I confuse a lot of people because I tell them I do not watch films that are rated 15 or above. 12A is my limit with Harry Potter probably being the most violent film I have watched in many years; I will choose a Disney film over a thriller any day of the week, and yet I love watching Criminal Minds, CSI, NCIS and all kinds of murder and crime related television viewing. I read Kathy Reichs and Patricia Cornwall, both writers of violent crimes and the Tony Hill series by Val McDermid which centres around a criminal psychologist who looks into the most depraved serial killers. Criminal Minds is currently in its ?? series and the original CSI is in its 17th, I have watched most of the episodes from both series. As technology has progressed and filming techniques improve, I have noticed that sets and murders became more graphic and realistic, the story lines have, over time, become more involved and have had to go to some extreme lengths in order to keep the viewer ratings. No longer are we simply satisfied with seeing a knife being plunged into someone who is out of shot and then seeing the body, now we are captivated as we watch an actor or actress portray the horror of the realisation that they are about to die and the life draining from their body. In order to keep us entertained the violence is graphic, detailed, realistic and depraved.
Each Good Friday I heard the same account of the death of Jesus on the cross. As I got older the leaders of our youth group felt we could handle the 'reality' of a death by crucifixion. So we were taken vividly, step by step through the horrible, gory details of the death of Jesus Christ, from arrest and beating, to the hill, the nails and the slow suffocation brought mercifully to an end by a spear in the side. And why the need to do this? To make me more grateful for what Jesus did for me? To make the sacrifice he made more significant? The price greater for the reward to be appropriate? Perhaps all of those things. What would we have thought if Jesus had come claiming to be the Messiah and had died of a heart attack? Or cancer? Things that we count as 'just one of those things', 'Not the person's fault'? Was it the way he died or the fact that he rose again that matters?
I don't think it would have meant enough if Christ had not suffered when he died. I don't believe that anyone today would take seriously any lesser sacrifice. But the question remains: Could God have achieved the same ends for our salvation had Jesus simply keeled over from a heart attack? Well the obvious answer is yes. If God is truly God then God can really do anything, including the salvation of all people through a simple, relatively painless sacrifice. So the real question is, is the problem with God or with us? Why do we need the violence and the pain to be so horrific that it feels like it rivals some of the most horrifically depicted violence that our technology mixed (with some of the ideas inspired by some of the most heinous of crimes that our world) can conceive? Why do we feel the need to, generation after generation, pull apart in tiny detail the suffering of Jesus?
When I was at university we studied a book by Elie Wiesel called Night. He was a survivor of Auschwitz and had seen the worst of the depravity of humankind, in the process losing his whole family. Some of the scenes in that book were awful, I went through one chapter with a box of tissues; the same when I watched the videos; went to museums which told me story after story like that. Why? Because I do not want to forget what we are capable of, I do not want my children or my children's children to forget what can happen when one person decides that the answer is violence on such a scale to anyone 'other' than their view of perfection. People like us killed Jesus. People like us thought that public execution and torture were acceptable. People like us denied and betrayed Jesus. People like us mourned him and grieved his loss. People like us touched his risen body, heard his words of love, promise and hope.
These are the things that are important to me. Not the level to which Jesus suffered, but the fact that he lived at all, that he brought a radically new way of understanding God and having a relationship with God. He taught a whole new way to love, to include, to touch and to heal. Yes it is important that we never forget what we were, what we were once capable of, because that is important in healing and growing and never repeating the same mistakes. But we must also remember that we are all a product of love. We were created by and for love, to love ourselves and others. Jesus may have died violently and in pain, but we proclaim a risen Christ: not just for Easter day but now, today and for eternity. Let the Jesus who lives and not the Jesus who died, be your guide and your reason for love.
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