Rational Modernism (Orange Meme):

Orange takes two approaches: historical criticism and phenomenological interpretation. By the first, scholars attempt with modern tools of historical inquiry to uncover the history of the event. This technique has had limited (albeit valuable) success. The most important issue from a historical point of view regarding the death of Jesus is who exactly killed him, and why.

At this point I should deal with the issue of anti-Semitism—a huge bugaboo but one that should be discussed. The Romans killed Jesus. Crucifixion is a Roman form of execution. By all other historical accounts, the Roman governor Pontius Pilate was a ruthless, sado-masochistic tyrant. He was not the well-meaning but weak-willed unfortunate chap washing his hands at a trial swayed by the intolerable resolve of the Gospel mob. There is no way to know whether there really was a conspiracy of the ruling Jewish elites perpetrated by the help of an insider to the Jesus movement (Judas). That question should be bracketed.
Why then we might ask would The Gospel writers lay the blame then on the Jewish leaders and people? Now this is a controversial thesis and I didn’t come up with it, although I think it holds value (see John Dominic Crossan, Who Killed Jesus?). It runs like this: the gospel writers were writing 40-70 years after the death of Jesus, and by then were coming to realize that they were not going to be accepted in the rising Pharisaic Jewish mainstream—John’s community had been excommunicated by the Pharisaic party which explains the extreme vitriolic denigration of the Jews in the Gospel—but were highly successful among the Gentiles. Now, a condemned criminal doesn’t necessarily make a great religious figure, so there was a conscious attempt to downgrade the Roman culpability in favor of the Jewish people, whom the Christians still felt jilted by.

A better way to proceed, as I suggest, is simply to read the Gospels for their meaning. Orange can universalize these meanings and begin to apply it to its own life. The Passion Narrative is one of the most tragic and psychological captivating story lines in history (read as fiction—as promoting a vision but doing so in terms of a narrative structure). All of the familiar themes—Jesus’s betrayal by a close friend; his other friends abandoning him and even denying they know him; the crowd turning on him; the unholy alliance between religion and the imperial state; the naïve ideology of violent revolutionaries thinking somehow the world will be better once they are in charge; the women wailing for him and compassionately wiping the blood from his broken body, unable to do anything else to save him; his last meal with his disciples, washing their feet, telling them that they should serve rather than be served; and lastly (my favorite) his absolute forgiveness and love even in the midst of so much hate, forgiving his persecutors and even reconciling a penitent criminal who simply asks to be remembered at the seat of judgment. Enter that world and begin to ask yourself—how I am a Pilate, how I am a religious hypocrite, how I am a Judas? Who in our world is a Caiphas, a Peter, a Mary Magdalene?



Multicultural Postmodernism (Green Meme):

The most prevalent and profound form of Green Christianity is Liberation Theology. Like the Green wave in general, it is primarily concerned with the marginalized and the oppressed. The Gospels are principally read as a story of Jesus siding with the outsiders, the so-called sinners of his day. He would eat with them: tax collectors, prostitutes, children, Gentiles, all of them, and even said that they were entering the kingdom of God quicker than the priests and lawyers. The Crucifixion is the ultimate symbol of the machine—the cold, callous mechanism of power—eviscerating a prophet of peace and justice. The same system that eliminated Jesus for questioning its values is the same system that entraps millions in starvation, assassinated Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi, and threatens to destroy our world even as we speak. A person at this stage would have wanted Mel to connect Jesus’ suffering to the suffering of the starving, huddled masses of our own world. According to this view, not much has changed over the past two millennia.

So which of these perspectives is true? An integral view would say: all of them, though some just are “more true” than others. I’ve focused on the healthy versions of each, but of course as first-tier realities [first-tier meaning any value system which denies the importance of any other. –ed.] they are fraught with downsides. Blue’s are many: e.g. the ethnocentrism of “believe in my God or burn in hell.” More shadowy is the desire to foist one’s inner anguish unto a savior who does all the work of salvation. The greater my inner self-loathing, in this view, the more brutal the depiction of the sacrifice (this is especially the case in this movie). Orange tends to be too cerebral. And Green Christianity suffers from its own version of Boomeritis [read: narcissistic multiculturalism which denies the validity of anything but one’s own ego] . Green Christians, that is liberal Roman Catholics and Protestants, generally despise this film. Many I’ve talked to openly promote censorship.

The thing is, Mel can make his movie any way he wants. If he wants to believe in any old-style blue faith, that’s his right. I give him credit for the chutzpah to make the thing, even though I obviously don’t agree with it all. A yellow would of course accept the limited truths of each of its predecessors. Blue at least brings us into a group, orange opens up the vistas beyond our own in-group, and green makes us remember the least fortunate of our world just like Jesus.

So what about a yellow, or integral, Christianity? Yellow would add the mystical. The life of Jesus is seen, according to this theology, as a revelation, a snapshot of the divine being in the form of a Jewish man in first century Palestine. Each major event of his life holds esoteric meaning. The baptism, The Transfiguration, The Resurrection, and The Ascension form a road map to the soul (covering what we would call the movements into the Psychic, Subtle, Casual, and Nondual Stages of Transpersonal Development). “Jesus died for our sins” means he died to show us the way. His crucifixion is the physical manifestation of the inner story of our truest liberation—we must die to our individual selves and rise in union with the Divine. The Cross is not to be understood. It has nothing to do with Jesus in a sense, but everything to do with us. It’s less a question to ask of God (“why could you let this happen then or now in the suffering of others?”) than a question to ask ourselves, a koan that strikes to our very hearts. It must be struggled with even though it is essentially unanswerable, and when carried to its conclusion will annihilate the individual separate sense-self, just as it destroyed the physical body of the Nazarene.

It cannot be denied by the discerning heart that the Christ, the source and suchness of this and every moment, revealed herself in a most extraordinary way in and through this man. Whatever happens that will never change. He will always stand as a preeminent example of enlightened, compassionate consciousness. Separating and describing the different interpretations surrounding this man and his death helps one to appreciate him whether or not one agrees or not with the later interpretations. Jesus didn’t ask for any of them, even an integral one.

If you take nothing else from the movie, remember this line from Claudia the wife of Pilate, who perceptively notes to her husband: “If you don’t hear the truth, no one will ever be able to tell it to you.”

For the kingdom of God lies already within you.

God bless you all.

CJ