Just imagine!
At last I have come to realise that what I really disliked about the 'Passion' was not its violence or gruesome brutality, but that it left nothing to my imagination. The depiction was so relentlessly explicit that I was forced to think of it as factual; and that made it unconvincing. After all, I was thinking, that much flogging with an instrument like that wouldn't just leave someone covered with scratches; there'd be bone and muscle showing. And nobody in that state could carry a cross that size; c'mon, give us a break! All that should have been excluded by scenes whose economic suggestiveness would have sent my imagination shuddering at what it might have been like.
In a way, that very fact surely betrayed a widespread cultural malaise. It is, quite simply, that this priceless faculty of imagination is being controlled, cramped, weakened by lack of exercise. The media, indeed, life itself, is being dictated by images. Business projects must have a good 'image', right down to the letter heading and the logos; Politicians are increasingly forced to prepare themselves for the camera. Artists are starved of symbols. Most tragic of all, a generation of human beings is being pressured to judge their value by appearances; Let's face it, a lot of the preoccupation with health and fitness is being driven by that; it's a significant factor in the problems of anorexia; and the affluent spend thousands on reshaping their bodies and faces. We become like animals preening ourselves for attention...
We can't afford to neglect our imagination. Imagination needs to be fed and stimulated, not stuffed and stifled. OK, so TV can be a useful child minder, but our children still need to play - to use imagination creatively. Imagination empowers our memories, offers new possibilities, gives insight into the hidden springs of character and personality. Above all, imagination feeds faith and hope, whereby, as the Book says, "we are sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." This is what makes books so important. Why do folk so often say they preferred the book to the film? It is because the book leaves the reader's imagination free to create its own pictures... Surely that's why we have a bible before we have a video... So if you want the truth for you, rather than someone's picture-truth, read the Book.
John Peck