Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" is not overly violent or intended to foster anti-Semitism, a speaker said Wednesday.
The filmmaker's storytelling is biblically accurate and designed to let people know what Jesus endured to redeem mankind, said Paul Birch, an InterVarsity Christian Fellowship staff member at Indiana State University.
"Gibson borrowed from all four Gospels, and it's pretty much all there," Birch said. "I thought he was faithful to the text, and there wasn't anything that disturbed me."
Controversy surrounding the film has centered on a possible anti-Semitic response from some viewers and its graphic content. Birch engaged an audience of 35 people in an open forum about the film and spoke about controversy possibly suffocating the film's message.
"I have a feeling that with the depravity of human beings, people could leave the movie theater with their own predisposed racist beliefs fueled," Birch said. "I don't think it's Gibson's intent. We as people are just big, fat sinners."
Jewish religious leaders and Roman soldiers co-conspired to bring about Jesus' death, a point that cannot be downplayed, Birch said.
"I am not at liberty to re-write history because history paints my people group in a negative light," he said.
Regarding the film's graphic violence, Birch said, "God does not require of us an emotional response to his good news. Our faith is not based on an emotional response to this movie, it's in the Lord Jesus revealed to us in Scripture."
Darius Lecointe, a research design consultant at University Computing Services, said the film distracts from Jesus' love and teachings.
"I think his life is more important than his death," said Lecointe, who had not seen the film. "Christians tend to push that we put him on the cross, not the redemptive aspect of it."
"The Passion" is not a verse-by-verse account from the Bible of Jesus' suffering but an artistic work, Birch said.
Gibson took artistic liberties to build the film around crucial events in Jesus' last 12 hours according to his traditional Roman Catholic beliefs.
"I think the movie could be helpful visually to do what I could never do verbally," Birch said. "I don't think it was inappropriate or too much. I appreciated (Gibson's) flashbacks to the teachings and life of Jesus."
Bernice Liang, a sophomore who had seen the film, said it was "powerful" and that questions she had not thought of were answered during the forum.
"I don't want to say it was a 'good' movie because of the message it portrayed," she said, "but it was very well done."
The forum was sponsored by the Ball State InterVarsity chapter. InterVarsity is a student-led Christian organization.
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