Was The Passion of the Christ Too Violent?

The Monday Mystery Part 12: The Scourging at the Pillar

“Then Pilate took Jesus and had him scourged” (John 19:1).

Welcome to the twelfth entry of The Monday Mystery. Each week I will write a reflection on a mystery (i.e. an episode in the life of Jesus or Mary) from the Rosary. My hope for this series is to provide fuel and inspiration for your own meditations. When you finish reading the reflection, I encourage you to do a ‘test run’ of the mystery by praying a decade of the Rosary (i.e. one Our Father, ten Hail Marys, and one Glory Be) while meditating on the mystery.

When Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ came out, many balked at the extreme violence it depicted. Even some Christians critiqued it on theological grounds. I still mostly disagree with these people, but I don’t scoff so loudly at them today. Let’s begin this reflection by considering the concerns they raise which I think are valid:

First, we don’t have any security camera footage of Jesus’ passion, and scripture gives only a general outline of the events. An artist depicting Jesus’ life will unavoidably have to make creative decisions and judgment calls which go beyond what we can know from scripture. Artistic decisions are never above criticism, especially when they’re not a matter of faith or sure historical knowledge.

Additionally, an artist who depicts a real life event has the responsibility to tell the truth about what really happened while preserving the dignity of their subject and the audience. There’s a fine line between journalism and exploitative voyeurism. People defend the violence in The Passion by pointing out that such scenes accurately depict the process of crucifixion. It might make you squeamish, but that’s what really happened. 

But if anything that typically happened at a crucifixion is fair game to show on screen, would you be ok with a film that showed Jesus naked on the cross? If you can understand why even Mel Gibson thought that would go too far, then you can also understand why artists have universally chosen to exercise more restraint than Gibson in showing Christ’s wounds. In modern Christianity, we have become hypersensitive to the ways which depicting nudity can violate the dignity of a person - more or less rightfully so I’d add. I think there’s room for more sensitivity to the ways depicting violent victimization can do the same thing.

With that in mind, I can think of at least three instances where I think Gibson piled on unnecessarily: the part where Jesus gets thrown off a bridge, the wince inducing shot of a flagellum tearing flesh out of Jesus’ face, and the part where Jesus’ shoulder was dislocated. Some might argue with this list, others might want to add many more items. Either way, I think it’d be challenging to defend the idea that the movie contains no gratuitous violence whatsoever. 

Nevertheless, I think that overall, the ratio of ‘unflinching portrayal’ to ‘Mel Gibson needs a hug’ in this movie is quite favorable. And I think graphic images in media have their place. They cut through euphemisms like a hot knife through butter. They expose dishonest rhetoric, and connect us to the true reality of what is happening in a way that written descriptions could never communicate. If the picture in your head of Jesus’ passion isn’t something like what The Passion of the Christ depicts, you probably haven’t grasped the full weight of what he did for us.

One place where The Passion succeeds at this, even in the midst of some of its greatest excesses, is the scene showing Jesus being scourged at the pillar. The scene brilliantly unfolds; we all know what’s going to happen, and yet we are kept on the edge of our seat. We’re allowed to think we’ll get left off the hook, and then we’re plunged into the darkness again. The scene is somehow made even more horrific by the surreal and disturbing appearance of the devil in the crowd. The skill and creative artistry on display shows Gibson at the peak of his powers as a director.

More than simply being a skillful piece of art, Gibson’s uncommonly realistic portrayal of the scourging sheds light on an often overlooked dimension of this mystery: the way it magnifies and accentuates the crucifixion. To be fair, the whole incident is easy to overlook. It isn’t even mentioned in Luke, and it doesn’t get more than a sentence in the other Gospels. But those sentences pack a punch. Imagine you’re listening to a friend talk about his fishing trip, and he mentions in an offhand comment that a crocodile bit his arm off. The fact that he felt this was barely worth a footnote is a clue to the listener that whatever is coming next is a huge deal.

However, now that scourging has not been practiced in anyone’s living memory, this clue has become far less obvious. The paintings which have come down to us aren’t much help, although they are moving and chilling in their own way. Even if Gibson exaggerated by a factor of ten, they fall laughably short of showing what actually happened. The flagella used to scourge Jesus were designed to tear flesh. Scourging was a punishment that struck fear into the whole Roman Empire. Pilate clearly thought it would be ‘good enough’ to satisfy a crowd that wanted Jesus dead. Gibson’s portrayal allows us to experience these short verses in the same way people of antiquity would have experienced them.

And what exactly are we experiencing? We are seeing Jesus’ sacrifice. We are also seeing Pilate’s anti-sacrifice. We are seeing what happens when we pass the buck on or moral duties. In our fallen world, doing the right thing often comes at a price. But we must be strong in these situations. What today’s mystery shows us is that if we don’t pay the price, someone else will. And in a very real way, that someone is Jesus. That is why he solemnly warned us: “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matt 25:40) and “Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me” (Matthew 25:40).

You do not want to be in Pilate’s position on judgment day. When you do your test run today, watch Jesus being scourged. One technique which has helped bring this scene to life for me is to time the scourges with the Hail Mary’s. With each Hail Mary, imagine 3-4 strikes against Jesus, and you will get a chilling sense of the unremitting suffering Jesus endured. Consider how, as awful as what you are watching is, it will only get one sentence in most of the Gospels. Finally, and most importantly, ask the Lord to reveal any areas where you may be allowing other people to pay the price you owe. May God bless you in your prayer.