In response to news of the negative review of The Passion in the New Yorker magazine (and all the other negative reviews by the secularist media elites): an editing of an email exchange with a friend.

     I just came back from seeing it, and I wouldn't expect any atheist, agnostic or Jew who is of the victim-cultivating sort, or anti-Christian zealot from the goat-cheese eating elite of NY and The New Yorker to have anything but befuddlement or typical arrogant contempt for this movie. Still, it is a masterpiece that is more cathartic (in the ancient Greek sense) than any other film I've ever witnessed without question. For believers, it is more of an experience than a mere great film. I must have lost 2 quarts of brine through my tear-ducts in the viewing. I've also seen Jews who I respect on TV and in print praise it and defend it, like David Horowitz of Frontpagemagazine.com fame and Michael Medved.

     If you're a squeamish person who wants to see a professional scourging and crucifixion tidied up and made less brutal than it actually was, you're not going to like the depiction. The Roman soldiers behave like sadistic Nazi Gestapo. It could have been less violent, but why should it be? No decadent Hollywood-type can provide a good reason. It's just the final lame excuse they come up with to attack the film. Lame, because it so flies in the face of all the gratuitously violent and deviant "art" they've praised unequivocally in the recent past.

     By contrast, in The Passion, artistic license is taken to make a legitimate point which serves to emphasize the antithesis of "gratuitous" or pointless Hollywood violence for titillation sake; and that is the essence of the Christian message, which is that Jesus Christ willfully volunteered to suffer the most grievous and painful death possible to redeem ALL mankind from sin, and provide the redemptive sacrifice and way to salvation and eternal life through Him...not gratuitous, but steeped in meaning of the most profound sort.

     It's a theological message and gesture on the part of God that is too deep and complex for superficial media-elite-types to grasp because they either can't grasp it and/or don't want to try. It's of no interest to them. They see themselves as disinterested bystanders, not benefactors of salvation and eternal life.

     No Christian expects them to like the film or its subject matter necessarily, but the double-standard and hypocrisy they've shown is really too much to swallow. They praise gratuitous violence, decadent violence in films like "Kill Bill", "Natural Born Killers", "Pulp Fiction", "Fargo", "Reservoir Dogs" and the like, but all of a sudden, the crucifixion is more than they can bare?...Give me a break. What boobs do they take us all for? The Jewish and Secularist critics that call the film anti-semitic don't have a problem with the film, but with the New Testament Gospels themselves and they should admit this. Gibson is pretty true to the plot of the Gospels, with minor exceptions. They're just peeved that ANY Jew would come off looking less than noble, which would be impossible, given the story as its written in the Bible. Still, Gibson tries to help them out with his portrayal of Simon of Sirene who comes off as a Jewish hero. And he has some members of the Sanhedrin protest the kangaroo court held by Caiaphus and actually walk out, refusing to condemn Jesus in such an unfair manner...Did we hear this kind of trumped up charge against DeMille for portraying the Egyptians in such an "anti-semitic" manner in "The Ten Commandments". Maybe Egyptian Americans should have been outraged!! You get the point.

     I highly recommend seeing the film. I don't think it would damage your psyche to see the Roman brutality in the context of Christ's sacrifice. It's very lyrical the way it's filmed and the actor who plays Jesus, Jim Caviezel, is quite remarkable and charismatic.

     What the critics really hate about this film and its creator Mel Gibson, is the unflinching moral absolutism they represent, which they despise being the moral relativists and radical individualists they are. In their know-it-all minds, Christianity is the backwards father they've been rebelling against because he lays down the law, and reminds them that there is right and wrong, good and evil, despite their stubborn desire to deny it. In their vaunted minds, God is for children and anal-retentive Victorians. No one should pass judgment on anyone else's personal behavior except the person engaging in the behavior, unless he's a white Christian male, and then you can judge him all you wish, and make sure you label him intolerant or bigoted.

     Jesus was not some wussy, Zefirelli, fey, love-bomber as he's often portrayed by Hollywood. He was both a man who exerted us to love our neighbor and our enemies, while at the same time said that those who don't fly right will ultimately be treated to damnation and eternal death. One can quote Him on both accounts. It's not an either/or proposition, i.e., either pacifist, non-judgmental, Kumbayah milquetoast, or fire and brimstone, judge and damner of the unrepentant. It's both/and. The desire to redeem and forgive is always there, but it is we who make the final choice. And it is we who damn ourselves if anyone does. When we refuse to acknowledge and judge our own actions as good or bad, we truly deliver ourselves unto evil. The NewYorker reader is not to be consulted on these points of reference because their foreign to his mindset.

     If I emphasize the judgmental nature of Christianity in a lot of what I say, it's a reflection of the times in which we live and how we're forced to struggle against a dominant pop-cultural elite which is antagonistic to notions of moral absolutism and is far more decadent and in need of repentance than of understanding. 40 years of psychobabbling non-judgmentalism and moral relativism has given rise to the serious problems we now face, because Americans and Europeans have totally confused liberty with license. The MTV half-time show is just another symptom of the coarsening, as is Kobe Bryant, Britney Spears, Monica Lewinski, Jerry Springer, Scott Peterson and Bill Clinton among others. They're both chickens and eggs. They contribute to the decline while being part of it and created by it. They and their electronic media enablers are a huge element of the problem, not the solution. Jesus Christ and the Word of God are the solution, and they know this and fear it, and so fight it...with ACLU lawyers.

     Freedom in its truer, ideal sense, is really only freedom to do what's right. And knowing what's right is intuitive. The American Founders understood this. When it becomes the freedom to engage in unbridled self-indulgence, it's not freedom anymore, but self-destruction, which unfortunately, when done large-scale as it is now, affects all of us, because it spills over into the whole society. People at the New Yorker, in academe or the media elites will always deny this and reject it's premise, because the premise requires their ilk to engage in self-restraint, which their very arrogant egos will never do, because in their minds, this license isn't decline but greater freedom itself.