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Christianity is bloody.
The whole thing started with an execution. If the early Christians had any tact—or, at least, a good PR agency—they would’ve downplayed the religion’s messy, off-putting beginning and encourage prospective newcomers to concentrate on something else. Instead, the cross has become the central symbol of our faith—something we slap on our walls and hang around our necks and embroider on our throw pillows. It’s almost like we’re venerating the electric chair.
And when you read the Bible, blood is everywhere—painted on doorways, spattered on altars and metaphorically quaffed by Jesus’ disciples. Most of all, we read about the blood Jesus shed for us on that cross. Sure, Christianity is about justice and grace and redemption. But we get there through sacrifice: About innocent blood shed for the guilty.
I was thinking of all of this while watching Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge—a movie where buckets of innocent blood are shed.
The movie—the first Gibson’s directed since 2006’s Apocalypto (and arguably a return to relevance after his profane, anti-Semitic, drunken meltdown at a police officer that same year)—is the story of Desmond Doss, a soldier in World War II who refused to carry a gun but won the Congressional Medal of Honor anyway. It’s one of the most Christian secular movies I’ve ever seen, as well as one of the bloodiest. Gibson’s depiction of the Battle of Okinawa isn’t just a harrowing picture of war. It’s a picture of hell.
It was in this hell that Desmond Doss earned his medal without so much as a sidearm. All he carried was his medical equipment, a Bible and a desire to save as many broken bodies as possible. “Lord, help me get one more,” he’d say rescue after rescue. “Help me get one more.” The real Desmond Doss saved 75 souls.
Hacksaw Ridge is quintessential Gibson—a director who never shies away from faith and seems fascinated by blood. Yes, his movies glory in gore, but I think it sometimes serves a higher purpose.
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