Timebuilder
Entrepreneur
- Joined
- Nov 25, 2001
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The movie presumes you know the whole story and you already understand why this sacrifice was made. If you don't, then you will not learn it from this film. JMHO.
No, you are probably correct, there is little "learning" from the film, aside from learning the brutality of Romans and the degree of suffering endured. And there certainly is a great deal of "poetic license" that Gibson feels is acceptable that someone more familiar with the Bible might not feel is acceptable.
There is however (and I think this is one of the reasons the movie was made) a stimulus to ask questions. Imagine: someone sees the movie, and he doesn't understand why Jesus was rejected as the Messsiah, or why He suffered this treatment willingly. This moviegoer will likely ask the first person he thinks can give him an answer. Maybe a friend. Maybe the local Bible church. A neighbor, or a poster on an aviation message board.
Before this movie, I had imagined a "flogging" to be the kind of whipping that a seaman might suffer on the Bounty under Captain Bligh. You know, a couple of dozen strokes of the whip, a bucket of seawater, and off to your hammock to suffer in recovery for several days, and then back to work on the ship.
It never occurred to me that they would just keep going until the victim was more like road kill than a man.
It makes the idea of His sacrifice even more impressive, because He could have decided against the whole thing, and let us all be lost. Instead, He was the architect of compassion and service. Wow.
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