"Passion of Christ" Risks Losing Impact

I have been reading through various blogs and came across much discussion on the subject of violent video games. I have read the ghoulish description of these games which includes decapitation, slashing eyes out, and various other forms of gore.

My first question is why? Why do video game manufacturers need to keep one-uping each other as to whose game offers more gore? And why would anyone want to purchase and play such a game? It makes one wonder about the beastile drive that needs this kind of satisfaction.

It is curious that this form of entertainment is so widely offered and accepted in the very same society that now debates what the definition to torture even is. From the average kid to the most powerful person in the world, our president, they and everyone in between has been affected by this moral blur.

It is my belief that such confusion has been the demon to overtake the mins of certain young people, directly leading to the rise in this nation's much-publicized school shootings.

A couple of years ago, I found out that my son was being exposed to movies at friends' houses that I would have never allowed him to watch. While these other parents were moderately careful about allowing movies that contained sex, they seemed to have no objection to the amount of violence. When their kids came over to my house and found me strict about not allowing movies that had a lot of violence, they thought this was very odd and I would explain to them "That's what's wrong with the world today. If more people objected to violence, there would be less wars and less violent crimes." They were left searching for a response but never being able to find one.

That was when I decided that my son, then ten years of age, was eligible to watch "Passion of Christ" despite its R rating. He had already been exposed to some gorey violence, at that time thanks to one of the popular "Star Wars" films then recently put onto DVD (funny, when I was a kid and went to see the first "Star Wars" ever released, it did not contain this kind of gorey violence and we enjoyed it so much we went back to see the movie more than once proving that this is an unnecessary ingredient for entertainment and film prosperity).

I wanted my son to view "Passion of Christ" while gore still had shock value for him, before he might become as desensitized to it as everyone else around us seemed to have become.

So my son sat with me and my husband and watched "Passion of Christ" when he was ten years old. It remains the only R movie he has ever viewed. He was very taken with the gorey suffering of Christ, and was full of questions. He said he could actually feel Christ's pain during the torture scenes. This time, it was gore with a purpose...and it stayed with him in a way that he better appreciated our Lord's sacrifice.

The great damage that can come from exposing kids to so much violence presented to them in a fun and entertaining manner as found in their video games and movies is that they will see it all as acceptable and risk becoming all together desensitized to it.

Villagers and their children watched Christ get executed in a grisly manner, but did this make it okay? We are to be struck by Christ's suffering, that is why it is called His passion. Passion and desensitzation are two different things. We parents would do well to remember this.

We cannot risk having future generations watch "Passion of Christ" and not be moved by it. Otherwise, we risk waterboarding and school shootings becoming so widespread that they are hardly considered newsworthy.