{"id":75,"date":"2004-02-15T00:36:46","date_gmt":"2004-02-15T05:36:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecapeblog.com\/wp\/?p=75"},"modified":"2004-02-15T00:36:46","modified_gmt":"2004-02-15T05:36:46","slug":"passion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecapeblog.com\/?p=75","title":{"rendered":"Passion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am hoping to see Mel Gibson&#8217;s new film, &#8220;Passion&#8221;, when it&#8217;s released later this month.<br \/>\nI respect him for not sanitizing the death of Jesus, as it seems so many Christian denominations have.<\/p><p><!--more--><br \/>\nChristians believe that the sacrifice of Jesus, half divine\/half human, was necessary for forgiveness of sins.<br \/>\nSince the day I learned that crucifixion is a torturous death by slow suffocation, a crucifix symbolizes to me the execution by cruel and unusual punishment of an innocent at the hands of his country&#8217;s occupying military authority.<br \/>\nThe new book sensation, The DaVinci Code, explains that the &#8220;traditional&#8221; cross which we see in all Western churches was rejected by some Christian sects in favor of a version of the Maltese cross, 4 parts that are equal in length.  A cross of this design could not have been used for execution, and is, thus, a symbol of Jesus&#8217;s ministry rather than his death.<br \/>\nI find few if any matters more worthy of consideration than one&#8217;s relationship to God, and instinct tells me that Gibson is a deeply religious man who made this out of a wish to tell Jesus&#8217;s story accurately and with poignance and empathy.<br \/>\nI&#8217;m sure this film will do brilliantly at the box office, and I hope it inspires the telling of other journeys, particularly of those spiritual leaders whom we perhaps don&#8217;t know as well as the Carpenter from Nazareth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am hoping to see Mel Gibson&#8217;s new film, &#8220;Passion&#8221;, when it&#8217;s released later this month. I respect him for not sanitizing the death of Jesus, as it seems so many Christian denominations have.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecapeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecapeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecapeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecapeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecapeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thecapeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecapeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecapeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecapeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}