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The Passion of the Christ Hooked up with Andrea yesterday, first time I've seen her since school ended last summer. She had asked if I wanted to watch 'The Passion' with her and having no other plans to go...plans were made. We met up at Town Center after my morning classand picked up tickets for the showing at 1 then walked aorund a bit, I had a couple errands to take care of and she did too. Some project for school where she had to ask some questions at a Club Monaco. Soon after, we had lunch and during that somehow got around to a discussion about faith and I explained to her my two main logical arguments against the Christian faith...or the whole judeo-christian system. That of how free will is not REALLY free will, (not gonna bother typing it up here...just ask if you really want to hear about it) and that the ends shouldn't justify the means. To be honest, they're good arguments...all nice and logical and to me at least, they make a LOT of fucking sense. I haven't met anyone yet that both fullly understood AND agreed with what I find wrong with free will but to me at least, it all fits together perfectly. To me, it all makes sense... Then I saw that movie. My friends...I will not lie to you. As fake as it might very well be, I was seriously moved by that film. Moved to tears in fact...and no, there was no overt crying on my part. Truly there wasn't. But I'd be a liar if I said that I didn't cry. Technically, I didn't. After all, no tears fell and no sniffling or any of that happy horseshit but there was a tightness in my chest, a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes... I found that hard to watch. I found that really hard to watch. This coming from a guy that didn't flinch through the gore in 13 Ghosts, wasn't fazed by any jump-out scare tactics in a lotta scary movies and can take some seriously disturbed ideas and scenes without being affected. I found this hard to watch. Not so much because of the physical damage involved, although that was pretty fucking hardcore, but more because of the reasons and implications involved. I guess in a way, that was your unintended gift to me Helen...understanding, clarity and comprehension. I remember you telling me a while ago that you were moved just while watching the trailer because the whole time, as you saw his pain, that you were thinking, "he did that for ME." That stayed in my mind while I watched the movie. It echoed and reverbrated within me while I watched this man getting ripped to pieces and reviled for telling what he thought to be the truth. I pounded in my head like the BAD headache that I had the day before as I watched his struggle to bear his cross while soldiers whipped his already torn flesh and it was the only thought in my mind while I watched him nailed to that wood and hang there, comforting the murderer hanging next to him even as he died. The movie ended. The night before, if you read my xanga site, I honestly believed that watching this movie would do nothing but add fuel to another argument, that of the ends justifying the means. That the sacrifice of Christ is nothing but a case for the ends justifying the means when everything that we are taught tells us that this is something completely wrong. I truly believed that I would be more fired up about that issue after watching him die...but I couldn't have been more wrong. Walking out of that theater, all that I could think to myself was that everything that I had...all my logical arguments, they all seemed so fucking petty and small. I mean...in the face of THAT, watching a man get ripped to pieces and crucified how could I lessen his sacrifice? I mean, after watching that...so fucking WHAT if my arguments make sense? Who the fuck CARES if they're even right? All of my arguments, despite them all, if there was even a CHANCE that Jesus really lived and died for me even KIND of like how the movie depicted how could I trivialize it by saying that it could be wrong? Like...fuck, I don't know how to get my point across...it's there, it's in my mind and I've been brooding on it since I walked out but I don't know how to make myself understood. >.< All of my arguments and objections...they all seem just so fucking petty and small in the face of a pain that great and a sacrifice made in my name. Just...what the fuck could I possibly say to that? Talked for a long while with Andrea afterwards, just walking around and sitting down at times whiel talking about pretty much everything. But religion took centerstage in those talks and I ended up just so confused and lost. I miss my childhood days when I believed without question or my mid-highschool days when I firmly didn't. I miss the certainty, I hate this fucking uncertainty, shifting between one extreme to another at the drop of a hat. Emailed Matt about it later that night, the response was quick and something that I found both comforting and frightening in it's implications. Talked to Juliette too...explaining how bad I felt; I mean, if the story was true, my life was pretty much BOUGHT by him at that point in time and if it was, what the bloody FUCK am I doing wasting such a precious gift with the way that I'm living now? It's a horribly humbling and shaming feeling... Perhaps it wouldn't have gotten to me as much if I had been able to prepare for it somehow, to sort out how I felt before I had gone by talking someone about it the night before or something...but there was nobody there, and maybe that was for the best... Maybe all part of the plan...all that I know for sure at this moment in time is that I know that this is goiing to be on my mind for quite a while... |