Jesus Actor Gets Some Fan Worship

Now, Religion in the News, a report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media. This week’s item is from www.ananova.com, July 6, 2004, with the headline: “Jesus Actor Mistaken for the Real Deal—James Caviezel has been swamped with requests to perform miracles by Mexican fans who believe he really is Jesus Christ.] The 35-year-old actor who played Jesus in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ was on a one-week tour of the east Mexican state of Veracruz.

“According to Mexican newpaper Reforma, dozens of residents from villages throughout the state, one of the poorest in the country, asked Caviezel to heal the sick and perform other miracles as he passed through.

“The actor, who is himself a strict Catholic, said, ‘The belief of these people really moved me. It was a shock for me to see how they came up to me to ask for my help. I had to explain to them that I was only an actor and wasn’t really the Son of God.’

“Mexico has the biggest population of Catholics in the world after Brazil and has been visited by the pope five times.”

Tom: Dave, we could apply the same thing…we’ve talked about it in the past, the Jesus Project…other films that have an actor playing Jesus, that have imagery that’s taken into villages, whether it be in India, whether it be in New Guinea, wherever it might be, it has the same effect. Yet people think it’s still a good thing, you know? One of the points that’s made is that the movies are the most popular form of entertainment—I think it’s one of the top three in the world today. People just—wherever they are, they love them. But you can see some results here that are not good.

Dave: Yeah, Tom, we’re probably turning some people off out there. “These guys are such fanatics—narrow minded, dogmatic. Let’s not keep hammering away at this.”

Tom: Well, Dave, if you didn’t write this—(I’m sorry to interrupt), but this is a news report!

Dave: Right. Right.

Tom: This is taking place, okay?

Dave: Right.

Tom: What we’re reporting, how people are responding to it.

Dave:  Right.

Tom: These are not our opinions.

Dave: Well, we’ve already mentioned this a number of times. It is very dangerous—in fact, it is blasphemy, it’s an abomination—for any human being to pretend to be God. Would you go around trying to pretend that you are God manifest in the flesh? Trying to pretend that you are Jesus Christ?

Well, no, I mean they’d lock you up if you did that!

Well, then, what about pretending to be Jesus Christ on the screen, the big screen? An actor. What’s the difference?

“Oh, well, we know that that’s acting.”

The problem is, as you see from this news report, there are some people who don’t quite get the picture, and, Tom, I’ve talked to people in this country—educated people—who have told me, “Well, now, since I’ve seen The Passion—now I have a clear picture of Jesus. So when I pray, I know what He looks like,” and so forth. “It really gets me closer to Jesus.”

You’re not getting closer to Jesus. This is not the true Jesus. So, the problem is Jesus Christ—I’m sorry, Tom, I don’t like to say this, and I don’t want to seem to be the bad guy because I know that there are people who have been able to take advantage of this film because it has raised the interest of many people, and they’ll talk about it. Like Christmastime—whether you believe in Christmas or not, people are willing to talk about Jesus. They’ve seen this film, they want to talk about Jesus. Well, straighten them out that it wasn’t His physical sufferings that saved us, and so forth.

But the problem is they’re getting a misrepresentation of Jesus Christ. This now becomes Jesus to them. For any actor to dare to do that—it’s an abomination! Of course, Jim Caviezel said, well he wouldn’t dare pretend he was Jesus unless he had Jesus inside of him, so he took the Mass, the wafer, everyday—which I don’t think is going to help.

Tom: Well, Dave, he was…he got the part, you know—I document this in Showtime for the Sheep?:The Church and The Passion of the Christ—Mel Gibson recognized some qualities about him. He said they were “otherworldly qualities.” So, on the one…you can’t have it both ways. On the one hand, you can’t say, “Well, I’m just a guy doing a job, playing a part,” and on the other hand, you’re selected because you have “otherworldly qualities”—qualities that are “spiritual,” qualities that are supernatural. I’m not saying that Mel said he absolutely had those, but you read the interview with the guy from Mother Angelica’s network, the reporter. It’s clear!

Dave: Whatever the reasons, Tom, somebody is misrepresenting Jesus Christ. In fact, Paul said, “Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more.” So, Jesus Christ—I mean, if…if this were helpful—God can do anything. He could have made movies of Jesus. He could have given it to us. He could have given us pictures, at least a still picture. At least an artist’s rendering that he…a really a good artist, from looking at Jesus when He was living on this earth, gave us a lifelike picture.

Tom: Dave, weren’t there men in the Bible who were anointed when they were putting together the Ark of the Covenant? That God anointed individuals. Didn’t He anoint artisans to render something that was—you know, again, according to His will. But we don’t find that with Jesus himself.

Dave: The Bible’s not a picture book, Tom, and I’ve said this many times. I don’t want to seem to hammer away on it, but we are born again by the Word of God. We live by the Word of God. God writes to us in words. If pictures would have been helpful, He would have given us pictures. In fact, they take us away, because you have the saying, “A picture’s worth a thousand words.” Why is that? Because you don’t really know what the artist had in mind. A picture cannot communicate, and, Tom, we can illustrate in many ways—we’ve been talking about “words are not physical”—“justice”—that’s not physical; “truth”—not physical. Now put that in a picture. Give me a picture of ethics. Give me a picture of honesty.

See, words have a power, and they communicate something that we understand in our soul and spirit, and when you dumb that down to a picture, you are not moving in the direction of truth. You are moving away from truth. And that is a basic problem with movies about the Bible, especially about Jesus Christ.

Tom: Again, it’s a translation by an individual—a director of a movie. You’re getting his view, his ideas, his concepts…even though you may feel they relate to something biblical, they are still a personal interpretation, and therein lies the problem.