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Here is a personal reflection question: did The Passion of the Christ movie make you rethink your faith? Barnagroup.com conducted a survey several years ago asking individuals if they had seen a movie in the past two years that made them not only rethink their faith, but actually make a change in their life as well. Of those individuals who actually admitted to making a change, 53% said it was because of The Passion. “Mel Gibson’s controversial movie about the last twelve hours of the life of Jesus, The Passion of the Christ, stunned the movie industry by becoming the eighth highest-grossing domestic film of all-time. (barnagroup.com)”
So just how much impact did this movie have on our society? The impact from this movie was more of an immediate impact than a long lasting impact. George Barna stated, “Immediate reaction to the movie seemed to be quite intense…but people’s memories are short and are easily redirected in a media-saturated, fast-paced culture like ours.” With that being said, Barna also reminded individuals that this movie still had a significant impact on viewers. “Don’t lose sight of the fact that about 13 million adults changed some aspect of their typical religious behavior because of the movie and about 11 million people altered some pre-existing religious beliefs because of the content of that film. That’s enormous influence. (barnagroup.com)”
What does this information mean? Barna was right when he said people are caught up in the “media-saturated, fast paced culture, so the fact that this movie touched as many lives as it did is a major achievement. Religious belief is probably one of the hardest things to touch on and even harder to have an impact on through a movie. Overall, this was a very well done movie. To prove just how well done this movie actually was Barna reported, two out of every three adults (67%) said it was “excellent,” and most of the rest (23%) described it as “good.”
Now what? What should someone take from all of these statistics? Other than the fact that these statistics back up the statement thatThe Passion truly did have a significant impact on people’s lives, they also get you thinking. Just Think for a moment about how, or if, this movie personally impacted you, if you saw the movie was what you heard about the movie different from what you actually saw? Were you one of the millions of individuals impacted by the movie’s message? If so, how were you impacted?