Can you find spiritual enlightenment on silver screen?

Frontiersman editorial board

Every once in a while U.S. culture is seized by something that is as inexplicable as it is transformative -- something that captures the public imagination for reasons that are not easy to define. Often, perhaps because our culture is so influenced by entertainment, the source of our captivation is a song, a television show or a film.

It seems Mel Gibson's film, "The Passion of the Christ," is the latest popular entertainment product to cause at least a buzz in U.S. culture. Responses to the graphic depiction of Christ's Passion have ranged from disgust to awe. Some of the most passionate responses have come from Christians and from Christian churches. In some theaters, including one in the Valley, church groups have set up information tables, and have sponsored other forms of interaction concerning the film, and spirituality in general.

At our local theater, a group handed out Bibles and tissues in the lobby prior to the film. Before the film started, someone took up a microphone at the front of the theater and explained that the audience was about to embark on an intense emotional experience, and that many people react to the film in different ways. He said he'd dropped off a box of tissues at the end of each row in case people became emotional. At the end of his presentation, he said there would be the opportunity for prayer, reflection and discussion inside the theater after the film.

Following that passionate introduction, viewers might have expected something on the order of a spiritual epiphany during the film. What followed that introduction, on the screen, was a particularly graphic depiction of the physical torture Christ may have been subjected to during the Passion. Some have said that such physical torture would have resulted in death long before Christ made it to Calvary. Others have complained that the film did little to explore the emotional and spiritual struggles of Jesus, which are likely more central to Christianity than the physical suffering he endured.

What is perhaps most telling about our culture, however, is how we seek -- and sometimes believe we find -- significant enlightenment, either spiritually or intellectually, in a Hollywood film or in the final episode of a popular television show. We wonder why churches don't have to hand out tissues before Sunday services. We wonder why our culture seems more eager to weep over a commercial film than it does over the toll of human suffering adding up in the Middle East today.