genius in that form.

To me, Mel Gibson is in the genre of genius and as one of my long time painting buddies said, “ There is no point any longer in raising a brush to canvas after seeing that exquisite imagery.”

Now to the issue of violence, itself. Violence, and incidentally the whole gamut of human emotions and passion has been reduced, in our society, to a bunch of robotic-like, perfect figures running around on screen, kicking and chopping off heads with single precise strokes. As the heads roll, we generally, if not laugh, not even feel squeamish. Look at the play station games for children, as a prime example. We have been trying to become a passion-less, bloodless, heartless (yes, these three are always found together) society of functional computeroid-men.

The reality in my estimation is different. We are really only animals trying to act God-like, without too much success. Our wonderful intellects have almost brought us to a point of extinction and devastation on Earth. We need to bring back our real, juicy feelings into existence to save ourselves. These feeling are not our choice if they are to be real.

Jesus was a man who had his experience and I cried all the way through the movie seeing his suffering. And, I did not regret a moment of it.
Afterwards I felt strangely cleansed and aware once again of Jesus’ one and only message…Love one another!!!…That means everyone including your Torturers.

We need to feel the violence humanity is capable of in order to feel anything at all, including love. It might wake us up from our deep, hypnotic, whitewashed sleep… We do not need Supermen (Hitler’s terminology); we need really humane, (with their weaknesses) people to make for a real society and not a make-belief world.