Gibson’s Ugly Baby
By
Director of Stewardship, Heartland Parishes of
The question that most people are asking me with respect to Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of Jesus Christ, relates to the theological significance of the ugly baby in the Devil’s arms scene. Christianity Today Magazine was also being asked that question. They asked Gibson, himself, to explain it.
Throughout the movie, Satan is depicted as a woman. During one of the flogging sequences, Satan is walking through the crowd carrying a baby, engaging Mary in eye contact as he walks. When the baby turns and looks at the camera, rather than a pretty baby looking at the viewer, it is this evil looking man about the size of a five year old. He looks like a pale, even disfigured, forty year old. When he smiles, it is sinister, almost grotesque.
The theological symbolism of this baby is part of Gibson’s dramatization of evil. Evil tries to imitate good, but always falls short. The Bible depicts evil likewise. The number seven, for instance, often symbolizes perfection. The number six symbolizes imperfection, or falling short of perfection…hence the mark of the beast being 666. It falls short of the thrice holy God.
In the movie, Satan, the mother of this ugly child, is glaring at Mary the mother of her child. Mary’s child is now a man disfigured and bloodied from the brutality and marks of an inhuman beating, but whom we still recognize and know to be beautiful.
Evil mimics good. That is its modus operandi. It may, at time, seem good, or feel good, but that does not make it good. Evil is a parasite. Just as a tic sucks blood out of its host, so evil sucks grace -- our spiritual lifeblood -- out of its prey, the soul.
Evil cannot live without good. Good, on the other hand, has absolutely no need of evil. That’s why, in the end, good has to prevail. When evil does not have good to destroy, it turns inward, upon itself, and destroys itself. We see that happening every day in people’s lives. Evil ruins lives.
Evil doesn’t just happen. People choose it. The evil we do always hurts us. It often also hurts those who had nothing to do with the evil we have perpetrated. Both are reasons why we are not to cooperate in evil. St. Paul tells us that we can never do evil so that good would come of it. At times, we must choose lesser evils, but we are not to choose evil in and of itself.
The man being whipped, crowned, forced to carry the Cross, and crucified, He is our salvation. Suffering is the remedy for evil. When we choose evil, we choose suffering. When we choose good, we reduce suffering. What is it about this equation that we can’t seem to figure out?