Back when I was in graduate school, I decided to see how many Christians I could possibly anger at once.

In my defense, I wasn’t the only one who thought this would be a good idea.

For reasons I don’t remember, I was part of a group called Kaleidoscope Films. Kaleidoscope operated out of the Student Union and specialized in bringing “little” and/or “artsy-fartsy” films (a technical term) to the union. Each member was assigned to recommend a film and then the group discussed and voted on them.

Once a film was chosen, a couple members were assigned to handle publicity.  This meant we had to make a large poster to put outside the Union Forum Hall and a smaller poster that fit on an A-Frame somewhere else on campus. This was all pretty painless and involved projectors and minimal art skills and couple hours every couple of weeks.

At least that’s what it involved before we decided to bring Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ to campus. We did this even though it had never been shown in Manhattan, Ks during its original release and even though we knew some people would have “issues” with it.

Like all things involving blasphemy and religion and evil, several meetings with “important authority figures” (IAF; another technical term) ensued. We were basically told to justify bringing such a controversial movie to campus and were are also assured, in so many words, that “free speech” was not an acceptable reason. So there.

In one meeting, I think with the man in charge of the Student Union, a group of us fielded several questions about our choice. The meeting was tense and we were all intimidated by the IAF and were stumbling around trying to avoid using the phrase “free speech.” At some point, the man asked why the movie was even worth seeing since someone in our group had just admitted it wasn’t textually accurate.

For some reason, although I knew better, the devils over my shoulders took over and I started talking.

Keep in mind, as you read what comes next, I don’t think I’d actually seen the movie or read the book at that point.

Also keep in mind that if you’re relying on ME to say the right thing, you are in desperate, desperate trouble.

I told the IAF that the movie allowed the director to focus on one element of the Christ story: his part human side. By trimming down the actual text, the director could explore that issue more than had been in other movies about Christ. It explored what was good about being human and what Christ was giving up to be the messiah. (I actually said more than that, but that was the gist of it.)

Whatever I said, it worked and we were allowed the show the movie. I don’t take credit for it, because a lot of people worked hard, but our chairwoman told me my answer was perfect. We did have to host a discussion about the movie, which is a policy exception we didn’t have to make for other movies. (If you search “The Last Temptation” in this link you can read Kansas State Collegian articles about the controversy.)

Although it did have some great moments, I was underwhelmed by the movie. The ending was kind of predictable.