should i let my child watch passion of the christ

#SHOULD I LET MY CHILD WATCH PASSION OF THE CHRIST MOVIE#

As an adult looking back, I just find it so sad that even the adults may have had warning signs going off in their head that this movie was inappropriate and disturbing, but the mental gymnastics that evangelicals are willing to do to excuse the horrors of the faith override all of that. I do remember though, I was absolutely obsessed with the group Avalon in my teens, and they were doing an interview with the radio station and one of the guys in the group said something along the lines of “I think we as Christian’s are kind of freaking out right now because we’re endorsing this R rated movie, but it’s worth it to watch and really understand what happened” or something like that. I was in my teens when it came out, and idk… I was awfully good at repressing emotions by that point, so it was disturbing, but not like… traumatizing for me. Anyone relate? The more I think about my childhood the more I realise how fucked up and strange a lot of it was, and what's worrying is that a lot of people who know my parents would say they're the 'good', 'kind', 'normal' sort of Christians. So while they were concerned about me seeing such awful imagery elsewhere, and encouraged me to stand up to bullies at school, when it came to this film and that piece of doctrine, it was all flipped upside-down, which is very difficult to comprehend, especially as a child. A few times I expressed my distress, and would leave the room (which didn't help, because he would play it so loudly that I could still hear it at the other end of the house), and he would yell at me and explain why it's important to see it and that it was right for us to be distressed by it, because it's our fault - the punishment we deserve. I remember dreading my dad's good friday ritual each year. In my opinion, allowing a child to view a film like that is utterly inappropriate and irresponsible. They were otherwise strict about the media we were allowed to consume. What gets me is that my parents would never have allowed their young children to view such graphic, distressing material in any other setting. A bizarre form of flagellation, as I now think many elements of good friday worship are. My dad used to put it on before church on good friday and skip through so he could watch just the crucifixion itself, to prep himself for worship. I would have been somewhere between 4-8 years old when I first saw it. Children were sacred and innocent to Jesus, and it would be more likely that adults (sinners) would be vessels for demons in the film.I'm a bit late for Easter but today a friend mentioned Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (2004) and it made me wonder how many other people were made to watch it as kids and were totally (understandably!) freaked out by it. It just felt wrong, and he could have easily changed something minor in the script and made it adults who were tormenting Judas instead. I think Mel Gibson went off the track with that idea completely. What I really didn't like (and I'd read about this beforehand) was the use of children to represent demons in the film. The transition from greed to angst over what he did was believable. and the idea to bring in a subtly creepy androgynous Satan, although not present in the biblical accounts, was very effective at providing an antagonist we could connect with. The cinematography, especially in the garden at the start of the film, made it look almost dreamlike. The languages were so rich and added so much to the film. You can almost watch this film without subtitles, but then you would miss some of the subtlety of the dialogue, which was at certain instances different from what you would expect.

Should i let my child watch passion of the christ