Why I won’t be showing my youth group ‘The Passion of The Christ’ this Easter

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This morning I accidently flicked toothpaste into my eye. It was stupidly painful and more than a little humiliating. That, however, was not the reason for the toothbrush or the toothpaste – I wanted to clean my teeth! The 2004 Mel Gibson film, The Passion of The Christ – in some odd way – is much like my unfortunate brush with the toothpaste. A significant emphasis on pain and humiliation that largely loses the reason behind the story.

I first watched The Passion of The Christ alone in my brother’s room when I was seventeen. I had a pretty mature Christian faith, and I was plugged into a good youth group. The initial post-movie shock lasted me about three hours. I remember guilt, fear, gratitude, and floods of tears. After that it took over my mental processing for weeks. There were just aspects of it that I couldn’t work out or square away.

On the whole, I believed it was generally a more helpful than unhelpful experience at the time. And that’s the thing – I wouldn’t say that The Passion of The Christ is a bad film, or even – on the whole – unhelpful for a lot of Christians. There are some very precious parts of the film that were handled with real grace and care. The question today, however, is whether we should show it at our youth clubs to groups of 11–18-year-olds? And linked to that question – does it honestly display what really happened to Jesus in those last days of His life?

A youth club staple?

I’m part of an online forum of youth workers who addressed this very question just last week: Should you show The Passion of The Christ at youth clubs? The debate drew very strong opinions from both sides. One person said the film was ‘manipulative and traumatizing’, to which someone else responded ‘you should try the source material sometime.’ Ouch! A parent raised concerns too, saying ‘absolutely not… I have a daughter that would be traumatized.’

Although this was just last week, it is an old debate. The argument usually goes back and forth between, yes show it, it’s important to see with accuracy the pain that Jesus went through; and no, don’t show it, it’s too violent, and it’s inappropriate for young people.

I have sympathy for both of these views. I think it is important to know how much tragic pain, violence, and humiliation the cross inflicted on Jesus, and for young people to be able fit that into their faith language. However, that should be done with 1) accuracy, 2) necessity, and 3) sensitivity as measures. Unfortunately, I think these are all found wanting in The Passion of The Christ.

Accuracy

The Passion of The Christ promotes a myth of accuracy though claiming loyalty to the Bible as its source material and historical meticulousness. There are, however, plenty of accuracy issues in The Passion of The Christ, from the clothes and beards to the languages and customs, to the off-kilter presentation of both the Jews and the Romans, to the reoccurring (and frankly creepy) anthropomorphised images of the devil. Sorry, I’ve got a soft spot for Christian mysticism, but 40 year old baby-Satan was just weird!

There are just far too many details that are inaccurate to take the film as solid history. However, it’s not just a case of ‘if you can’t get the small things right…’ There are also a few much more significant problems. For this post, I’ll focus on just one – and it’s a big one!

The film’s particular and extended image of ‘scourging’ – repeated lashes with something akin to a cat-o-nine tails embedded with pieces of bone or metal – does not come from either the Bible or historical authorities. As archaeologists Berlin and Magness comment ‘there are neither descriptions, pictorial representations, nor physical evidence for the brutal implement that is used at length and to such horrific effect in The Passion’s “scourging” scenes.’[1] In fact, the only implement the Gospels’ mention is a ‘reed’ (Matt. 27:30; Mk. 15:19), and the only example of a weapon anything like what’s displayed in the film is ‘the whip’ used by Jesus to drive people out of the temple (a ‘φραγέλλιον’ in Jn. 2:13 ). This, however, was a collection of leather chords, not a metal-encrusted torture device.

Although the image of a torture weapon with multiple chords and chains and with bone or metal hooks is widely shared in Bible studies and on the internet, in reality there is very little evidence of the Romans using anything like this in the time of Jesus. The closest thing we have from archaeology is a ceremonial instrument carried by pagan priests (which wasn’t used for torture) or a 4th Century ‘plumbate’ whip, which wasn’t around in 1st Century Palestine. It wasn’t really until the 15th or 16th Century that the Church began to speculate on this kind of torture weapon. Our understanding of the ‘cat-o-nine-tails’ scourge is, in reality, an invention of medieval art, not Roman antiquity.

In the film, however, Jesus is lashed, flogged, and scourged across several positions, with several embellished tools, around one-hundred times. If the film is correct, and Jesus was tortured in such an unprecedented and remarkable way – and one that diverges so much from Roman custom – you would have thought that one of the Gospels would have mentioned it?

Going back to the youth workers’ forum I mentioned earlier, one person said, ‘If anything [the film] doesn’t show half of what suffering our savior went through!’ and another, ‘[The] Passion of the Christ doesn’t hold a candle to what actually happened but is the closest thing to it.’ Sorry guys, I appreciate your passion, but if you’re using either the Bible or historical record, then the scourging scene was overdone, exaggerated, and largely fabricated.

This isn’t to make light of Jesus’ flogging. By no means! But it is a matter of focus. Whereas the Gospels focus on the teaching and person of Christ without overly concentrating on his physical pain, The Passion of The Christ completely reverses this emphasis. It dials up the torture to a degree that is indefensible from either historical or biblical evidence – and loses the purpose or person of Jesus behind it. There is accuracy in some of the drama presented, but much of it is heavily embellished.

Necessity

My second issue is contextual balance. Theologically, the film places so much emphasis on the physical, human-flesh suffering, that it loses the eternal battle for souls almost entirely. It’s mostly important that we know that Jesus died for us, and then it’s definitely meaningful to remember that that was an intense and unfair death. But the pain experienced is not the point! When we super-over-hyper focus on any single aspect of the gospel to this extent, we throw the perfect balance of the story out of whack, and we lose the narrative power of the whole.

If you put rocket fuel in Ford Mondeo, you’re not left with a faster, cooler car. What you actually have is a very messy explosion! Even if The Passion of The Christ was mostly an accurate depiction, the severe overemphasis on Jesus’ torture and death without any explanation or context loses the wider story of His incarnation, crucifixion, atonement, resurrection and ascension.

The most glaring issue throughout the two-hour violent depiction of Jesus’ torture and death then, is that at no point does the film address the question why? For what reason did Jesus die? If you’re going to use The Passion of The Christ as an evangelistic tool, then that’s a really significant hole. And considering the intensive emotional state that your young people are going to be in after watching it, are you going to be able to then explain what’s missing? You might get a positive-looking immediate result (“they were speechless!”), but you also might be unpicking it for years to come.

Put another way, if you’re going to justify over-emphasising  gratuitous violence for theological reasons, you’d better make sure your theology is on point. This is especially true if you’re working with vulnerable young people.

Sensitivity

Entertainment Weekly ranked The Passion of The Christ as ‘the most controversial film of all time.’ I’ve heard Christians say this is because the gospel is offensive and divisive, but that’s not the reason the magazine gave. It was ranked this highly because of its extreme depictions of torture and violence. For context, they ranked this ahead of Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, a film for which the phrase ‘ultra-violent’ was invented.

The question that comes to focus here then is why do you want to show it to your young people in the first place? Because of the extreme violence and gore, it’s an 18-Rated (R in America) film that has been deemed unsuitable for younger audiences. This means you would need a very good reason to show it to them. If that reason isn’t accuracy or necessity, then what do you have left? My fear is that it stylises Jesus in such a way that invokes a response – and if we were really honest, that’s why we show it.

Even in a teenage world of ‘Call of Duty’, ‘The Hunger Games’, and ‘Game of Thrones’ our responsibility to safeguard the development of our children should not be dialled down. Even if they are exposed to violence in the media, it is not an excuse for us to jump on the same bandwagon and attempt to disciple them pastorally by exaggerating the violence of our own tradition. While a wide range of gruesome violence exists in the Bible, taking in a movie laden with visual effects and featuring real actors is an entirely different experience.

Coming back to the true cross

We must teach Jesus and we must teach the cross. There is nothing more essential for us to do! But let’s begin and end with the real Jesus and draw them to the cross of the Bible. It’s there where true power is found, and a lifetime of passion is fuelled.

The cross was a violent, gruesome, humiliating, and unfair treatment of our saviour. It was an incredible amount of suffering! However, we do not need to embellish the details, bypass the facts, ignore the theology, or neglect context to tell this story. It’s important that we share the fullness of who Jesus truly is.

Good youth work doesn’t rely on easy wins. Rather than depending on these intensive (and insensitive) ‘jumpstart’ moments, let’s instead do the real work of building relationships with young people that will draw them close to Jesus with integrity, love, and longevity – rather than guilt, fear, and confusion.

It’s not a terrible film, and some of it I really value, but I won’t be showing it to my teenagers this Easter.

 

[1] A. Berlin & J. Magness (2004), Two Archaeologists Comment on The Passion of the Christ. The Archaeological Institute of America. Available at: https://www.archaeological.org/pdfs/papers/Comments_on_The_Passion.pdf

 

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Deconstructing your deconstructionism.

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Since the mid 1990s anything ‘deconstructed’ was suddenly very cool and everything from deconstructed Aristotelian ethics to a deconstructed sandwich (which is effectively two slices of bread on a plate next to some ham) was suddenly column inch worthy.

Driven largely by postmodernism outside the church, deconstructionism inside was dressed up in ‘challenge everything’ and ‘strip everything back’ language. The popular coat this wore for a number of years was The Emerging Church (remember that?).

The thing is that I like this kind of language and approach. Arguably the basic attitudes around this kind of deconstructionism are found in sound exegetical methods and healthy critical thinking. We should challenge traditions and attitudes of our belief systems, and it’s also important to step back, take stock, and even strip back what we believe to its roots and uncover the gold under the dressings.

Taking this further, if we were to truly honour what philosopher Jacques Derrida meant by Deconstructionism, I think we would find all kinds of helpful avenues to explore. Although this tends to be far less what we mean by ‘deconstructionism’ and so won’t be the focus of this post.

I want deconstructionism to work, therefore, but at its heart there’s an issue: Deconstructionism, in the way we use it, literally means taking something apart.

If all you’re doing there is taking something apart to see how it works, then I can see some wisdom in this. It’s a smart way to figure out the mechanics of anything – take it back to its fundamental, component parts. This is also ideal if you have a supply of spares in case you break anything.

Of course, you can’t do that with living things. If you start ‘deconstructing’ a pig, at some point you’ll take something out that can’t just be put back in, and that pig will die.

You just can’t do this with people. They bleed. You can’t do this on yourself either. You bleed too. At the very least it’s a risky thing to do alone.

Shooting yourself in the foot

Taking the more positive side, you can look critically at your worldviews and (ideally facilitated by a therapist) do some healthy unravelling and delving into your personal history. You can look for root causes, repressed hurts, and milestone events. That’s healthy. The Bible would mark this out as part of our journey of sanctification and wholeness.

But taking yourself apart indiscriminately is just not the same thing. You bleed. The more you take apart without compassionate help, or invested guidance, the more chance you have of cutting something irreplaceable, or unscrewing something fundamental. The damage of caviller or isolated deconstructionism can last for years.

The same thing is true for organic systems like families, marriages, the environment, and even churches. If you haphazardly start taking things apart, at some point you could cut something that shouldn’t be cut. The modern deconstructionist attitude to this is, ‘well maybe that thing needed cutting’, but who are we to make that decision for other people? This type of cutting affects more people than just us.

Even without the inherent selfishness behind that, you end up shooting yourself in the foot. As soon as you start deconstructing an organic thing, you exponentially limit the ability for that thing to grow, change, or be made well. Isn’t that what we wanted?

Are you really doing what you think you’re doing?

Deconstructionism is held up as almost an Eastern philosophical approach. It’s used in the same conversations as mindfulness, reflective practice, and spiritual formation. It’s seen as a rebuke to the imperialistic and controlling nature of the world, education, politics, or the established church. All of this is super attractive to a Millennial like myself! In reality though, this dramatically misunderstands the epistemological nature of what deconstruction is.

As a quick caveat, if you’ve studied Deconstructionism (big D) as a theory, you’ll know it’s really the brainchild of Derrida as a way of contrasting and drawing words from meaning. Although there is overlap, this is rarely what people are really doing when they use the word ‘deconstruction’, and this is perhaps truer in Christian circles.

You can trace the roots of what we mean by deconstructionism directly back to Rationalist Philosophers such as Descartes, Spinoza, and Hume – or more recently, the Analytical approaches of Moore, Wittgenstein, or Russell. It is not an Eastern approach by any stretch of the imagination.

An Eastern approach looks at something in its organic entirety. It moves things around but doesn’t strip parts off the whole and it doesn’t naturally remove concepts from the table. It keeps things together and it keeps dialogue open. Eastern philosophy highly values to nature of community over the individual. The deconstructionist approach is Western and individualistic to its core.

How we approach deconstructionism destroys and it eliminates. It strips and it breaks. It pulls things apart and reduces ideas down to obtuse simplicity. It relies on an objective coldness towards, and disconnect from, the subject matter. This has its place – especially in arenas like engineering or chemistry – but it’s not the obvious place to go for organic health.

The destructive patterns of deconstructionism

Tell me if this sounds familiar:

  • Person A has bad experience of church.
  • Either Person A doesn’t seek, or church doesn’t provide, healing and reconciliation.
  • Person A leaves church, but still feels spiritually connected to God.
  • Person A starts a ‘time of deconstruction’ to harmonise their connection to God, and their experience of church.
  • Person A gathers others and starts a new form of deconstructed ‘church’.
  • New church starts to formalise and institutionalise.
  • Person B has a bad experience of this
  • Rinse and repeat.

This is simplistic, but it tells one of the many stories of deconstructionism.

Sometimes we engage in deconstruction when we should engage in conflict resolution. Sometimes we engage in deconstruction thinking we’re doing soul care but end up with a much smaller faith. Sometimes we engage in deconstruction as a way to ‘fix’ church, but instead end up disabling the very things needed for growth.

There is much in our faith that needs to be fought with. There is plenty in established church to be challenged. Church as a whole needs to do much better in all kinds of ways. There are also many legitimate reasons to leave a church – especially after experiences of abuse or harassment. These experiences can even necessitate seasons of solitude away from established Western church practices. We need to do something, but deconstructionism isn’t necessarily the answer.

I think the healthiest things we can do that resemble deconstruction are done carefully, with a therapist, in a family, or within a community. In fact, if we took the Bible seriously – especially the community ethics encouraged in the early parts of the book of Acts, Paul’s epistles, and the pastoral teachings of Jesus – then I think we’d find better practices.

Deconstruction, at its heart, is a cold, mechanical way of breaking things. It’s not designed for things that are alive, and as a result often makes things much worse. It’s tempting, and it’s hot right now, but that doesn’t make it helpful for longevity, healing, change or growth,

We should engage in critical thinking, in spiritual formation, in self-examination, in healthy debate and dialogue with church and family. We should be vulnerable and honest and seek mutual support in a community of meaningful relationships within a worshipping body. We need to consider the whole and think about the necessity for organic matter and systems to be connected in order to work, change, or grow.

Church is far from perfect – but it’s a big boat that moves slowly when were all committed to seeing it at its best.

Let’s leave our versions of deconstructionism to the inanimate.

 

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A neurodivergent’s experience of Christian youth festivals

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Not everyone responds to things the same way. We should all know that, however it’s too easy to forget that neurodivergent young people exist in our groups, and they have very different experiences and at high stimulus events. Student, author, and playwright Chloe Perrin gives us her experience of what it was like to be a young person at a Christian festival with an – at the time – undiagnosed neurodivergent condition. Thank you, Chloe, for your honesty and clarity in helping us see another perspective! Over to you…

 

Cry Night

I spend too much time on TikTok.

Due to the number of hours I’ve clocked (remember, Christians don’t judge) the algorithm knows me pretty well and I’m frequently suggested content by fellow neurodivergent ex-youth-group kids. It was while mindlessly scrolling at 3am that I was suggested a video by one such creator asking if anyone else who went to Christian youth festivals remembers “cry night”?

I’d never heard it called that before, but I knew immediately what she was referring to. The culminating night of any Christian Summer camp, where a particularly heartstring-tugging talk is followed by weepy worship and an alter call. The night usually seemed positive – it was cathartic and a good number of young people would give their lives to Christ. However, I decided to do that most dangerous of things and peep at the comment section to see what these majoritively ex-Christians had to say. Spoiler alert, it wasn’t positive.

One word regarding the night popped up in the comments over and over again: manipulative.

Neurodivergence and “The Spirit”

I’m neurodivergent, which means I experience socialising, emotional processing and sensory stimuli very differently from a “typical” person. For me specifically, “normal” stimuli such as certain sounds or lighting can be massively effecting in a variety of ways. This knowledge has had me looking back at the numerous youth festivals I’ve attended to untangle what experiences were Holy Spirit and what were simply my brain being my brain, and when I read the comments on the Cry Night (as I’ll be referring to it) video I felt relieved. Seeing people explain the problematic elements of the night in a way I’d never been able to, I could finally put words to my suspicions.

The way I describe myself post-diagnosis is as having tools previously inaccessible to me. Through therapy I’ve been able to understand a world that isn’t designed for my brain, which makes it easier to identify what triggers my own physical and emotional responses. When I was attending youth festivals, however, I was undiagnosed with no inkling that my world experience was any different anyone else’s.

Cry Night was always a particularly messy night for me, where all my emotional hurt came flooding out in a glorious display of tears and mucus. At the time it felt like an appropriate response to what was going on around me – but I was never quite able to understand why my memories of this night felt bad. Had the spirit not moved me? Is the Father’s healing not sometimes messy because we’re broken people?

The Logistics of Cry Night

Let’s break down Cry Night. It’s the final or penultimate evening of a typically five-day long festival which usually involves camping. Logistically it’s a glorified evening service – big sermon followed by intense worship. The sermon is the most emotional of the week’s programme and we’re affirmed by whoever’s onstage that this is a safe space to open ourselves up to the Spirit. The lighting and sound design are big, the only other time you’d see such design being concerts. Everything is tailored to brush against the exposed emotional nerves of the young people present, making it easier to invoke the Spirit.

Those physical and emotional triggers I mentioned earlier? That’s the entirety of Cry Night: I’ve been camping for a week, my clothes are sodden because even in the height of Summer, British weather is still British weather. I’m getting zero energy from the sugar and junk food I’ve been binging on for five days straight, I’m tired. I’ve been sitting on the floor all week because chairs are illegal in youth spaces, I’m uncomfortable. Big lights and music – that’s a sensory overload right there. And to top it all off, I’m in the middle of a crowd, so socially I’m overwhelmed with little space to stim (self-stimulating behaviour to manage anxiety, for example I swing my arms or bounce on my toes).

Two worship songs in and although I don’t realise it my body is in panic mode. The lights hurt, the music pounds at my head, I’m losing the tangible sense of where I am or what I’m doing, and my thoughts are moving too quickly for me to even attempt to ground myself. I start to break, which is when curl into a tight ball and rock back and forth.

As a neurodivergent person most of my outward actions aren’t based on how I’m feeling but on what others are doing, I take my social cues from everyone else. On Cry Night, people are crying, spaced out or sometimes literally screaming, giving me little opportunity to gauge “correct” behaviour. Stewards checked in offering prayer, but none recognised my medical needs as my actions fell under the umbrella term for appearing overwhelmed in a Christian space: “being moved by the Spirit”. I couldn’t vocalise my discomfort because the only vocabulary undiagnosed me had to make sense of the situation was vague Christianese. I was “having a moment with Jesus”, nothing unusual there, it was happening to everyone.

Is it Really That Bad?

The fact that many ex-Christians refer to Cry Night as manipulative is no surprise, because it’s literally a design choice. It’s designed to help young people open up emotionally, to be vulnerable to accepting Jesus. The key word there is “vulnerable”, and if you’re manipulating people into a vulnerable position to get a reaction, you need to take into account that some people, like myself, are unable to handle that in a healthy way. This damage doesn’t last a night either; I’m still unpacking the emotional state Cry Nights put me in and my last one was half a decade ago.

There’s also the mountaintop affect. As someone whose neurodivergence gives them emotional instability and impulsivity issues, the comedown of the mountaintop effect isn’t just depressing for me, it’s dangerous. I felt big things at these festivals; things that forced me weeping to the ground. If I don’t feel that again until the next event, I think “why is the spirit abandoning me so often?” I don’t need to tell you the places that thought can take you, but I will stress that the general lack of NHS resources or peer understanding for neurodivergent people makes it ten times worse for us.

I’m not saying all Christian youth events are bad for neurodivergent young people, I know our understanding of accessibility is constantly changing and steps are being made. However, these events as a whole are still largely inaccessible to us. We wouldn’t dream of putting on a big youth event and taking away ramps or signers, I just ask that this sensitivity include neurodivergent young people as well.

 

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Why youth workers sometimes need to switch off

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I have a cat. At most levels she is a normal, run-of-the-mill cat. White, fluffy, purry – the whole cat-esq shebang. But she harbours a dark secret – and that is she’s a psychotic lunatic freak with macabre pastimes and dangerous hobbies.

Let me explain. Luna (the cat) hunts mice. Normal enough, right? However, Luna can bring home (and eat) seven mice a day… that we know of. If that wasn’t bad enough, she doesn’t eat the whole mouse. She eats everything but the head, which she likes to leave on our doorstep. I assume as a warning to other mice – or just as a talking point for the postman.

Luna also loves to play with string. Again, normal right? But Luna will purposely spin in a circle chasing string over and over and over again, until she becomes so dizzy, that she stumbles around drunk, and then promptly falls over.

Youth workers can be just like my cat!

Through one lens we can look exactly like every other youth worker. We play games, we teach using creative object lessons, we wear ripped jeans, and we grow soul patches. We look like we’re doing this thing ‘normally.’ But under the surface, many youth workers – including at times, myself, are self-destructive, narcissistic, people-pleasing, terrified-of-our-own-shadow nightmares!

We have to be doing stuff – constantly. Stopping and considering or even appreciating is rarely on the cards. If there’s space, we have to fill it: An empty room? Run around throwing loo roll! A quiet space? Yell loudly! A sparse calendar. Fill it entirely!

Is this you? Then you’re running hot – and you’re gonna blow!

Some of this is certainly fear-driven. We get fearful that people aren’t having a good time, or fearful that the pastor isn’t happy with our job performance, etc. Fear is a huge motivator. I think there’s another reason though and that is that we just don’t know any better.

The self-perpetuating model of youth worker burnout

Most youth work in the UK is done by volunteers, and the large majority of paid youth workers have had no formal training. For most of us, we learned youth work from ‘the guy who went before.’ What I mean by this is that many youth workers learned youth work from their youth worker – with some tips picked up from festival and event youth workers along the way.

So, if these youth workers were ‘always on’ then we’re probably just perpetuating the same poor practice. More likely, however, we only ever witnessed them in full-on youth worker mode at projects, and then assumed ‘that’s just what being a youth worker looks like.’

Then there’s a theological reason too. Since the late 1940s we’ve been reading books and attending seminars telling us that as ‘incarnational youth workers’ we’re supposed to always be on. Our door should always be open, our phone always switched on, and young people should feel free to demand our energy whenever they feel like it.

Since this time, however, and especially since the 1980s, it’s been really hard to convince youth workers to stick around for very long. Very rarely will a youth worker work beyond one contract before moving on to something else. All of the youth workers I knew from growing up are not youth workers anymore.

There’s a lot of reasons for that, but I believe there’s more than just a subtle corelation between overexertion in youth work, and time spent in youth work.

So, switching off?

Why do you need to switch off? Because you will burn out if you don’t. We know this, but we don’t really know it.

We don’t really know the importance of regular, consistent days off.

We don’t really know the importance of booking and taking holidays.

We don’t really know the importance of switching off notifications.

We don’t really know the importance of hobbies, friends, and activities away from youth work.

Those who work these things out (and so do know) are those who keep going! But even they still need occasional reminding. There are others who know the importance of these things too though, and that’s those who have already burned out.

I could have phrased it ‘we don’t really know the consequences of not…’ Consequences on our health, our marriage, our kids, our sleep, our friendships, our hairlines, or even our job effectiveness. Exertion in does not mean quality out.

So, let me just end there – using a language we can all get:

Youth workers sometimes need to switch off because they won’t be very good at youthwork if they don’t.

Food for thought.

 

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