What Christianity is Really About

Got into a debate on the nature of "Satan" earlier today.

The problem with a literal interpretation of an ancient document is that ancient storytellers found their audiences were totally okay with an explanation of a current system/problem/etc. happening "a long time ago, before any of us were around."

That sufficed for their explanations, because writing either didn't exist or hadn't been around for very long (depending on the culture you're looking at).

For us, here, now, it does NOT suffice, because as a species we have developed methods of recordkeeping which extend far beyond an individual lifespan, as well as finding evidence of events and creatures which predate our entire species.

The issue of "Satan" (a word which simply means "adversary," and is not capitalized in the oldest versions of scripture) becomes moot if you treat the "adversary" as a literary figure rather than a literal being.

Literarily speaking, "Satan" represents bestial human instinct.
To kill or be killed. Fight or flight.
Survival as one's highest achievement.

This base instinct is the adversary of higher existence (what we in our limited vocabularies call "God"), because higher existence strives to overcome simple survivalism (inherently selfish) in favor of acting in the best interest of others (inherently selfless).

Higher existence could only communicate with base instinct in small amounts, and most of the time this communication was misinterpreted by multiple peoples as favoritism of the "gods".

When different people groups with different interpretations of higher existence began to interact, base instinct caused them to fight and kill one another, believing that the other's interpretation of higher existence posed a threat to their survival.

Fast-forward a few millennia.
Higher existence, having been unable to overcome base instinct no matter how many times it revealed itself, interjects directly into our existence with a direct example of how we can each overcome our selfishness and achieve a utopia of selflessness.

As expected, many to whom it is revealed joyfully accept this new way of being.

Also as expected, those who had clung to the ancient misinterpretation rejected the direct revelation, preferring to stifle the example, and hope their barbaric action would terrify the acceptors to a degree which would prevent them from spreading the revelation.


Fast-forward a few more millennia, when humanity has moved beyond hunting/gathering, beyond simple architecture, beyond the printing press, beyond industrialization, beyond digitization.

We now have more information about ourselves and our world than ever before, yet some still hold to the ancient, literal, misinterpreted revelation of higher existence.

Thus, hypocrisy run rampant.
Thus, haughty, judgmental people guilty of the very things they condemn in others.
Thus, a world confused and infuriated by this group of people claiming to have THE TRUTH, yet showing zero signs of having achieved anything which is impossible without "their" truth.

The Passion of the Christ

First time seeing it: Horrified at the level of detail, but understanding it to be realism.
...then horrified again that I was in a movie theater with TODDLERS and SMALL CHILDREN, whose parents had FORCED them to watch this bloodbath solely on the hearsay of it being a "Christian" film.

Second time seeing it: This is just torture porn, in the strictest sense of the term. The film is centered around watching a human being slowly and brutally murdered, and there is ZERO narrative outside that center.

Overall, Ben Hur was a much better Crucifixion/Resurrection movie.
We FELT the injustice and brutality of Christ's death because of the genius of IMPLICATION and actual CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT instead of blood and guts flying all over the screen (a screen we are forced to keep our attention on because of the subtitles).

Also, Ben Hur actually has a STORY.

In all cinema, in all STORYTELLING, every event included in the plot must serve a purpose in the overall narrative.
Even documentaries must choose from a huge list of events, and present them in the order which will create the greatest dramatic effect.

Where previous films had included scenes of Jesus' torture as an increase in dramatic tension leading up to the climax (the actual crucifixion), we got there after a long series of ups and downs, each release in tension preceding a greater increase.

The Passion simply threw us into the rev-up to the climax, stretched that rev-up out for so long the tension threatened (or perhaps was designed, stupidly) to distract the audience and take them out of the story, and hoped we stuck around long enough to see the final resolution.

“The weakest possible reason to include anything in a story is: ‘But it actually happened.’”
-Robert McKee, Story

That a film revolves around a particular religious tradition is no excuse for incompetent storytelling.
That there are so many well-written films about Jesus makes The Passion's glaring flaws that much more obvious.