The Passion of the Christ: Mel Gibson's Jesus envy backfires
Harold Hark
27 February 2004

Jesus is the Prime Hero for Christians, and subsequently for most of the Western World. And well should he be. If you follow his teaching you will be among the lucky few who are not politicians, do not blow up abortion clinics, and do not carry his banner on the way to slaughtering The Other.

Jesus's twist on heroics was not to shoot the bad guys but to be a mirror for their barbarity. The suffering he endured was not for our sins but for our liberation.

Sadly, most folks are not up to this quest. Instead of transcending by example as Jesus did, we whip out our six guns or other forms of anger and blast away in revenge. And, of course, we are blasting the good guys most of the time. Just like the killers of Christ, be they Jews or Romans.

For two millennia Christians have been living out this original post traumatic stress disorder with a split personality. On the one hand they preach the message of Liberator Jesus, while the militant wing, responsible for history's greatest atrocities, keeps avenging themselves on non-Christians.

When you think about it, Mel Gibson has unconsciously acted the part of the Avenger of Jesus in just about every movie he's made. If memory serves, he came close to playing the Liberator Jesus in "Braveheart". So it's no wonder he finally came up with a film depicting his lifelong hero, a film which, perhaps unconsciously, combines both aspects. Has Mel harboured this fantasy since childhood? With a zealous, trend-bucking priest for a father (and one who holds reactionary views on The Holocaust), he would not have escaped childhood without the man's influence, both emotional and fanciful.

For those of us who regard religiosity as a form of mental illness, the film is neither uplifting or cinematically worthy. The location and cinematography are beautiful, but the acting is nonexistent, and the script and its incessant violence are the work of a fanatic unable to edit. Gibson's personal vision of this great story purports to be based in fact, but since it is all hearsay, he has just made a fool of himself. As have all those deluded people who take what they can from writings and events incomprehensible to them.

As Barbara Hooks writes in The Age, Green Guide, (26/2/04):

"The New Testament is billed as the words of God. It's authorship is on very shaky ground indeed. Jesus of Nazareth kept no written record of his sermons. Accounts of his life, death and resurrection were written years after his death--in one instance by a disciple said to be illiterate; in another, well after the death of the so-called author. Contradictions in and between accounts are rife, originals don't exist, and the oldest surviving texts are still only copies of copies 150 years removed from the originals."

If Christianity, the religion that preaches peace, was born of such a violent act, it is no wonder its adherents are still committing acts of violence, and always in Jesus's name. An entire religion has been handed down, generation after generation, with its defining moment a textbook case of PTSD.

Contrast the results of Jesus's teaching with that of the no-less-wise Buddha. It's as if they lived on different planets. Buddha had no gods to worship; his message was the liberation from Samsara, the eternal wheel of suffering life. In the Judaic tradition, Jesus made the fatal error of claiming to be the Son of God; the wisdom of the day being that people could better comprehend his Buddha-like teachings this way. Instead, he gave his followers an excuse to claim His God as theirs and to allow for no other God. The hubris associated with "My God is better than your God" has devastated the planet ever since.

Gibson's Passion is without doubt the most revealing film on Christianity yet made. But most Christians have still to absorb the essential liberation Jesus exemplified. They hear the words, but don't understand them.

Hopefully our future history will one day record that humanity finally got over religion and became serious about spiritual development.